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.
Web-based Software
Friday, February 26th, 2010Web-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.
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.
Measuring Customer Satisfaction in the Contact Center – Part 2
Thursday, February 18th, 2010Measuring 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!
Measuring Customer Satisfaction in Your Contact Center – Part 1
Monday, February 15th, 2010Measuring 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.
Help Desk Software Saves the Day!
Thursday, February 11th, 2010
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!
Customer Support Software Changes the Way You Look at ROI
Tuesday, February 9th, 2010Customer 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.
Customer Support Software Changed the Way We Manage Risk
Thursday, February 4th, 2010Customer Support Software Changed the Way We Manage Risk
Customer support software with predictive analytics serves both the customer’s and the company’s needs by building long-term, trusting relationships. Much of the financial mess we have witnessed in the past two years would have been avoided if the lending companies had used predictive analytics to qualify buyers and limit how much they could purchase.
Predictive analytics allow companies to treat each customer as an individual. Not only does the customer feel more cared for, but he feels his interests are being considered. He feels that the company is not trying to “get him in over his head,” but considering his ability to re-pay, his comfort zone, and his desires and needs.
On the other hand, predictive analytics allow companies to mitigate their risks. No company wants to loan a client money that can never be paid back. Qualifying customers and understanding their capabilities helps the company know the best offers to extend to each customer.
A company that is using predictive analytics to identify the causes of complaints and then prioritize actions to resolve those complaints is able to positively impact retention of valued customers. Such a company can understand how to meet their customer’s unique needs, build deeper engagement, and reduce attrition.
The greatest value of customer support software with predictive analytics is that data sources can be linked to build a picture of an individual customer’s attitudes and behaviors. Then the company can provide each customer exactly what he needs.
Using predictive analytics requires and enables a company to establish clear, well-defined goals and act upon them. Companies must commit to those goals and use stringent measures to monitor their progress toward those goals. This often requires operational and organizational changes in order to embed the insights gleaned from the predictive analytics across the entire enterprise. Specific goals are more easily tracked and measured than general goals such as “increase ROI.”