Customer Relationship Management, or CRM, is a vital component of any successful business strategy. Think about the last time you were a customer and contacted a business looking for information or advice. Did you just fill out a form on their website, tick a box in-store while signing up for something, or maybe, you called them directly to speak to someone. How each of these interactions take place and what is done about them, is not always up to you the customer. As a business owner, you want the power to shift a little to your side, to help control how these interactions are improved, so the business benefits in the end. But how can you do that? You may have read our blog post a couple of weeks ago on Lead Management and think that they are one and the same, but they’re not. There is a relationship between the two, and many of the same concepts are used by each tool, but they also differ in many ways.
CRM is more than just generating sales for the business, it is building a relationship with a customer so they remain so, well into the future. It’s much cheaper to keep a customer than it is to win a new one, that’s why customer referrals and reviews on social media is such a huge business. People are more likely to buy from a business again if their first experience was memorable, successful or just simply exactly what they needed at the time. People are also more likely to tell their friends if the experience was a welcome one, and increase business through word of mouth, it’s almost free advertising! Customer relationship management is all about learning. Learning what the customer likes, doesn’t like, when they are likely to buy, what makes them and what makes them turn away. It’s about reading all the information that you can gather on a customer, be it automatically recorded from website actions, or manually recorded from phone or in-store communications. The more you know about your customers, the better you can serve them.
One of the major benefits from an Accentis CRM solution, is that it’s a true win/win situation for both the customer and the business:
- The customer wins because the service or products they need are able to be catered to them, ensuring that they feel valued as a customer and get what they are after.
- The business wins because it gets loyalty from customers and increases sales from them alone, while also building that relationship whereby the customer will usually recommend the business to others.
Knowing what your customer needs and wants, along with when they need and want it is crucial. You can probably get away with selling some products all year around, but wouldn’t it be better to know when your maximum return on these products would be? Customers can come to you and you will instantly be able to bring up previous sales history to offer spare parts, replacements or the very latest version available.
Knowing your customer’s wants and needs means knowing your own business also. A major benefit from utilising a CRM is knowing what is going to sell and when, it essentially a huge overview of your business in one location. Not only can this improve your sales, but it can improve your profit margins too. All of this knowledge gives you analytics and the ability to forecast sales year on year. Why order products that only sell meekly during the winter months, when you can save on storage and order them in the warmer months when your customers need them? Expand your sales reach by offering channel products that can be sold to enhance products your customers have previously purchased. All of these can be advertised to them as something they might want, because you know they own your main product, and this new option will increase the value and features even further.
Within Accentis, customer relationship actions can be recorded against each customer and supplier based on varying parameters. Our solutions team can add any number of new, custom fields to suit precisely the data you need to store, and better serve your customers. History is not lost, so you can go back as far as your records go to see any changes in behaviour that may affect future sales, good or bad. Accentis Enterprise is powerful and simple to use at the same time, giving you the flexibility and consistency to always improve sales, customer retention and satisfaction. We’ve all been a customer before, so we know that’s better to feel appreciated.