Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is the broad category of concepts, tools and processes that allows an organization to understand and serve the customers/client in a business. CRM is about gathering information that is used to serve the customers—basic information, such as name, address, meeting and purchase history, and service and support contacts. In a supplier relationship it might be procurement history, terms and conditions, or contact information. This information is then used to better serve the clients.

1: Know your Customer: The goal of any CRM system is not only keeping track of customer information, but also enabling ease of doing business for customers. In order to achieve, forthcoming relationship with the customers, the company’s aspects is to understand the customer needs, allow company’s marketing teams to personalize business messages and enable the customer service divisions to provide offerings that differentiates the company among competitors. In today’s business landscape of complex business relationships, it is important to capture company information including purchasing history, lifetime revenue streams and profit information. A 360-degree view of a customer includes sales, marketing, customer service, accounts receivable, invoice history, and ordering information in the system.

2. Build a business relation: For any CRM implementation it is necessary to understand how effective and successful the implementation can be. The business involves a few concepts like project costs, business requirements and key performance indicators. Before obtaining a cost analysis, organization has to understand what business requirements are required to implement in CRM system. 

3. Retaining End Users: The main use of CRM is to retain the company’s end user.CRM is the key to creating and capturing customer information while running business processes as it helps to understand what they need and why they need it right from initial transaction. It helps organization to provide better service for different users. A successful CRM implementation must take into consideration how different users choose the purchasing methods. 

4: Identify Client Communication Channels: This tool has understanding of customer’s purchases, locations, and CRM activities as it is helps to understand how the customers interact. This helps to build customer loyalty program on the regional basis and also helps organization to launch a new product on the basis of customer interest. The tools provide new trends by email, phone or pamphlet. Interacting through these various channels enables smarter marketing, more cost effective marketing, better customer service interactions and improved sales revenues.

5: Drive Sales Effectiveness: Sales Force Automation (SFA) tools of a CRM implementation can improve efficiency and effectiveness of company’s sales team by helping sales track client activities, manage customer communications, or maintain a consistent selling approach. The benefit to organization by SFA tools includes sales management’s ability to understand the pipeline and forecast their business properly. Any relevant task, meeting or sales activity within each selling stage can automatically be exposed on the system so as to retain key steps in the selling process, ultimately allowing for better management of the entire selling process.

6: Analyzing Marketing Costs: Some companies can ask their marketing managers how much revenue has been generated by a specific campaign and get an accurate response. It may be difficult to measure true, tangible values the marketing team offers to company. Intangible benefits like stronger brand recognition or enhanced product positioning are much easier to produce. CRM systems can enable marketing managers to better understand the measureable benefits of any marketing campaign. CRM systems can tell marketing managers what leads were generated from a campaign, the source of those leads, how many leads were converted to opportunities, and how much revenue was generated because due to that activity.

7.  POS Analysis: CRM initiative can be successful for marketing teams as it enables marketing managers to initiate and automate the campaign process within a CRM system. CRM systems should provide features to maintain marketing activities, associate costs and expected returns to the company, process the lead flow through various client channels such as the web, email or phone, as well as build the lead and opportunity pipeline. Moreover, in order to understand the revenue stream generated from a campaign, the CRM system can be integrated in revenue booking systems. 

8. Analyzing current market: Marketing analysis within a CRM system should enable marketing managers to work closely with sales and customer service teams to determine how their expenditures and efforts are resulting in improved sales revenue, increased customer loyalty, profitability and lifetime value. It also involves managing customer enquiries.CRM allows leads to be generated from multiple customer interaction points and enables high lead conversion rate.

9. Leveraging the Loyalty Effect: CRM initiatives can help enhance customer service. CRM system can help customer service team manage tasks such as issue tracking, service activities, call-volume and time-per-call for customer-service representative. “Soft” metrics helps to achieve customer loyalty and client satisfaction by improving service efforts from the CRM system process and control.

10. Customer Service & Information’s POS: CRM systems help customer service teams to manage the service process, costs, customer information by sharing other sales teams within the organization. By allowing the sales team to view open client service requests and  also address any customer issue related to goods and services.CRM system can help improve market share by enabling the customer service agent to create quick, easy to sell and easy to close revenue generating opportunities from their normal service job responsibilities.

11. Choose the Right Tool and Approach: One of the most important factors driving CRM success is having CRM strategy led by the business executives who manage customer interactions, more specifically Marketing, Sales and Customer Service.CRM provide multiple methods of accessing business functions over the web, while mobile or in the office which contributes to the success of overall initiative.

12. Key Initiative Attributes: Key attributes to CRM implementation should include an easy to use user-interface, a secure, real-time analysis platform, and should include a configurable (both simple and complex) application ranging anywhere from the screens and labels to third party system integrations. Multiple access options are essential to the process for acquiring customer data in different environments.

13. Build the Team: It is important to secure stakeholder engagement from each division. It will help the organization to transfer the related data of the product availability to provide better customer satisfaction according to customer product needs. 

14. Obtain management buyoff: It is important to start with leadership when preparing a CRM initiative. The business will have a much higher rate of success by obtaining management buyoff and CRM to help drive the business process. 

15. Expert help: Most of the companies operate on a global basis that adds business value. CRM enlists outside expertise to help in decision-making, requirements gathering, process understanding, advice, expertise knowledge and expertise experience from prior CRM initiatives. 

16. Centric Strategy towards Customer: CRM gathers information and methodologies to manage efficient and profitable business relationships with customers. The main objective of CRM is to help companies to understand customer behavior and provide better service in order to achieve customer satisfaction. In this way, business can earn customer loyalty and generating referrals that can contribute to customer acquisition.

17. A Cloud-based CRM: The cloud enables development and increased access to a new generation of CRM products developed specifically for the needs of the small to midsized business market by substantially lowering the cost of entry.

18. Use of Customer behavior Analytics: CRM is used by the organization to know the behavior of the potential customer regarding purchasing power on each activity in the store. CRM uses behavioral analytics to recommend additional products that customers are likely to buy based on their previous purchasing patterns.It will help the organizations in decision making on new product/services development.

19. Improved brand Reputation: CRM manages customer relationships helps to improve the service process of the company that enhances the brand reputation of the company. This in turn can lead to referrals and new business transactions. 

20. Time Saving: CRM has the entire required customer and product information which is available at any given time thus it beats time constraints. Due to this organized format, contacting customers either individually or as a group and retrieving any information related to customer purchasing behavior can become effortless.

21. Market segmentation: CRM helps in improving segmentation scalability for targeting prospects and leveraging data from CRM and external list data to prepare marketing plan based on numerous customer attributes. This also helps in enhancing marketing productivity, increasing conversion rates and reduces risk uncertainty.

22. Loyalty Management: CRM consists of complete information about potential customers and prospects. CRM data also provide companies with important new insights into customers' needs and behaviors, allowing them to tailor products to targeted customer segments. CRM helps the organization to give better experience for the customer by giving promotional offer and loyalty scheme program on each transaction done by customer.

23.  Implementing a technological solution: Use of new technology in CRM system helps the sales team to reduce the working time and keep the updated information in the system. CRM implementations help organization to reduce risk and increase the Return-on-investment.

24 Plan effective promotional campaigns: Using effective customer segmentation and taking into account specific customer preferences, and facilitates effective management of promotions and campaigns to different sets of prospects and customers.

25. New product design: CRM helps the organization in new product designing on the given feedback data by the customer on each transactions.