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CRM Interview With Zappos Social Engagement Scientist Part II

Friday, July 29, 2011 by Sidney Angelos

Yesterday we featured an interview with Zappos Social Engagement Scientist Graham Kahr. Graham gave us some insight into the Zappos brand, how they are using social CRM, and advice to other businesses currently trying to merge social media with CRM. Below is the 2nd half of his interview. Enjoy!

 

How do you currently measure the effectiveness of your social media marketing?

We break our measurement down into three separate categories.

Behavioral – How our actions are influencing customers’ decision to shop with us.

Diagnostic – How much readers are engaging and the reach their engagement creates.

Sentiment – Understanding the customer and spotlighting new opportunities to WOW.

While conversion is great, our primary focus is on interaction and the sentiment of those interactions. We want to give our customers helpful content, inspire them to share their experiences and connect with us.

Last, but certainly not least – What advice can you give to a new business looking to use social media?

Be human and let your values shine through. Customers can sense canned responses and content with ease. And nobody likes a friend that only talks about themselves so let your customers be the star – the story is really about them anyway.

Thanks again to Graham Kahr!

 

CRM Interview With Zappos Social Engagement Scientist

Thursday, July 28, 2011 by Sidney Angelos

We had the opportunity of ‘virtually’ sitting down with Zappos Social Engagement Scientist Graham Kahr. Graham gives us some insight into the Zappos brand, how they are using social CRM, and advice to other businesses currently trying to merge social media with CRM.

How did you get started at Zappos? Tell us a bit about your history with the company.

I was hired to join the Zappos Family as a customer loyalty representative. At the time, I was a magazine editor and looking for a change of scene. Hearing about the progression plans for employees, I couldn’t help but feel that I would be able to chase my passions. I worked as a phone rep for four months before joining the Resource Desk (the team that handles the @zappos_service Twitter account while assisting the entire CLT team on the floor with difficult situations). After five months, I joined the Zappos Blogs Team as a blog copywriter where I was able to lend my journalism talent to Zappos and six months later joined the Brand Marketing team as the Social Engagement Scientist. My primary role is inspiring engagement on our social channels around fashion, culture, customer service and our community efforts.

Love the title, Social Engagement Scientist! From what you’ve seen, how do you think social media has helped evolve the Zappos brand over the years?

We really view all of these channels as a means for communication. Social channels have enabled our customers  to communicate with us in new ways and listening to our customers helps us deliver WOW through service (our #1 core value). Beyond improving communication between our customers and our brand, we have really enjoyed using mediums like Twitter to communicate with each other. You can see the Zapponians who tweet at twitter.zappos.com.

Great! We’ll start following the Zapponians! Speaking of social media, how does Zappos use customer relationship management currently paired with social media? Do they tend to work well together?

We deliver the same world-class service in social media that customers would receive on the phone, live chat, email, etc. While we sometimes help customers on Twitter and Facebook, it’s a very small part of interactions on those channels. Most of the conversation revolves around sharing positive experiences and totally random conversations (video games, food, Internet celebrities – seriously, follow @zappos_service). Our Customer Loyalty Team doesn’t use any scripts on the phone and we avoid them in social as well. Every customer deserves their own experience and social media has been a great place to tailor positive experience.

We want to thank Graham for his answers. Lots of great information to share with our readers. Please tell us your thoughts after reading, in the comments below and look for the 2nd part of this interview tomorrow!

CRM Strategies Examined

Tuesday, July 26, 2011 by Sidney Angelos

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is being embraced by an ever-widening number of businesses as more and more people come to understand the great benefits a successful CRM strategy can offer for today’s companies.

Of course, there is really no such thing as one strategy. The best CRM plans bring together a number of strategies that complement one another and work together to give a multi-layered approach to improving a business’s performance by improving the customer’s experience.

While every strategy will be different for each business, there are a number of key areas that can be adapted to create an overall strategy:

  1. One of the key CRM strategies is to ensure that it is fully embedded in the culture of the organization. The way this is best achieved is to have full buy-in from the whole of the sales team. In practise this means everyone from the head of sales right down to the frontline staff. Successful CRM businesses have come to understand that if this is not the case there is a weak link that can derail the whole operation. Therefore, they make it a priority that CRM is fully embraced.
  2. As simple as it sounds, the absolute bedrock of any CRM success is the quality of the data that is held in the system. Put simply, the better the data the better the results. It should be a business’s priority to ensure a strategy of all data being of the utmost quality. Every customer’s entry should be as complete and up-to-date as possible with everything from the correct spelling (few things irritate customers as much as having names such as Linda spelt Lynda) to purchase history being in place. It may only seem a small point, but successful businesses know that it can often be the difference between a sale and a missed opportunity.
  3. One of the key revolutions that CRM has provided is the way in which it has liberated staff. The days when the best staff were isolated from their customers are slowly receding into history. Forward-looking companies understand the value these staff can have for their business. Of course, no one is suggesting that the head of product development should be sitting on a counter somewhere on the off chance a customer has a query. However, it could well be a great idea to have that member of staff blog on the business’s official website so that he or she can discuss new products/future developments and importantly give the customers a chance to ask questions and offer suggestions. This strategy of a two-way dialogue is one of the key benefits of social CRM and can have real advantages for the company. An extreme, yet innovative example of this was when European wireless provider Giff Gaff replaced their call centre with an online community. The concept of customers helping customer may be radical, but it has resulted in award winning service and an increase in profitability.
  4. Another key CRM strategy is to not think of CRM as a ring-fenced section of a business’s overall strategy, but rather one element (albeit a very important one) that is integrated with others. A CRM system can be linked well with email, order entries and other programmes so that the user can access a wide range of information quickly and efficiently without having an ever-increasing number of windows open.
  5. The final key strategy is one that is often overlooked by even the most experienced business. The desire to make the move to CRM can often mean that things are unnecessarily rushed. This can lead to poor implementation, a training issue and a steep learning curve for all involved. It is a much better CRM strategy to go for a phased implantation as this will help guaranteed a successful beginning to a business’s CRM strategy.

Were these 5 steps helpful? Share with us in the comments below.

CRM & Google + – What You Need to Know

Monday, July 18, 2011 by Sidney Angelos

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is now established as a superb tool for businesses to use for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of their customer relationships and in turn, increasing profitability.

One of the key strengths of CRM is the way in which it integrates with other products and services. It is therefore little surprise that there has been much speculation as to whether and/or to what degree, Google + can be used as part of an overall CRM strategy.

The initial impression of many who have used Google + is that it lends itself well to the world of CRM. It does this through a number of refinements and improvements of previously available features along with the introduction of some new tools

Circles.

Arguably the most discussed feature of Google +, Circles is at its most basic and group management tool. However, it is also much more than this. Facebook has long had a method of organizing contacts into user-defined groups. This is a very useful tool for CRM as it allows a business to create groups of their customers, so an electrical retailer could have a list of customers who have bought microwave ovens and another who have purchased hi-fi separates, instead of just a list of all customers. The advantages are self-evident: the retailer can target its customer base much more accurately and in turn customers will not receive marketing that is inappropriate. The problem has been that group management tools have often been hard to use. Circles changes that by creating a simple UI that utilizes drag and drop so that a user can build much better groups. Google + provides a list of recommended contacts (based on Google Contacts and/or Gmail) from which a user can easily set up their groups (or circles). This ability to target marketing means that Circles is a first rate CRM tool.

Sparks.

Initially, this could be seen as simply an area for entering text to be taken to a search engine. However, it becomes apparent that Sparks is much more than this and is a useful CRM tool. Essentially, it is a method by which a user can enter an interest (say bird watching) and be taken to a list of books, blog posts, video clips (and indeed anything that a normal Google search would show). This is really useful for businesses from a CRM point of view as a business’s product or service could be entered (say “hi-fi turntable”). When the list is brought up, the user can add it to an “interest list” for future reference. The user is then in a position to see what others are saying about the product and gain an easy snapshot of what customers are talking about. This could prove invaluable in not just gauging how customers feel about a current product, but also in the process of developing future products. There is also a “Featured Interests” section that is particularly useful for finding out what are trending topics.

Huddle.

This is an app that is designed to allow a user to group message across key mobile platforms (including iPhone, Android and SMS). The possibilities here are superb for CRM implementation. A business with user groups set up (such as the electrical retailer’s hi-fi list) can send a group message concerning an upcoming hi-fi campaign just to the customers in that list. This will help improve customer relationships by providing targeted information to those who stand a high chance of being interested.

Google + is in some ways a refinement of previous Google tools that also brings some new ones to the social media party. For business, it enhances their CRM capability by offering users the opportunity to streamline the process of customer interaction as well as providing a platform for the discussion that lies at the heart of all CRM.

Interview With Thought Leader Kathy Herrmann Part II

Saturday, July 16, 2011 by Sidney Angelos

Kathy Herrmann

We had the chance to sit down with Kathy Herrmann to ask her the hard hitting questions about social media and CRM. In this second part of the interview series Kathy discusses companies who are taking full advantage of social CRM.

Kathy, are there any companies you can think of who are doing a great job with social CRM currently? If so, what companies?
Vendor: Salesforce.com is building a strong customer service platform that includes support for social.  They’re being smart about it too because they’re creating a strong handshake between Customer Service and Sales.

Let me give you an example.  A customer can tweet or post an issue in Facebook.  A company can then use their Salesforce Service Cloud application can capture the conversation or issue and make it into a case.  A service rep can then be activated to assist a customer.  Using Chatter, the rep can call out to other employees across the organization for information to better assist the customer.  The combination leads to faster issue resolution.

Further, the intelligence gained from that specific customer (or related feedback within the social channel) can then be shared with Sales who can turn it into a marketing or sales opportunity within their Salesforce Sales Cloud application.  And Service and Sales Cloud all seamlessly integrate.

Company: Dell. Dell took Dell Hell to heart and social became one of the channels they used to improved service.  They’ve built a listening center, headed by a former badvocate who became an advocate.  They view SCRM as part of their corporate strategy and allow sound business fundamentals (aka, making a business case) to their initiatives.  They’re measuring the business impact on social and can see how it is contributing to multi-million dollars in sales.  It’s a great win-win for both Dell customers and the company.

Company: Best Buy. Best Buy wanted to alleviate buyer paralysis when it came to making tech decisions.  They use social media across Twitter, YouTube and other channels to help educated buyers and accelerate buying decisions.  It’s working for them in terms of creating more satisfied customers and generating multi-million dollar revenues over a multi-year period.

Quite a few great examples, thank you!  What books or blogs do you recommend for learning more about social CRM?

My site has a wealth of information about SCRM and related topics, including blog articles, white papers, and videos.

Blogs:

Esteban Kolsky (@ekolsky) – CRM Intelligence and Strategy
Mitch Lieberman (@mjayliebs) – A Title Would Limit My Thoughts
Brian Vellmure’s CRM Strategies Blog and @crmstrategies
Paul Greenberg – PGreenBlog and @pgreenbe

What obstacles have you faced with clients or with upper management in proving the return on investing in social media for CRM?

There’s a disconnect between many social pundits and the executive suite.  Among the pundits, there’s a common opinion that social is a no-brainer and so companies should just jump in.  And there marks the divide.

Executives may have a gut feeling that social will be good for their business but they want to know how it will impact their bottom line.  What kind of business results will they gain from doing social?  And by business results, I mean revenues and profitability.

If a company is going to undertake social CRM initiatives at a strategic enterprise level for marketing, PR, customer service, or even internal collaboration, then social isn’t free.  It’s going to demand resources of people and technology.  So executives will expect to see a business case before they approve strategic investment in social CRM.

Folks who understand this – and make the necessary business case – will gain faster approval because they’ll be able to demonstrate their social objectives, strategies, and expected revenues or cost savings from investing in social CRM.

Tell us, how exactly do you currently measure the effectiveness of your social CRM?

Social CRM measurement means adding new metrics to the traditional.  Continue to collect metrics related to marketing, call centers, etc.

The cornerstone of the new metrics will be social monitoring metrics from vendors like Radian6.  Social analytics solutions allow companies to collect actionable intelligence about the behavior of customers and other interested parties across the web. These solutions measure, analyze, and report on social efforts.

I use the aggregation of traditional metrics, social analytics, and business results to determine the ROI of social programs – and ROI is the real test of effectiveness.

What traditional CRM techniques have you modernized through the use of social media?

Employing processes and technology to monitor social conversations and act on them is huge.  For example, being able to pull the conversations from a customer community site into a service case to provide direct customer service is huge – and it can happen in almost real time. Companies who take this approach find their customer satisfaction scores climb.

What advice can you give to a new business looking to use social media for customer relationship management?

Social media is a force to be reckoned with.  Customers are active in social channels whether you are or not.  Over time, if not already, companies that avoid social media engagement will find themselves penalized by their customers and the market place.  Said another way, social channels is where customer service is happening so your company better be out there.

Thanks again Kathy for letting us pick your brain and ask you the tough questions. Don’t forget to follow Kathy on Twitter, @KathyHerrmann for more about CRM and social media.

Interview With Thought Leader Kathy Herrmann Part I

Friday, July 15, 2011 by Sidney Angelos

Kathy Herrmann

Thanks so much Kathy for taking a few moments to let us interview you. Tell us, what is your background in CRM or social CRM?

I am a thought leader on social business and organizational change management. I specialize in holistically fusing people, process, and technology requirements to ignite positive change.

My transformational focus centers on helping clients understand how to leverage social business to improve customer-facing activities like marketing, sales, and customer service. Additionally, I also help clients foster greater collaboration across employees, customers, and partners. And I design ROI methodologies and tools for social business valuation determination.

For more information you can follow me on twitter at www.twitter.com/kathyherrmann or visit my site:  www.kathyherrmann.com.

Sounds like you have quite a bit of expertise in this field! How do you think social CRM has evolved in recent years?

Traditional CRM is based on 1-to-1 transactions because a company and an individual customer.  In contrast, SCRM refers to 1-to-many or many-to-many.  This has created challenges for companies to collect actionable intelligence from social channels.  And it’s not just intelligence from channels that a company may be active in.  Information from channels where they may not be active can be as or more important.

Social CRM technology is being driven by the demand for actionable intelligence from social channels.  Technology tends to break out into the categories of social engagement, community management, social monitoring, and the connectors to these solutions.

There is no one vendor, though, who does all aspects of SCRM well — although there are vendors that are doing categories well.  However, companies wanting a fully integrated and holistic solution still need to build best of breed solutions.

Companies really need to understand their social objectives and strategy to understand what they want to accomplish with social.  Once they do, then they can define the right SCRM technology solution set for them to manage their people and processes.

Agreed – knowing what you want to accomplish with social is the first and arguably most important step. How do you think the future of social CRM will change and morph over time?

Change management

Becoming a social business – not just a company with a Facebook page – is a change management opportunity and challenge for a company.  It requires attention to people, processes, and technology.

The more important question is – what can a company do to provide a better customer experience?  And what changes to people, processes, and technology are needed to support the strategy and tactics for such a customer-centric business model?

Doing social from a holistic corporate perspective needs to be driven at the executive level because it’s a strategic play.  Without executive buy-in and KPIs that support the strategy, it will likely fail within a company (or succeed despite itself).  Once the corporate strategy is defined, then the right processes can be generated and the right technology solution sets can be determined to support the people and processes.

Technology

No one SCRM vendor has a complete soup to nuts solution – and that’s probably a good thing because specialization is valuable.

Companies should expect to build best of breed SCRM solutions to meet their strategic needs.  Integration will become important to ensuring these individual solutions play well together.   Expect to see the major SCRM vendors or third-party providers build more connectors between solutions to ease integration and data collection across solutions.

Additionally, expect to see the major CRM players continue to make acquisitions to bolster their SCRM feature functionality.  Salesforce is a prime example of this with their acquisitions over the last few years of GroupSwim and Radian6.

We want to thank Kathy for taking the time to let us ask her the hard questions! Be sure to check out Part II of this interview tomorrow, and let us know what you think in the comments below!

Relationship Marketing In the Healthcare Sphere

Friday, July 15, 2011 by Sidney Angelos

The following is a guest post from Dhaval Patel.

The field of healthcare marketing is inundated with marketers who act in the interest of their respective employers.  Big pharmaceutical companies like Merck, Pfizer, and Sanofi-Aventis employ marketers to market their flagship prescription drugs.   Often times, these marketers work in concert with each other; however, more often that not these marketers are battling for a piece of valuable market share.  Relationship marketing along with business-to-business marketing can reduce marketing silos, and create an efficient workflow.

With the advent of online marketing and the rise of social media new avenues are available to marketers.  Online marketing has dramatically increased the breadth and scope of the marketing community. Where once marketers had to travel door to door to reach their respective clients, we now see marketers utilizing email along with other digital tools.

Savvy marketers have utilized these tools to reach out to a larger audience.  The influx of digital marketers has created a niche community focused on messaging and product positioning.  Customer relationship marketing, or CRM, has become an invaluable tool for healthcare marketing.  By digitizing information and fostering online communities that have global reach, these savvy marketers have not only increased their market share but in some cases have increased ROI.

The evolution of marketing has occurred rapidly.  Ten years ago healthcare marketers would go to door to door to pitch their products.  Within the past five years email and email marketing campaigns have been the standard.  The next five years, in all likelihood, will be dominated by Twitter, Facebook, and SaaS (software as a service).

Here are some healthcare trends to keep an eye on:

Drug Patent Expiry

The expiration of trademark drugs within the healthcare industry will have a profound impact on healthcare marketers.  There will be a dramatic spike in generic drug manufacturing globally.  Social media, along with marketing software, will play a big roll in how marketers distinguish themselves from competitors.

The Rise of Social Media

Social media guidelines, which have yet to be provided by the FDA, will have a profound impact on how marketers operate on Twitter and Facebook.  The savvy marketer will keep an eye on these trends and position their product accordingly.

SaaS (Software as a Service) integration

Marketers will also utilize software that is easy to use and provides a rich database of customer information.  Inbound marketing efforts, PR campaigns, and social media development will be readily accessible to savvy marketers utilizing SaaS platforms.

What are some relationship marketing methods you use to engage your customers?

How To Know When Your CRM Is Broken

Thursday, June 30, 2011 by Sidney Angelos

During the 1990s when customer relationship management or CRM was just beginning to be implemented in business processes, one of the biggest challenges was simply getting the corporate structure to use the tools and channels of communication effectively. Today, the evolution of the Internet, and its various channels, has increased the contents of the marketer’s tool box with more innovative ways to manage the business’s relationships with its customers.

The challenge with all the latest bells and whistles is to know when something is amiss. When does the company understand that their CRM efforts are not working, or being as effective as they might be?

Too many marketing executives wait to see the reports. Even on a weekly basis, the time it takes for the feedback to enter into the conversation may be longer than is healthy for regular, successful business operations.

Fortunately for today’s business marketing professional, in addition to a wide array of low cost, effective CRM applications, the employment of social media with the specific application towards customer relationships management can provide near real time feedback on the current state of CRM affairs.

In the past, sales was a direct indicator of how a company was doing. Though still true today, taking the time to wait for sales data, making a determination of response, and then implementing that response can take too much time.

With the use of social CRM tools and communities, the business can be more active in the direct interaction with its customers. When something goes wrong, the conversations usually start with the communities of users. Active company representatives continually monitoring the various social channels can be clued into the negative conversations within minutes, not the days, weeks or months of the past.

When it comes to monitoring the working efficacy of the CRM application in place, one of the best mechanisms is to simply ask ones customers how things are going. How has their experience with the company affected them?

Again, social CRM provides a number of tools that are both easy to use and relatively inexpensive as well. The following list briefly describes some of these tools, and how the savvy marketing department can use them to promote the company brand, while still providing top quality service to the customers:

Tools To Use In Effective CRM

  • Cloud CRM Applications: Cloud computing, or the hosting of applications on servers (or parts of servers) not wholly owned by ones company, can provide the business with effective, scalable solutions when it comes to providing quality relationships management. An effective indicator of shoddy CRM can be the over-burdening of in-house servers loaded up with various software applications required to provide acceptable customer experiences.By enlisting the help of instantly scalable software and hardware solutions, the business can do away with the excuse of technology as an inhibitor to the customer being treated fast and in good fashion.
  • Monitoring the Conversation: Knowing what is being said about ones customer is as important as being able to take quick action to remedy less than positive scenarios. In the past, this sort of continual around the clock monitoring simply was not possible.Today, however, with active use of social communities, the company is able to set up automated services which check any mention of a brand. Now, with dedicated individuals whose primary focus is spotting and reacting to the mention of its brand names, the conversation can always be heard.When others are speaking ill, social CRM provides a fast, easy, and low cost way to deal with the challenges. When bad things are spread about the brand, it becomes paramount for the company to address the problem head on, in good timely order, and with intelligent, compassionate solutions. Social CRM will provide the communication channels for this to happen.
  • Continual Content Creation: If the company is receiving a number of similar questions or complaints about some aspect of its operations, a clue might be picked up on that CRM is broken. Maintaining a database of the various questions asked easily leads to an FAQ page, or knowledge base of solutions where current and potential customers can find the answers they seek fast.
  • Setting Automated Notifications: As stated, people will talk about ones company and brands. In addition to the real-time conversations taking place within the confines of social communities like Facebook or Twitter, thousands of bloggers and other website owners publish new articles and blog posts every day. Many of them will talk about the brand that is important to the company in question.Search engines like Google have free, easy to use mechanisms in place to monitor a specific keyword or phrase and then email those references to someone in the company who needs to know what’s being said. Whether having an email delivered immediately, or on a daily or weekly basis, it is important to hear what is being said outside of the traditional social community venues.The quicker one is receiving this information, the faster a determination can be made on how to deal with it. For a large percentage of the conversations, simply logging into the speaker’s website and leaving an official, informed comment can make the difference between representing the brand well, and inviting further challenging criticism.

In a nutshell, if the paying customers are complaining about products, or the way they are being treated, one should know there are challenges with the CRM process. When the conversation is a bit harder to locate, extra efforts need to be employed in order to better deal with amicable solutions.

Taking the time to monitor the chatter, separate the noise from the legitimate concerns will be a win for the company in a number of ways. Existing customers like to know they are valued. They’ll tell everyone within their spheres of influence when the business goes out of their way to make the customer feel valued and worthy.

But customers will also tell their friends and associates when they’ve been done wrong. With today’s communications capabilities this bad news can spread much faster than wildfire.

Have you noticed that your CRM efforts are not working properly? What metrics did you use to come to this conclusion? Share with us in the comments below:

Interview Series Continued – Measuring CRM Performance for Small Business

Monday, June 13, 2011 by Sidney Angelos

We’ve had the chance to sit down with Vern, a freelance writer who has experience writing about customer relationship management. He’s also had a chance to test and measure effectiveness of small business CRM usage through his work with private companies.

There can be little doubt that a well-implemented CRM strategy can have huge benefits for small business. It can make all the difference between a strong, customer centric business and one that fails to compete with its rivals.

However, putting a CRM strategy in place is only half the battle. The other half is arguably even more important: measuring the success of CRM. This is where there is the potential for problems to arise. While many forward-looking small businesses understand the importance of CRM, many are unsure as to how they can measure its performance.

One of the key issues is that while CRM is intended to increase profitability, it is also by definition designed to improve relationships with customers through improved service and a higher level of brand loyalty. While profits are easy to measure, many businesses struggle to find ways to measure the other areas that CRM impacts.

The good news for small businesses is that there are a number of methods that can be employed to measure CRM success.

  1. Combine old style and new style platforms. One of the mistakes some businesses can make is to think that as CRM is a “new” platform that exists in the world of Web 2.0 then only new methods, such as social media platforms can be used to measure it. This is a fundamental error and one that will lead to inaccurate results. CRM is designed to increase customer satisfaction through a better system of holding and retrieving data in which customers’ details are available to different departments so that the customer can receive more detailed marketing. The result of this can be measured by monitoring customer feedback. Of course, this feedback can be found online in a wide range of platforms (everything from Twitter and Facebook to comments on the business’s website). However, offline feedback is just as valuable. This could be in the form of written communication or verbal conversations. The key is to record these interactions (i.e. make a note of them afterwards) and enter them onto the business’s system. When combined with online platforms, a true result of CRM measurement can be gained. For the small business, this can be particularly effective as it is a relatively low-time consuming procedure that will provide invaluable information.
  2. Social Media isn’t just for the Big Boys (and Girls). While it is important not to forget more traditional methods of communication, there can be no doubt that social media is an ever more important area for business. However, there is sometimes a feeling among small business that social media is for the large businesses and corporations. This could not be further from the truth. By embedding social media into a small business website (for example, including a Twitter feed or link to a simple Facebook page) a small business has an ideal way to monitor customer feedback and measure how their CRM is performing.
  3. Two-Way Dialogue. One of the key facets of CRM is that it has shifted the old-fashioned businesses model of a monologue (the business advertising) to a dialogue in which the customer has an equal part to play. What this means for the small business is that they are presented with a way to measure CRM that is simple and cost effective. Based on customer’s details held on the CRM system, a small business can send emails, flyers or even call customers to discuss new products or updates to products they already have. This is a much more targeted method of marketing that used to be the case and it holds itself up to measuring much better. By tracking the customers contacted and their response, the small business has a simple yet highly effective method to measure its CRM performance.

 

CRM Interview – How to Use CRM to Improve Efficiency and Effectiveness

Saturday, June 4, 2011 by Sidney Angelos

We had the chance to sit down with Vera, a CRM expert and freelance writer. She discusses how to improve customer relationship management, how to improve efficiency and effectiveness as well.

In today’s business environment, forward-looking companies are on the look out for anything that could give them the edge over their competitors. It could be argued that nowhere is this more apparent than in the drive to improve efficiency and effectiveness. After all, these two areas provide the foundation for all business success.

The problem lies in the fact that while all businesses would like to be more efficient and effective in all they do, it is often far from clear exactly how this may be achieved. Businesses spend hundreds if not thousands of hours searching for ways to streamline their processes while maintaining strong products and/or services and hopefully improving levels of customer service.

The good news for any business who finds themselves in this position is that there is a superb resource available that can help move these goals from wish list to part and parcel of every working day.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a flexible and powerful tool that can give a business a new level of impetus and help it move to the next level and beyond.

So how does it do this? For any business unsure of what CRM has to offer, or for those who want to take the next step, a good idea would be to investigate an appropriate webinar to help get a firm grasp on what CRM can do for a business.

Essentially, CRM can benefit a business by improving efficiency and effectiveness across a wide range of areas. There are a number of ways in which it can be used:

 

  • Front line staff benefits. CRM provides a platform for sales, support and service staff to become much more efficient and effective in all their dealings with customers. The reason for this is simple: because CRM allows them to have immediate access to a history of all interactions with customers, they are placed in a much stronger position to offer bespoke advice and suggestions. The great thing about this is that it benefits both business and customer. The customer gets information relevant to his or her interests/buying habits and the business can save a large amount of time (and money) by targeting appropriate products or services.
  • Marketing campaigns revolutionized. It is no exaggeration to say that CRM revolutionizes marketing campaigns. It does this by helping create much more targeted marketing through efficient use of the customer database. The difference can be astounding. Instead of sending out details of a new product aimed at parents at everyone on the database, CRM could easily help a business target its customers much more effectively thus saving a considerable amount of money. It also helps build customer relations, as inappropriate marketing materials do not frustrate customers.
  • Working better together. CRM promotes a closer working relationship between teams as it encourages sharing of information in a mutually beneficial manner. This leads to improved efficiency as less time is lost by different teams attempting to access the same information. With CRM, it can be accessed through a central database. This also means customers are not being constantly asked the same questions. Once the information is gathered, it is there for every team to view and use.
  • Managing the pipeline. One of the key areas of success for CRM is the way in which it significantly increases efficiency and effectiveness of pipeline management. By having an up-to-date database of customers, CRM helps a business predict future trends and therefore puts it in a much stronger position to capitalize on future market directions. Of course, one of the best ways to do this is by analyzing historic trends and using CRM to interpret this data in order to best position the business for what is to come.
  • Cross-selling. In many ways, the holy grail of business – the ability to sell more than once to the same customer. This is a highly effective way to increase the bottom line. CRM comes into its own here by helping a business see purchase history and therefore being in a position to offer products that have been improved or are in a new edition.

CRM is a powerful tool to improve efficiency and effectiveness and drive sales efficiency by helping create an enhanced level of customer service which in turn leads to a more receptive customer base.

 

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