Posts Tagged ‘CRM’
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.
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.
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.
Customer Relationship Management Solutions
Friday, December 11th, 2009Customer Relationship Management Solutions
Customer Relationship Management — or CRM — helps companies achieve business objectives that facilitate rapid responses to customer needs and lead to healthy and profitable customer relationships.
It is imperative for every organization to gather, retain, and use valuable information about their customers to enhance their business strategies, offer their customers faster responses, and provide better products and services. Today’s organization produces and collets information at a rate that far outpaces its ability to manage or share that information.
More information should mean more knowledge which should mean a greater competitive advantage. However, most companies do not have the power or resources to make sense of and apply that knowledge.
CRM solutions manage knowledge and information. They also enable companies to execute activities within and across value chains while supporting all facets of decision-making underlying those activities.
Most workplaces are now “connected workplaces.” That means the workers have computers (usually laptops to have at home and at work) and various other always-on technologies such as PDAs, smart phones (such as iPhones or Blackberries), and MP3 players.
Business has become globalized. Your business can access any business worldwide and any business in the world can find and access your business – often in real-time.
Corporate transparency and accountability is being demanded today as never before. These factors, along with the need to constantly respond more quickly and effectively to competition, are driving businesses to seek new applications that will affect their net profits in a short amount of time.
Performance is about more than just information quantity; it is about information usability. Increased information does not increase performance if there is not a corresponding expansion of the user’s ability to sort, apply, differentiate, and manage the information.
CRM solutions enable workers and companies to work together with efficiency and agility. They encourage information sharing and communication at all levels. And they streamline workflows to save time and improve performance.
CRM solutions sort information to make it easy to access information that is relevant and avoid that which is not. They mask process complexity by providing an intuitive and relevant user interface and simplifying multi-part tasks.
What Can CRM Software Do To Help My Company?
Friday, December 4th, 2009Companies need to increase customer loyalty and boost profitability. However, customers are more informed, more demanding, and less willing to release their cash.
The businesses of customer relationship management and marketing have historically based decisions on what the manager thinks the customer or market is going to do or what the company management feels will happen. They are slow to embrace the new technological methods of actually assessing trends and competing based on intelligence and analytics.
The time has come to change, to understand and be responsive to customers’ needs and market forces. The CRM solutions are readily available to help organizations improve their understanding of customers and realize the full revenue potential of their leads.
Three key obstacles stand in the way of turning leads into customers: (1) the lack of real-time data and analytics that capture insights from multiple customer touch points, (2) information that is selectively gathered, inaccurate, or incomplete, and (3) date being siloed and its use restricted across the organization. As a result, critical business decisions are made based on conjecture and partial data rather than on empirical data and intelligence.
Managers need to see their company from the eyes of their potential and current customers. That means thinking like a customer seeking information. They (and perhaps a friend who is not in the same type of business so he has fresh eyes and mind) need to become customers. Start with a question and navigate the company web site to see how much has to be done to answer the question – or if the answer even exists there. E-mail the support department with a request or question. Make a purchase to see how well that process works and how aggravating or simple it is. If you have stores, walk into one or more and ask questions a customer would ask. Request a demonstration. Purchase something. Return your purchase to see how that process works. Take notes on all the processes. Where are the glitches, the frustrations, and the hang-ups? What is going well?
When you pose the question to customer support, it is very important to note the follow-up. This is an area where many companies lose their customers’ future purchases and recommendations. Get together with key players from marketing, customer service, and sales and brainstorm ways to improve the various ways in which a customer can access and interact with the organization.
Select a CRM system that enables an organization to run campaigns that align with its customers’ preferences, tightly integrate marketing across all inbound and outbound channels, increase sales productivity by providing customer insight, manage marketing and sales resources more efficiently, and turn contact centers into profit centers.
Have you ever considered that help desk calls have the potential to become sales opportunities? By having a CRM software that includes a real-time data miner, call center agents can get a recommendation of a customer-appropriate prequalified sales offer while on every call.
The use of support tickets that are tracked can increase retention rates by as much as 40 percent. Good customer follow-up using CRM software can improve service renewals by over 100 percent in the first 18 months.
Customer promotional campaigns can be executed within hours instead of days. And 100 percent of the campaign offers will be followed up. Did you know it takes at least five contacts with a customer to actually engage the customer in talking about a sale? How many of your sales reps stay engages with potential customers through five or more contacts?
Implementing the right CRM solution makes the business of customer relationship management easier and provides economic value and a competitive edge to the company. It turns your sales reps into trusted advisers who can make appropriate, targeted offers to customers. It enables support personnel to shorten call times, resolve issues quickly, and engage in seamless conversations. The right solution delivers personalized, customer-focused interactions which result in more frequent revenue opportunities and satisfied customers.
Successful CRM is Web-Based Customer Relationship Management Software
Friday, October 16th, 2009Customer relationship management reigns supreme today. Customers are now in charge of the buy-sell relationship. They have the attitude of “do it my way or I will find a company that does do it my way.” Customers are internet savvy and use the internet to research products and companies and compare features and benefits as well as pricing. Thus, there is little loyalty to a brand if they find one with more features or a better price.
Product life cycles have accelerated. There is increased pressure for innovation. And decreased time between design and production. Meanwhile, companies are hard-pressed to bring in more revenue from potential and existing customers.
That means that companies need ways in which to access and view customer information. And managers need to find new ways to give employees better access to customer and supplier information.
Web-based Customer Relationship Management software allows a company to take full possession of all their customer information including notes that sales reps have traditionally made in notebooks, on cards, or in personal PDAs. This provides continuity and makes the data visible and accessible not only to the incoming sales reps but the entire enterprise as it may be needed.
CRM is a competitive tool, a key method for gaining a competitive edge in the game of winning and keeping customers. The success of the web-based CRM software is dependent on everyone in the company embracing it and understanding that it will make their lives better and simpler.
When the CRM software is web-based, it
- creates the same structure enterprise-wide
- ensures accountability
- creates and maintains history
- forces collaboration adn accountability
- provides visibility.
Making Sense of Customer Relations
Thursday, August 20th, 2009While many companies have Customer Relationship Management software, few companies know how to make sense of their customers’ information or understand what further information about their customers would be helpful. In this time of changing markets and needs, it is very important to obtain and use key pieces of customer information to become sensitive to their changing needs and to keep customers working with your company.
Customer relations are changing. Customers are not likely to want any more inventory than they know they will use. As a result they are buying in smaller increments and paying as they go. How does this affect your relationship with your customers? What information should be collected so that you provide customers with more value?
- Make sure all contact information is complete. Not only is it important to get the contact person’s name and title, but you need to make sure his or her e-mail address and phone number are current. One good way to do this is to send an e-mail that is personal “thank you for your business,” gives a special offer on something they purchase routinely, and needs a reply which will verify information.
- Identify your best customers. These are your most profitable customers. Certain key data impacts profitability, such as pricing terms, costs to serve, and products purchased. Included in this information should be data about their payment habits.
- Use the information you know to plan and predict future marketing efforts. Based on trends and past purchases, it is often easy to plot trends in customer needs. Some CRM software will even provide such information analysis. Follow or verify information with simple, quick three-question surveys with your most profitable customers.
By using Customer Relationship Management Software (CRM software) to collect and manage key pieces of information about your customers, you can quickly identify your most profitable customers and learn to meet their changing needs.
Is Web Based CRM the same as SaaS?
Wednesday, June 24th, 2009
Web based CRM, or hosted CRM, is one of the main types of SaaS (Software-as-a-Service). SaaS is any web based software, so SaaS can include various applications from web based meeting software to company-wide communication tools to customer relations management.
Why is web based CRM catching on so fast? Several studies have confirmed that businesses of all types often lose customers due to lack of frequent and appropriate personal contact. But businesses need a cost-effective way in which to have frequent contact with their customers and potential customers.
Web based CRM can be integrated with web based sales force management or your current invoicing and financial software. Unlike a premise-based CRM solution, you can have a fully unifed sales, service, operations, and accounting solution which will cut your costs and your headaches.
With web based CRM as your SaaS solution you can quit hiring IT people, quit upgrading software and the training on it, quit paying for maintenance, quit worrying about power outages causing data loss, and quit frustrating one department with the things another department does. Because it is Software-as-a-Service, you have nothing to load on your server or individual PCs, yet every person in your company no matter where they are located can access all the information they need!
With a Software-as-a-Service CRM you will have nothing to invest in – only a monthy fee or a pay-as-you-go schedule. If you have a computer with a browser and an internet connection, you can use web based CRM.
Connect your front office with your back office using web based CRM. Production will be able to communicate with billing and the customer’s invoice will be sent as soon as his product is shipped. Get up-to-the-minute reports on your inventory.
Yes, web based CRM is SaaS. But web based CRM is much more than a single software. It can be a total end-to-end solution for a variety of problems that you may have thought were unconnected. And, at a time when everyone is concerned about costs and ROI, it is the only solution that immediately and continually decreases your costs and increases your ROI.
CRM Software Should Benefit the Customer
Wednesday, May 20th, 2009When implementing CRM software, many companies forget what the “C” is for – Customers. Companies are so busy focusing on gains in efficiency and tracking the numbers that they forget that without customers, there is no business. If you don’t take care of customers and grow the customer relationship, there is no reason to make investments in employees, products, office equipment, or technology. Without customers, there is no reason for the product or service. Does your customer define your business? That is the way it should be.
What is the purpose of CRM software? Let’s see. I think that is part of the title: Customer Relationship. But what is the relationship of the customer to your company? Customers make a purchasing decision – often based on the relationship your company had with with friends and colleagues. Ever think about that?
Customers drive the price of your product or service – either up or down, depending on how valuable they perceive it to be. Ultimately it is the customer that decides when, how and how much to interact with the company. It is the customer’s image of the brand that creates the brand.
The third word in CRM is management. Up to now it appears the customer manages the relationship, but the company needs to take some control. The company can and needs to develop strategies to enable the company to work in an ongoing fashion to improve its ability to start, continue, and improve its relationships with its customers.
By putting the Customer first in Customer Relationship Management, the company elevates the customer and his role in the business. By putting the customer first, the company becomes customer-centric and begins to ask questions of their customers and potential customers and listen to the answers. The company gets to know real customers with real needs and not some contrived profile of the ideal customer. From this, the company creates real answers.
The result is amazing. Improved customer satisfaction leads to customer loyalty. Revenues grow. Employees become more production and more satisfied. And the costs of lead generation, customer acquisition, marketing, and sales decrease.
Where does CRM software fit into this picture? The right CRM software enables the company to re-evaluate its priorities and re-shape its processes to fit its goals and its customers’ expectations. It empowers employees to better serve the customer. And it captures all those things that the customer says as well as how the company responds.