Part 7: Focusing on the “relationship” in CRM

View the entire customer history on one screen, along with custom fields.

Give your customers access to a secure self-service portal for billing or support.

Use live support, web forms, and email to capture customer support tickets.

Customer Relationship Management

Customers to any business should be one of their most precious assets. Looking after your customers should be high on the list of any business owner's priorities, failure to do this will mean they will look elsewhere and go to one of your competitors.

Something which any business wants to avoid at all costs. To ensure that you are giving your customers the very best service and are constantly meeting their needs day in day out you need to realize the importance of CRM. CRM or customer relationship management is a system of processes which businesses use to organize and track their confirmed and potential customers.

A CRM System That Streamlines Your Customer Interactions

  • Keeping accurate and up-to-date customer detailed records, noting any change of address or telephone details immediately and altering any details which are incorrect on a customer's record. Good CRM software programs will enable this to be done quickly and easily through one program.
  • Tracking all customer contacts, something which is essential for the smooth and effective running of a successful business. For instance, if a business is sales people are contacting customers to speak to them a customer will not want to feel harassed by several calls each day. Using a customer service software solution to track customer contacts will prevent this from happening.
  • Creating customer centered targeted marketing, to get the very most from any marketing campaign it should be targeted. By using information held on a CRM program businesses are able to create targeted marketing campaigns that really get results for them.
  • Running processes from one single software program. When a business uses a CRM solution there is no need to use other programs. Implementing a single CRM program means that a business can save time and money, no more paying for multiple software licenses each year and no more switching between programs just to complete a sales form.
  • Creating invoices and quotes for customers quickly. Customers will often complain that they wait too long for invoices and quotes to be generated and this can then lead to a lack of customer confidence. No business wants this to happen so using a CRM solution which deals with paperwork can put an end to misplaced or late quoting and invoicing.

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Focusing on the Relationship

Using CRM correctly should mean that all customer transactions and interactions are fluid and efficient. CRM plays a large role in successful marketing campaigns and can be a huge help to sales staff when they are trying to identify customer buying trends. Customer relationship management is becoming one of the most fundamental aspects of any business and it can mean the difference between increased profits through repeat sales and customer satisfaction.

In fact using CRM can mean that some of the strain and guesswork can be taken out of the equation for many businesses. Customer relationship management is important is that it is essential that all businesses recognize this and do all that they can to act on it and implement a good CRM solution as soon as possible.

In Part 8: When to make the CRM jump.