In today’s world, your customers or clients have endless options as to which organizations or e-commerce stores they choose to do business with. As a business owner or online retailer, this means it is incredibly important that your new and existing customers remain loyal to your organization and that your main focus should be creating strong and unbreakable relationships with your customers. There are many Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software solutions to help develop and enhance customer engagement and loyalty, but the key is implementing the CRM software that is going to suit your needs best.
How to use CRM software to improve customer relationship
Collect & Store Personal Info with CRM Software
The most fundamental – but vastly important – CRM utilization is collecting, storing and tracking your customer’s personal details. If your CRM is merely storing your customers’ sales histories and contact details, you are doing your organization a disservice. Important customer information might include things like birthday, interests and social accounts. Collecting and leveraging this data will give you a deeper understanding of your customers and how they relate to their environment, thus enabling you to pitch the appropriate message via the right communication channel based on the specified information.
Target-Based Resource Allocation
It is estimated that 70-80% of an organization’s total business profits are generated from 20-30% of its total customers. Therefore, it is vitally important to leverage CRM analytical tools to know just who those top-tier customers are and how they interact with your organization. Tracking this data through your CRM software enables you to appropriately allocate your resources for the best yield and ensure that your high-value customers get are being identified and serviced the way they should. This is called target-based allocation and is an invaluable customer retention tool.
Send Out Regular Updates
To further enhance the relationship you build with your customers, you can utilize the personal information and details you have stored in your CRM database to email your client base updates and or pertinent information about your services or products. You can also use your CRM software for gentle touches like birthday greetings, thank you notes and other non-sales related sentiments. Simple messaging like this makes customers feel valued, involved, bonded to your organization and more likely to continue doing business with you.
Rapid Response to Customer Complaints
Nobody wants unhappy customers, but it is an inevitable part of running a business. The key is addressing, remediating and creating a solution to complaints in the most expedient manner possible. CRM can immediately address customer grievances, deliver an instant response and automatically help move dissatisfaction through to resolution. From a customer’s perspective, the quality of a business organization’s customer service can truly make or break their brand loyalty, so it is in every business’s best interest to implement rapid complaint response tools within their CRM.
Analyze Customer Buying Patterns
Arguably one of the most important segments in your CRM is analyzing your customers’ buying and shopping patterns. By integrating your CRM with data tracking tools, you get expansive insight into your customer’s shopping history, shopping pattern and shopping preferences. You are then able to leverage this great data to tailor your marketing strategies and branding. In this way, your customers pack even more of a positive punch to your business, as they are both revenue generators and major influencers on your targeted marketing initiatives.
