THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN BUSINESSES AND CUSTOMERS

The progress of technology is imminent and fast so the speed of the changes impacts every area of our life both professional and personal, in the role of customer or manager. Social media is one of the biggest innovation of the XXI century and keeps evolving. Social media is not only a sum of websites for entertainment and interaction between users but a collection of platforms which engage businesses and customers in the same place beyond e-mail and telephone. Before the rise of social media, customers were forced to write e-mails in order to receive an answer to their requests or complaints from the companies. Never before the boundaries between clients and companies were so low, the interaction so close and the access in real time to the customer’s favourite brand. All types of businesses can find directly what their clients want, their opinions about current and future products for free. Likewise, clients can address directly to their favourite companies as to those which disappointed them. This paper aims to provide insights from literature review relating to the impact that social media platforms have on the relationship between businesses and their customers. Questionless, it’s interesting and important to present first of all what is social media, why these platforms are important for businesses and show the risks and benefits in the management of the customers. Social media has an ugly face too. Businesses are exposed to the criticism or individuals who want to harm the image of the brand and not all the business which are engaged in social media are successful. The statement that social media is trendy is true as the fact that social media is not a panacea. At the end of the paper is presented a general conclusion after balancing the risks and benefits of social media for the relationship between businesses and customers.