Put “Relationship” Back Into CRM Solutions

Organizations should use their CRM software to recognize and honor consumer preferences. 77% of consumers say that companies should let them decide how they want to be contacted, yet only 33% of companies even capture their customers’ preferred method of message delivery according to Forrester Research (2009).

And only 14% of 4,700 consumers say that the ads they receive are relevant to them. Most consumers prefer a dialogue rather than a monologue.

The consumer wants to feel “listened to” and in control rather than being told what to think, feel, or do. These things would result in benefits for the company and benefits for the consumers.

What is needed as part of the CRM Solution:
- Automated solution
- Capture preferences including opt-ins and opt-outs
- Simple, easy-to-read results
- Real-time updates
- Campaign tracking and reporting

Let your customers tell you what they want to hear about and how they want to hear it. Information such as opt-ins and opt-outs needs to be captured in real-time and accessed automatically in real-time.

Benefits:
- Visibility into customer contact status
- Increase sales productivity
- Greater management visibility
- Significant cost savings
- More effective marketing campaigns
- Improved customer satisfaction and loyalty
- Increased lifetime value of customers

Transform customer communications into profitable relationships. Achieve a one-on-one relationship with your customers.

When you have greater visibility into your sales activities with your customers and you have real-time access to the contact preferences of your customers and prospects, key metrics can be used to determine your pipeline of future growth.

Contacting a customer or prospect by his preferred method eliminates risk and maintains a positive, productive relationship. This results in creating value for customers which increases sales and customer satisfaction and loyalty. Productivity is then increased resulting in an overall increase in lifetime value of the customers.

Tags: CRM, customer relationship, relationship
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CRM Help Desk Software: What You Need to Consider

CRM Help Desk Software is not a priority for someone starting a business. Their customer relationships are built one at a time through personal contact. However, once the company grows to the point of adding employees, the customer-company dynamic begins to change. The challenges faced by small businesses become more similar to those of larger organizations – to get a unified view of customers throughout the company and to keep in contact with those customers.

All companies want to provide a consistent customer relationship management service, which also yields profits for the organization. As businesses grow, informal customer communication cannot be sustained, so some other method must be instituted. That is when CRM Help Desk software becomes a possible solution.

When considering what CRM Help Desk software to purchase, it often does not matter how large the company is. The concerns are basically similar. Three C’s must be considered: Customization, Communication Strategy, and Cost.

Customization

Most CRM Help Desk solutions for small business often do not fulfill the expectations the firm has of the software. If the CRM system cannot closely integrate with the other existing systems or does not store information within the customer database in a centralized manner, it can deprive the small business of leveraging the complete potential of the CRM software. If the CRM database cannot be customized or configured as per the organization’s requirements, it can result in the CRM system being completely inflexible.

Communication Strategy

Small businesses should consider only those CRM help desk systems which can be incorporated easily into the existing IT infrastructure. Ideally, CRM solutions should be considered as a strategy as opposed to just technology. These need to be implemented directly to curtail costs as well as errors pertaining to sales, thereby raising revenues. Since most customer information is already available within current systems in the organization, creating a new application, which contains entirely new information, is a redundant process and in the case of small businesses with limited resources, this can be a painstaking process.

Cost

Before any purchase of CRM software solutions are made, the small business should ask if the software will truly communicate with customers and be easy to use by the employees. You also need to know the overall costs for integration of the CRM Help Desk system.

Since most small businesses have limited resources, they cannot spare their employees on a full-time basis to carry out CRM Help Desk Software implementation. Ideally such companies should consider a web-based application. This eliminates installation and licensing costs and nearly eliminates all labor costs for installation and maintenance. Yet, it gives them regular updates and upgrades and access to expert advice and help as needed. This ensures the success of the relationship management system implementation.

Tags: CRM, CRM software, Help Desk, help desk sofware
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Help desk CRM software provides internal service and support solutions that automate the help desk and service desk function. Typical help desk CRM software functionality includes call management, call tracking, knowledge management, problem resolution, remote control, and self-help capabilities.

CRM and call center software specialize in solutions that help automate the call center and customer management process including customer identification, communications, segmentation, analysis, sales and marketing. Some vendors in this category offer complementary solutions in the form of sales force automation (SFA), help desk software, and related front/back office solutions.

Knowledge management enables companies to more effectively manage structured data, unstructured information, collaboration, and document management. While a majority of these vendors focus specifically on knowledge sharing, search and categorization tools, some offer complementary products in the form of help desk automation, customer relationship management (CRM), call center management, and related front/back office solutions.

Tags: Help Desk CRM Software
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Web-based software, or Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions, will account for 25% of all new business software by 2011, according to Gartner. Why are decision-makers increasingly turning to SaaS for application deployments?

Find out how to achieve business benefits through SaaS, which include:

• Higher productivity and ROI
• Lower upfront software license and staff costs
• Increased agility to scale software in meeting business change
• And more!

SaaS can make a great impact on your business’ bottom line.

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) or web-based software is software that is delivered via the web and priced as a monthly, quarterly, or annual subscription. It transfers the burden of implementing, maintaining and keeping the application up to date and running smoothly from the customer to the vendor. It eliminates the costs and complexities of installing and integrating hardware to support the software and hiring additional staff to support the application.

SaaS permits users to more quickly and fully leverage the software functionality. It also enables users to immediately benefit from the software vendor’s latest technological features without the disruptions and costs associated with software updates and upgrades.

All types of businesses and all sizes of organizations can benefit from web-based software. Mid-sized organizations using help desk software or customer management software stand to benefit most from this new innovation.

Today’s economic environment has intensified these companies’ needs. Customers expect more service than they got in the past couple of decades – and research shows that customers’ expectations are rising. Customer loyalty is fleeting. Competition is rising and intensifying due to globalization and eCommerce. Employees are being encouraged to work from home or forced to spend more time on the road meeting with customers and partners face-to-face. Rising costs and tightened credit are forcing organizations to tighten their operating and capital budgets.

If you are wondering if SaaS, or web-based, help desk software or customer management software would work for your company, please contact Cynergy Software at 800-349-0527.

Tags: SaaS, Software-as-a-Service, Web based software
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Cynergy Help Desk software is web-based software that can be utilized for online CRM. It features tools to submit and track sales activities as well as lead generation activities.

CRM Performance Tracking allows sales staff to view the percentage of deals they have closed. Staff members can view or attach files when updating customer requests. Pending sales and forecasted closings are shown on the screen. A knowledge base management system is incorporated for quick solution of problems.

Cynergy Software allows managers to create user accounts, view staff performance and response time, and configure the software and displays to fit their needs. It allows easy access of customer databases and easy creation of templates.

Cynergy Software is the choice of software for many sales and support-center organizations. Many of the features that are optional in other software packages are standard in Cynergy.

Tags: online CRM, Web Based CRM
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Measuring Customer Satisfaction in the Contact Center – Part 2

Using the automated survey tool in your help center software will give you quick and accurate feedback after each interaction with your customers. Technology alone does not assure effective post-call surveys. The makeup and delivery of post-call satisfaction surveys can significantly influence their reliability and usability.

Consider these 5 best practices based on the American Customer Satisfaction Index published annually by the University of Michigan:

1. Use a scientific questionnaire design. Asking if the customer found the agent knowledgeable and helpful in the same question will not give meaningful feedback and will confuse the customer who may have found him or her helpful but not knowledgeable about the question. Each question should only address one issue. And each question should be straightforward and clearly stated.
2. Define the goal. Know why you are taking the survey and how you will use it before you devise the questions.
3. Keep it short and to the point. Your customers’ time is valuable. Respect them. And don’t forget to thank them for taking time to answer questions.
4. Measure the right things with the right scale. Don’t give open-ended questions; word questions specifically and give respondents the choices you want to measure. Using a scale that takes advantage of the phone numbers 0-9 is easy for respondents and converts to a 100-point scale for reporting.
5. Coordinate your survey with other departments. IT teams need to buy into and have advanced warning for any survey initiative. Various departments can make use of the survey results, so make them available quickly and let others know how to access them.

Your customers have high expectations of your company whether you realize it or not. Surveys need to be constructed in such a way as to give companies ideas for moving forward and improving the customer experience now and in the future. Think of your customer satisfaction survey as a tool to help you take your contact center to the next level, one tier higher than that of the competition!

Tags: contact center, customer satisfaction, customer survey
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Measuring Customer Satisfaction in Your Contact Center – Part 1

“Call centers have become obsessed with customer satisfaction. Unfortunately, not all of them know how to measure it.” Greg Levin of the International Customer Management Institute made that assessment nearly three years ago and it just as true today.

How important is customer satisfaction to you? It should be key to gaining a competitive advantage and keeping it. Therefore, you must be able to measure customer satisfaction and identify satisfaction drivers that need attention.

While companies are attempting to cut costs they must still keep their customers happy or risk losing them.

Did you know:

• 96% of customers who have had a bad experience don’t report it and 91% of those don’t do business with you again
• Dissatisfied customers tell 10 or more others who will never do business with you
• It costs 5 times as much to recruit a new customer as it costs to keep an existing customer
• The probability of selling to an existing customer is 60-70%, but the probability of selling to a new prospect is 5-20%

If customer satisfaction is so important, how can you ascertain the level of your customers’ satisfaction. ASK THEM. Yes, ask them directly. And ask them within minutes of their call or e-mail to you. Feedback collected immediately after an interaction event is 40% more accurate than feedback collected 24 hours (or later) after the event.

Current contact center software contains post-call survey tools to capture customer feedback and enable you to gain insight into customer perceptions. These automated surveys have far lower costs and faster turnaround times than any other method.

In my next post, I will give you some best practices for your follow-up surveys.

Tags: call center, contact center, customer satisfaction
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About a month ago I got a call from a client overseas.  They were having issues keeping track of a flood of calls that they were getting from remote users.  They had been tracking the clients in the past using emails and an Excel spreadsheet.  Thus every time they would receive a call or email, they would copy and paste the email from Outlook over to Excel, or write the info from the call into the Excel spreadsheet that they had been using for several years.  Problem was, they had to update the spreadsheet on a regular basis, and invariably they would miss tickets by not pasting the correct cells, or some of the help desk ticket calls would disappear when they pasted from one place to the other.  After a short overview of Cynergy’s ticketing system, the prospect was able to see how easy it was to log a ticket in Cynergy, and keep track of it on the user dashboard.

Help Desk Software to the Rescue!

And, the client was able to see where tickets could be ordered in any way they wanted as well as escalated from one service level to the other.   In addition, the client was able to see their customer’s information on the same screen without changing to their spreadsheet or CRM system.  Thus callbacks were much easier and more orderly.

Then yesterday, the same customer called us for some additional training on our project management system.  They had been using another Excel spreadsheet for keeping track of projects and their Outlook for scheduling those projects.  After a short training session, the client was ecstatic about some of the features they learned about, as well as a much deeper understanding of how the project manager could actually save them valuable time without having to call each other on collaborative issues.

Thus, another satisfied customer!  But more importantly, we saved them time, and made their job easier.  Now that’s what I call a Win/Win situation!

Tags: Customer Support Software, help desk software
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Does Your CRM System Drive or Facilitate Your Processes?

An organization’s CRM system can either effectively support or hinder their business agility and capacity to respond to change which affects their overall corporate performance and customer satisfaction. Today’s CRM vendors deliver systems with differing degrees of configuration and customization capabilities.

“Customization” and “configuration” are not necessarily the same things. While most companies use them interchangeably to mean “tailoring to meet your needs,” one needs a tech team while the other usually does not. Configuration refers to changes that can be accomplished without the tech team, but customization normally requires technical programming skills which will cost you more money.

Instead of worrying about finding a CRM system that is close to what you need and having it configured and customized, consider a modular approach.

• - A modular CRM approach allows you to purchase only those parts you need and have them quickly and easily tailored to fit your specific requirements.
• - Modules will integrate with existing software, so implementation will be quick.
• - Even if you cannot afford all the pieces you want immediately, you can add them on in time without any loss of data or accessibility.
• - And by teaching your employees to use a single module, the training will be short and straightforward.
• - Your employees will also then feel comfortable in additional modules as they will work intuitively and employees will need very little additional training.

The real value in this approach is that the CRM system is not driving your processes. You are in control of your processes and your CRM system is facilitating them!

Tags: configurable, CRM system, customizable
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Customer Support Software Changes the Way You Look at ROI

Companies must commit to continually measuring and monitoring their return on investment on all projects, but especially thier predictive analytics projects. ROI affects and impacts marketing, IT, and the contact center.

Taking too short a view of ROI can negatively impact a company. Too many companies feel that if they do not recover every dollar spent on predictive analytics – and then some – within 12 months, then predictive analytics is a waste of money.

Predictive data analytics are tied to the long-term, to the ROI Cycle. This cycle begins with customer data which feeds equations to predict customer value. From there the company can understand and predict customer attitudes, expectations, and preferences. Then marketing can avoid activities that devalue the customer relationship and focus on those activities that build customer relationship and value. Contact agents can find the best way to satisfy customers and reach out proactively to cross-sell and up-sell. The customer is more satisfied, so he recommends the company and its products and he spends more on the company’s products.

Predictive analytics give some substantial “indirect benefits” which translate to ROI:

- Productivity
- Ongoing and incremental gains
- Retention
- Employee satisfaction

The amount and clarity of data generated by predictive analytics can increase the quality of sales leads and, therefore, make sales teams more productive. Customer preferences for communications can make marketing efforts more effective. It also makes the people using them more productive.

Contact center agents have the most current information to up-sell and cross-sell additional products. Retention is more efficient than customer acquisition — and it is a major benefit of predictive analytics.

When predictive analytics give all employees access to the most actionable information, efficiency increases and productivity increases. Employees are empowered, effective, and happier.

Tags: Customer Support Software
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