CRM 1080

CRM Benefits -- CRM 1080

Hello all!!!     

Have you ever been frustrated because you can’t find your agreements? Or don’t know which of your employees last spoke to a client? Or which one of your sales brochure is the latest version? Or why don’t your employees realize that “Bob” is your high valued customer that requires special attention?  

If this sounds familiar, you are in dire need of CRM. When implemented successfully, a CRM initiative will transform your muddled, messy, mis-managed and disorganized business into a lean, mean, tech-savvy machine!   

Here is 15 benefits of a CRM system would bring to YOUR BUSINESS…      

1. Enable everyone in your organization to achieve operational excellence with a single 360-degree view of the customer.     

2. Facilitate successful execution of business performance philosophies such as Six Sigma, Lean, TQM, and the balanced scorecard.     

3. Increase customer acquisition, retention, loyalty, and profitability with standardized and improved sales methodologies.     

4. Automate redundant sales processes to better target resources, increasing the number of opportunities closed and accounts managed per sales representative.     

5. Empower your sales team with real-time pipeline and forecasting to direct focus to the most profitable opportunities.     

6. Keep in touch with your customers, even when you are on the road, with access to complete account information on laptops, even when disconnected from the Internet, and other mobile devices that are always in sync with corporate sites.     

7. Quickly identify and provide prioritized response to your most profitable customers and prospects.     

 8. Utilize powerful business rules to automate tasks and target your best clients through up-sell and cross-sell marketing initiatives.     

9. Enable marketing executives to quickly measure responses to marketing initiatives on a real-time basis, identify trends, and maneuver to leverage the most successful campaigns.     

10. Increase customer satisfaction through not only decreasing customer inquiry response time but also through providing the right response the first time.     

11. Provide customer self-service options to reduce costs, improve access, and increase customer satisfaction.     

12. Provide timely customer service responses using sophisticated business rules based on questions or other content such as keywords.     

13. Reduce unnecessary problem and inquiry escalation through the automated monitoring of customer interactions such as representative response times and frequency.     

14. Increase effectiveness and reduce costs by routing customer service calls to the most appropriate customer service representative, such as by geographic location, specialty, or acuity.     

15. Enable executives and management to be less reliant on IT to monitor the state of business through management analytics.

Is customer the king? If we don’t take care of our customers, would someone else will? Does the quality of work depend on the quality of people? Is customer services an attitude, not a department?  LET’S VOTE…..

To my customer.
I may not have the answer, but I’ll find it.
I may not have the time, but I’ll make it……

I trust you had great holidays — Happy New Year!   

There are probably tons of articles for what the CRM world is going to bring to the market this year…  Perhaps you should read the ones from 2009 to see if the “predictions” were just a great wish list by analysts.  Instead of predicting what CRM features are going to be popular or should be popular this year, I am going to take a different approach.     

So, here is my take on where we are headed…   Let’s just say the keyword is Contact Intelligence.  And what do I mean by Contact Intelligence?   What if pertinent information about your relationships is fed to your CRM system automatically and what is the point?  The point is that building a business is not purely based on the quality of your products but rather based on the relationship you form with your customers.  So, the more you know about them, the more you cater to their every unique need.    For example, Let’s say you have 50 prospects in your pipeline;  Now,  what if your system automatically provided you with the latest content relating to your prospects region, industry, organization or even personal accomplishments.   And what if you could use this information as a “gateway” to a deeper conversation and/or providing kudos for an accomplishment to your prospect.   This level of relationship touch builds trusts and may just be what is necessary to close the deal.   

The technology that can provide this level of sophistication and intelligence is already in R&D.  In some lesser way you are already seeing the beginning of these “features” when companies and/or analysts talk about CRM integration with Social Networks.  But integration with Social Networks is just part of the picture…  Integration without intelligence is like having a car and not knowing how to drive it.   There is vast amount of data with the various Social and Public Networks — the key is to integrated these networks with CRM in a manner than can provide value to both the user of the CRM solution as well as the recipient — in this case the prospect or client.   

As the year progresses… I will be sharing more about the technologies that are making headway in Contact Intelligence the way I defined it.   In the meantime, it is critical that you review the usage of your CRM solution to ensure that each customer touch point is optimized for the highest possible results.   Also, make sure you review all automated processes to adhere to changing business processes and/or focus.   

Happy New Year – May the force of your CRM solution continue to drive your business towards the goals you have set!   

Regards,
The CEO