Tips for avoiding antisocial CRM
Use what you have
Businesses should make more of what they already know about their customers. CRM products today can record, track and analyse data about previous spends, what products customers buy, preferred contact methods and so on. Integration with marketing departments should exist to enable building lists against the database, doing targeted marketing campaigns, whether by email, telephone, notes.
Let the customer come to you
Increasing the ways that your customers can give you information, such as self-service, will create better relationships in the long run. Web interfaces can be built to let customers log a query, update opportunities, track the progress of these interactions with their supplier. By putting the power in the hands of the customer, you can also learn their preferences, what they want from you, how they like to receive information, and what not to do!
Use the web-based functionality to your benefit
CRM systems can be integrated with most business applications, and an online environment brings new potential. An intranet-CRM mash-up, for example, would mean that sales or marketing could see reporting dashboards from product development or accounts payable. Alternatively, where an application in another part of the business contains valuable customer information, that application can be launched within the CRM system as if it was all-in-one.What’s the return if you do this right?
- More targeted marketing – don’t spend tens of thousands of pounds, when 90% of your efforts go to the wrong person
- High value intelligence – knowing who your high volume customers (buying 3,000 widgets) and high value customers (buying £3,000 widgets) means you can utilise the most effective channel – web for the former, personalised phone service for the latter
- Self-service satisfaction – if customers can log on and track their own cases, rather than ring up and queue in an automated phone system, they’ll get a better experience
- Streamlined customer service – with self-service you can see calls drop, meaning call centre staff can pick up the high value opportunities and spend more time on outbound calling, but targeting the right customers, rather than a blanket target call list
- Identifying issues – with a more intelligent system of self-service, analytics can report back on who’s accessed the Web, how often, and if there’s an increase in contact, someone can cement that relationship by proactively calling to check in
- Managing Service Level Agreements (SLA's) – keeping track of your SLA's is a legal and financial imperative. Being able to build in alerts and notification of deadlines or where a particular criteria is hit for a customer, can save paying fines, as well as avoid damage to your reputation
Overcome the challenges
- Self-service – ensure customers know what this means and what they’ll get from it to enable them to take up the option and for you to see results, rather than just give a web page in an automated voicemail server.
- Break down barriers – different business units need to agree to share the information they hold, and must understand the common goal
- Customer relations versus technology – CRM products are built by and for sales, marketing and support people – not Web 2.0 gurus. Forward-looking companies will be ensuring that the digital designers, who wouldn’t naturally be bedfellows with those departments, bring their knowledge and understanding of new online features and networking tools into the forum.
From a technology perspective, we’re not talking a massive shift, new infrastructure, huge integration issues. The fact is, many vendors already offer the kinds of tools discussed here, and as everything moves online, these can be easily integrated into marketing applications and wider business applications.
CRM 2.0 is a classic buzz word, but all of the tools are there to do it right now, it’s just about using what you’ve got better. CRM 2.0’s not a new generation of technology that requires investment, but using customer-focused processes and working smarter within the Web 2.0 environment.
Some might say CRM 1.0 was software and CRM 2.0’s a collaborative process – but let’s not abandon the principles of the original CRM yet. It’s about geography: for all its good intentions, the one-directional CRM of old put the company in the middle of outbound communications. Now the customer is in the middle of a rapidly expanding ecosystem, consisting of constantly evolving mechanisms to contact people.
CRM 2.0 can’t just be about a new definition or a new term. Who needs a new word that still doesn’t have an agreed meaning or a proven model? It’s about a second chance to get CRM right. People didn’t become ‘individualised’ overnight – but the industry doesn’t have much longer to get CRM right.
Duncan Wood, Product Manager, Sage CRM (UK)
