The recent economic crisis has businesses scrambling to come up with creative ways to remain competitive during the recent economic downturn. Many are turning to customer relationship management (CRM) applications run in the cloud in order to give their company an edge over competitors.
No doubt about it—it’s a customer’s market. In this type of market, customers have a myriad of choices. Each company that offers a service or a product is marketing it aggressively, trying to capture the elusive customer, while most customers are budgeting and spending as little as possible. More often than not, it’s not even the product itself that attracts or retains customers, but some other aspect: brand loyalty, effective marketing, superior customer service, or even the old standby of a money-back guarantee.
Companies must appeal to the customer’s needs in order to encourage shopping. Companies who frequently surveyed or engaged customers through blogs or other social networking tools found that customers were more receptive to their products. Personalized service is a primary way to appeal to customers; CRM applications allows companies to keep track of customer preferences and treat them accordingly.
Branding is an important aspect of customer service, and each company should strive to provide an ideal customer experience. No company wants the reputation of being slow, inattentive, inefficient or misinformed. Therefore, companies are seeking new ways to deploy experts in customer service to provide seamless communication and deliver informed answers.
Additionally, businesses are exploring new social networking tools, such as Facebook and Twitter, to improve wait times. There is nothing worse than having a problem, then having to wait 30 minutes or more for someone to address the issue. Customers who do not desire to wait on the phone can initiate an online chat, send an email, or even issue a complaint via Twitter. Many customer service departments have integrated Twitter into their customer service solutions. Therefore, customers may receive a response instantaneously or within several minutes.
Data analysis is very important in determining key accounts, top performers, best sellers, and other important metrics. Each of these reports may be generated easily through customized CRM software. Managers who review this type of data can determine which accounts to pursue to earn the most profits, and which sales people to assign. Top performing sales people can be assigned to the most lucrative accounts to increase the likelihood of the sale being won. Data analysis also allows managers to anticipate a customer’s needs prior to a visit to ask for a sale. When sales people appear informed about the customer’s business, they are more likely to purchase. Both the customer and the sales person benefit from data analysis.
Disney’s Go.com focuses on leisure, recreation, and entertainment. Go.com migrated from editorial content to a search and directory portal. The company was challenged with rebranding itself and driving additional traffic to the site. They decided to change the content of the newsletters to a witty and fun style to capture the attention of the audience. This strategy kept people on the site once they arrived to it from a search engine. Furthermore, they could post messages on the message board in order to provide feedback about improvement to the site.
Many times, customer relationship management is run through the cloud, so that applications can be continually updated, accessed by any authorized user with an Internet connection, and automatically generate reports. This system of capturing data and performing workflows can represent a time- and cost-savings over server-based structures. It’s a great way to integrate a social media campaign into the more traditional CRM practices.
