Customer Relationship Management Apps are the Future of Friendship

Read the other side of the debate here.

A friendship is the most important investment a person can make. But like all investments, friendships require resources. Time, thought, emotional investment, sometimes even money are all required to maintain a healthy relationship. 

Between work, school, and other responsibilities, sometimes we just don’t have enough of those resources to spare for our friends, or at least we don’t think we do. It turns out that CRMs, Customer Relationship Management apps, could be just the tool we need to find that little bit of extra time our friends need and deserve.

Customer Relationship Management apps have been the go-to way for companies to keep tabs on their customer relations for years. They have become a necessary tool for any budding or thriving business. At their core, these applications are simply organizational tools, hardly more complex than a calendar or a schedule, but just as important as one.

The benefits of this are on par with the benefits of keeping a calendar. I don’t know about you, but as a university student and freelancer, I’ve had to rely on scheduling for practically all aspects of my life. Without proper organization it’s hard to get anything done, let alone balance all your personal, professional, and scholarly responsibilities. And as someone who regularly relies on his phone calendar, it doesn’t take much to imagine how an application like this could help me spend more time with the people I care about, so long as I take proper advantage of it.

This could easily be seen in another light, though. If you require an application to tell you when and how to spend time with your friends, then are you really enjoying that time? 

In an article on this subject by Axios.com, journalist Kia Kokalitcheva says that “there’s something deeply unsettling about the idea that a friend is reaching out only because an app reminded them to,” adding, “it’s hard to believe they truly care about you.”

But if you set reminders in your phone about an important professional meeting, or an approaching final exam date, you do it exactly because you care about those things and want to be properly prepared for when they happen. We don’t use schedules to act as our digital taskmasters which order us around and rip away our freedom, but rather to help us take full advantage of our time. Wanting to use your time with the people you love to the fullest possible extent is a sign that you do care about them.

There’s another element of CRMs that could potentially bring your social and professional life to the next level. Most businesses use CRMs to manage not only important business contacts, but all business contacts. As put by the creators of Dex, a social CRM that’s currently in development, some apps are built explicitly to help you “turn acquaintances into allies.” In other words, there are CRMs that could help you to build new relationships, not just maintain your current ones. 

CRMs are slowly gearing more and more towards social management, and they could be exactly the right tool for the job. 

Considering how much potential to do good they have, I would encourage you to reach out and try one. See for yourself whether CRMs are a passing phase in social media or the next step in improving your social life.