Get over the Winter business blues – Part 1

By Anita Holley, Head of Marketing EMEA

The New Year appears to have brought with it the doom and gloom of a triple-dip recession and news of large retail names entering administration. As a member of the Executive Team of a SME, I panic! If the heavyweights can’t make it, how are we going to make a profit in 2013?

If you’re asking yourself the same question then the first step is to set out your business goals. Mine are;

  • Retain existing customers – if I offer excellent service, then the chances of upselling and cross-selling will increase and I avoid the expense of acquiring new customers;
  • Increase business productivity – if I refine our business processes, our productivity will increase;
  • Reduce my operating costs – In refining the business processes, efficiency will also increase, reducing operating costs naturally.

Excellent, I’ve done it, saved the business – but now I need to put everything into practice. Easier said than done. So what to do next? Let’s look at the first goal, retaining customers.

First what do my customers want? That’s easy to answer, what do I want when I’m the customer? I want everyone in the company, whether I call, email or write, to know my key details, what products I’ve purchased, my likes, dislikes, whether I have a complaint, was it resolved etc. In short, I want to be recognised.

So how can you ensure your customers are ‘known’ by your staff across all touch-points? Introduce Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software.

CRM systems are specifically designed to manage customer information, providing all staff access to a customers’ details instantly, even if that member of staff is out of the office, they can still have comprehensive access via mobile or tablet devices.

Imagine a customer calls with a complaint and the Customer Service Rep spends 5 minutes searching for the customers’ details, can’t respond to the issue and promises to call back… not a good representation of your business. But, in the meantime, your Sales Rep has just arrived at the same customer’s office for a potential upsell meeting. Your Sales Rep walks into the meeting knowing nothing about the complaint, what do you think will happen next? I doubt the customer will be impressed. In fact, they will probably spend the next 20 minutes repeating the complaint and any chance of the Sales Rep getting a cup of tea, let alone making an upsell has evaporated.

With a CRM solution this could be a different story… the same scene, but this time the Customer Service Rep answers the call and using the CRM system confirms to the customer their details, the products they own and asks, how can I help? On hearing the issue, the Customer Service Rep accesses the Customer Knowledge Base, a library of previous complaints and resolutions and quickly finds the answer, which they relay to the customer – everyone is happy!

Now, the Sales Rep arrives, after checking the customers’ history via their smartphone, can walk in and immediately confirm the issue has been resolved satisfactorily – and then continues with the meeting for the reason it was arranged: to sell.

Goal 1 achieved!

Maximizer CRM