Think of all the information you gather as part of your business relationships with your customers. Are you missing critical information that would help you serve your customers even better? Are your sales activities really optimized? Do your sales/marketing and customer service representatives have all the tools they need to offer an exceptional level of service?
Most organizations answer no to either of these questions. They would however greatly benefit from implementing a customer relationship management (CRM) system, if they haven’t already, that would allow them to significantly improve the quality of service and sales.
A customer-oriented business strategy
To maintain good relationships with your customers, you must be able to adapt your interactions with them by gathering, analysing and managing various customer-specific information.
A CRM is not simply a better “Outlook”. It’s a complete system allowing the management of customer relationships, communication preferences, promotional campaigns, field sales activities, opportunities, incidents submitted to your customer service representatives and more…
The right solution and the right implementation approach
The CRM should be seen as a tool and not as a technology. The solution you choose should be tailored to your specific needs above all. It should also be easily integrated with the existing systems and compatible with all the devices (desktop computers, smartphones, and tablets) in your organization.
To successfully implement CRM clear objectives must be defined from the beginning. Here are a few examples:
- Reduce the preparation time of store visits
- Define and maintain detailed customer profiles and send targeted communications
- Increase the average value of the business opportunities
Moreover, everybody should be able to easily use the CRM system and understand its value. The system should simplify the work, not make it more complex! This will save precious time to the members of your team and optimize their working practices.
Specialists can help you avoid traps and successfully carry out your implementation the first time. In addition to providing support for the personnel training, they will help you integrate the CRM to your existing softwares and make sure your starting data is clean and quickly available.
Once in place, you will soon begin to see the value of the CRM.
A better knowledge of your customers, an improved quality of the service and more targeted sales can only be good for your organization, don’t you think?