Do you ever wonder what keeps customers at a specific business and what drives them away? A customer’s loyalty is no longer based upon the quality of the product; it has much more to do with the cost of the product and the type of service they receive. If customers feel as if they could get a better deal (and experience) elsewhere, they will not hesitate to shop around for other providers. With customer expectations such as these, how do companies retain customers and make them feel valued?
While it is a great time to be the customer, it is a challenging time to do business. How do you deliver the experience your customers are demanding? How do you retain your customers and stop them straying to your competition? The following tips were created with the company in mind.
The key to keeping customers happy
This is why more and more business are adopting customer service strategies and making sure their IT budget has money designated for the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems they need to deliver such strategies. CRM is sometimes misunderstood as just being for sales people or just for front line staff who are taking orders. But making sure that your prospects and customers receive excellent service can no longer be thought of as simply the job of front line staff. Increasingly it’s everyone’s responsibility and needs to be thought of as a companywide endeavor.
What can a CRM system help you do?
CRM is about enabling a business to share customer data around the organization and ensuring that processes run from one end of the business to the other, so you can adapt and deliver the experience your customers crave. Ultimately an integrated finance and CRM solution can help you coordinate your business internally and manage the channels through which you interact with your customers, so you can deliver what they want while also helping you achieve greater customer retention.
Bringing it all together
Many companies are still using separate systems to manage sales, marketing and customer service. By doing so they are storing up problems for the future and dissolving into the background – not standing out against competitors. While each solution might work well for each group, it may not be delivering the best company-wide solution; multiple systems potentially mean multiple contacts for your customers and ultimately a bad customer experience. Disparate systems could lead to your customer receiving a number of communications or phone calls from many different people. How many times have you received a phone call from the same company and had to explain that you have already spoken to someone?
You’re left with the feeling that no-one talks to each other and you end up looking elsewhere.
Investing in technology
With the unpredictable economy, businesses cannot afford to continue as they are. To survive in this economic climate, a business must invest in the technology that allows them to differentiate and grow. In the economic downturn there is a greater need to work smarter as there are fewer revenue opportunities and everyone has to be maximized to their fullest potential.
Every time a business delays investing in the CRM technologies that help them grow and capitalize on their customer service strategy, that business loses revenue and customers. The cost of doing nothing may just cost you your customers.
Contact us today to find out more about putting customers at the center of your business.