Customer Relationship Management: Weathering the Economic Storm
Thursday, March 25th, 2010
Use CRM to Weather the Economic Storm
How can you keep the customers you have? You can and must deliver the best products available. You must deliver the best and most complete services and solutions available, but how can you do that? Start with Customer Service Software that helps you build relationships in ways that are convenient for your customers. For those under age 40 that would be using internet and e-mail solutions including web-based knowledge bases and internet chats and forums. For those over 40 it includes telephone calls with knowledgeable agents who have answers at their fingertips. A keyworded, searchable knowledge base will benefit both your customers and your help desk agents. The use of multiple channels to deliver information and help will appeal to a broad customer base.
How can you gain the confidence of prospective customers? First, you have to find prospective customers. This is the job of lead generation software. Then you have to keep them interested and you have to prove that you are trustworthy and understand their problems. One of the oldest tricks is through reliable information delivered piece by piece over a period of time. This is the function of a good e-mail strategy that is built into CRM software. By building a relationship with each prospect and delivering useful information related to their issues and problems, you will be assured of a long-lasting and mutually beneficial relationship.
A great and ongoing relationship with a customer will yield benefits in further sales and in recommendations for years to come. This type of relationship weathers economic storms.
CRM – Software or Strategy?
Thursday, March 11th, 2010Is CRM a Software or a Strategy?
Before CRM software, customer relationships occurred slowly — one-on-one in person or on the telephone. Someone said, “Technology does not drive change; technology enables change.” That is especially true of the technology for customer relationship management (CRM). Now that there is technology for customer relationships, there must be a plan or a strategy to go with the use of the technology.
What do you want to accomplish through CRM software? CRM solutions can help you get to know your customers better, understand their needs, and respond to those needs to create a valuable customer experience.
CRM can even begin prior to the customer relationship with lead generation and qualification. CRM software can help you target the right groups of people and the right people within those groups. And CRM solutions can follow customers through various purchases and upgrades to better meet customers’ needs and to build or refine products or services to meet those needs.
Your CRM solution must fit your CRM strategy. But if you don’t have a CRM strategy, you won’t know what solution fits that strategy. However, every business has a CRM strategy which is implied through its business goals. If those goals are only concerned with the financial bottom line, you will quickly realize that your company is not customer-centric, or even client-friendly.
Start by evaluating your short-term and long-term business goals. Which ones are or can be customer-facing? What do you want to accomplish in lead generation, lead qualification, customer satisfaction, cross-selling and up-selling?
Next, look at your market and your industry. What are the customer drivers? What is your competition and what are they doing? Consider how your company can differentiate itself from all the others through customer experience. Don’t forget to consider the impact and requirements of your strategy across different geographies, languages, markets, and channels!
Your company’s CRM strategy is unique – driven by your company’s goals, customers, conditions, and environment. When done right, CRM strategy creates differentiation across the firms of an industry. For that reason, a variety of CRM solutions exist and must be explored for their “fit” with your strategy.
Put “Relationship” Back Into CRM Solutions
Tuesday, March 9th, 2010Put “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.
Selecting CRM Help Desk Software
Thursday, March 4th, 2010CRM 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.
Help Desk CRM Software
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010Help 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.
Web-Based CRM Software Features Online CRM
Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010Cynergy 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.
Does Your CRM System Drive or Facilitate Your Processes?
Thursday, February 11th, 2010Does 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!
Customer Relationship Management Around the World
Monday, January 18th, 2010The Genesys study I cited on Jan. 15 also has a version that includes 16 key countries, measuring customer satisfaction and the cost of customer dissatisfaction, and outlining some possible solutions to keeping customers and keeping them satisfied. The main purpose of the study is to continually gain perspective on the changing nature of customer service as well as consumer perceptions of it. This shapes the way companies deliver great customer service.
Surveys were conducted in the following countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Czech Republic, France, Germany, India, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Enterprises in these countries (combined) lose an estimated USD $338.5 billion each year due to defections and abandoned purchases as a direct result of a poor customer service experience! Nearly 70% of those surveyed had ended at least one relationship due to poor customer service.
Consumers in Poland, China and Mexico have the largest number of interactions per year with customer service. In countries that have fewer interactions, the responsibility to make each interaction count positively is much heavier on the company.
Amazingly, there are three common threads to the demands of those surveyed. The first two are somewhat related.
“Don’t ask me twice.”
Consumers want better integration between self-service and assisted service, including voice self-service and eServices. They want to be able to start in voice self-service or the Web and get live assistance from an agent, and to start in e-mail and have better integration with agent-assisted service.
“Treat my interactions as a conversation.”
Consumers are demanding the ability to communicate across multiple channels. More than 40% said they would like to see companies deploy at least one new channel of communication with all channels being fully integrated.
“It’s okay to give me a call or ask me if I need help.”
When they are stuck on the Web or in self-service, 86% of consumers said they would find proactive engagement either a “strong benefit” or would see it as “welcome assistance.” The most frequently cited reasons for poor service included being trapped in automated self-service, being forced to wait too long for service, repeating themselves, and dealing with representatives that lacked skills or training to answer their inquiry.
As might be expected voice (by phone with an agent) is still the number one choice of method to solve a problem. However, e-mail and web combined now overtake voice, especially if the communication channels are well integrated.
Consumers overwhelmingly want more proactive outreach, with more than 83% calling it a “strong benefit.” This is the strong suite of customer relationship management software.
They want an easy to use interface for reporting or following an issue. And they want continuity from one channel to another, so that everyone is updated on what has been said and done.
Happy New Year! Happy New CRM System!
Thursday, December 31st, 2009Happy New Year! Happy New CRM System!
What will give you a happy new year? One answer: MORE SALES.
What will give you more sales? A new CRM software system. Let’s look at three ways CRM can increase your sales in 2010.
Help your company help you. Create success. Create positive energy. Try something new for the new year!
5 Ways to Make 2010 Better Than 2009
Tuesday, December 29th, 20095 Ways to Make 2010 Better Than 2009
Do you have a business plan for 2010? Is it different from the business plan you had a year ago? Is it specific? Or are you at a loss to know how to make 2010 better (or even different) than 2009?
If you feel beaten down by the economy, you need to take control of your company’s destiny. Create positive energy. Be like the losing football team that puts points on the board just before going to the locker room for halftime. Purposely do things that will positively affect the morale of the company and start 2010 on a high note.
Acknowledge the positive things you have been doing. Find new ways to use old strategies and tools to generate leads, to capture orders, to follow up customers, and to increase customer satisfaction. If you do not have the tools to do that, spend the time and money to put those tools in your arsenal for 2010.
For 2010 you need a CRM system that:
- 1. Manages your lead generation process.
- 2. Manages your customer relationships.
- 3. Delivers immediate access to information that is critical to sales people and help agents.
- 4. Provides full accessibility through mobile devices.
- 5. Integrates social networking into the system.
Explore the possibilities. Try free trials to see what fits your business and your working styles. Be ready to power up immediately when the new year begins!