There are few modern thinking business leaders who would argue against the concept of building better relationships with customers. Techniques for measuring positive engagement with customers can be implemented using information technology based CRM systems, and the data can be used for generating more sales, as well as improving retention rates and lowering customer complaints.
Here are five advantages of using CRM for your business, no matter how big or small your organization.
1. Develop more profitable conversations with customers
Providing opportunities for dialogue with customers is one of the major benefits when CRM is adopted as a central ethos of your business. Feedback is easier to achieve and to log as communication channels are open and customers have a more transparent view of the business, and how their comments and opinions are used.
Logging and then forgetting about customer feedback becomes a thing of the past, and customers begin to feel they have a more important and recognized stake in the future of the business. This is both empowering and emotionally binding for customers who may have felt no connection with the business in the past.
2. Brand awareness increases and diversification potential is realized
Tying in with the idea of having a say on the direction the company develops, is the way customers relate to brands and the support they give to individual products or services. Having more vocal customers who really want to engage with the company can produce new opportunities for diversification and for increased sales opportunities to people in the customer database. It can help the company shed liabilities in terms of brands and push forward the items which customers respond to. It is also possible to measure more accurately the impact a brand has on customers and what marketing strategies could be employed to improve awareness.
3. Gain an edge over less technologically aware competitors
Many enterprises are operating in highly competitive environments and with the downturn on the economy worldwide, more than ever they need to be aware of their competitors and know ways of gaining advantage. CRM can provide opportunities to develop unique selling propositions which may not have been obvious before the advent of customer profiling through the use of CRM analytics software.
4. Relate to customers more easily, via lots of new channels of communication
Gone are the days where customers had to telephone or write a letter for information or register an issue; in modern times customers want to be able to use social networking sites and live chat for instant responses to their queries, or else they will simply go elsewhere. They need websites to be accessible and easy to navigate and they want their emails answered within a few hours rather than the three to five days businesses used to consider acceptable, and which unfortunately many still do.
5. Customers can be offered a modern service to fit in with their modern lives
Research suggests increasing numbers of customers are doing their shopping and booking their holidays using mobile devices. It is as likely for them to contact a company using their cell phone or tablet as it is for them to call via a landline or from their PC at home. For companies to be there to take their orders it is essential that they use modern CRM methods, and to do so can lead to vastly increased profits, based on greater numbers of technology savvy customers.
Jake Walker works for an agency that is a leading provider of CRM for small businesses (in Poland we say CRM dla małych firm) in Europe.
