In today’s consumer society where technology is advancing at the speed of light, customers are demanding more and more for their money – and now more than ever customers are prepared to shop around to get the biggest bang for their buck but that’s not all.
The modern customer has expectations that are higher than ever – they want to feel valued and if they don’t they will take their hard earned cash and go elsewhere.
Great news if you’re the customer – but what if you’re in business? How do you deliver the experience your customers are demanding? How do you retain your customers and stop them straying to your competition?
Keeping your customers happy
This is why more and more businesses are adopting customer service strategies and making sure their IT budget has money ear marked for the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems they need to deliver such strategies. CRM is sometimes misunderstood as just being for sales people or just for front line staff who are taking orders. But making sure that your prospects and customers receive excellent service can no longer be thought of as simply the job of front line staff. Increasingly it’s everyone’s responsibility and needs to be thought of as a company-wide endeavour.
What can a CRM system help you do?
CRM is about enabling a business to share customer data around the organisation and that processes run from one end of the business to the other, so you can adapt and deliver the experience your customers crave. Ultimately an integrated finance and CRM solution can help you to coordinate your business internally and manage the channels through which you interact with your customers, so you can deliver what they want whilst also helping you achieve greater customer retention.
Bringing it all together
Many companies are still using disparate systems to manage sales, marketing and customer service. By doing so they are storing up problems for the future and just blurring into the background – not standing out against competitors. While each solution might work well for each group, it may not be delivering the best company-wide solution; multiple systems potentially mean multiple contacts for your customers and ultimately a bad customer experience. Disparate systems could lead to your customer receiving a number of communications or phone calls from many different people. How many times have you received a phone call from the same company and had to explain that you have already spoken to someone?
You’re left with the feeling that no-one talks to each other and you end up looking elsewhere.
Investing in technology
Businesses cannot afford to continue as they are. To survive in this economic climate a business must invest in the technology that allows them to differentiate and grow. In the current global gloomy economic climate, there is a greater need to work smarter as there are fewer revenue opportunities and everyone has to be maximised to their fullest potential.
Every time a business delays investing in the CRM technologies that will help them grow and capitalise on their customer service strategy then they are losing revenue and customers. The cost of doing nothing may just cost you your customers.
