Because of the fact that computers have taken over both our personal and daily lives, there are several concepts, which used to be implemented differently, and that now seem to have been reduced to pieces of software. One of those concepts is Customer Relationship Management. The truth is, there’s much more to it than the software part.
The real concept behind CRM has nothing to do with software or the paper forms that are filled either by you or your clients. Like most good business concepts, there’s no way to put a price tag on CRM for the simple reason that it’s a WAY of doing business. All the software is just a way of automating a concept that has been around way longer than computers have been. This concept is simply about the way you do business and manage to maintain a line of communication with your customers.
Good customer relationship management has little to do with software and everything to do with your mindset while running your business. After all, your software is only going to give you what you can get from it, so you have to understand that good CRM is about two things: 1) your customer is where the focus of your business should be, and 2) you should constantly be accumulating now information on your customers, and storing and using that information to improve your business-to-consumer relationship.
The first thing you need to know is who is your customer. Well, in the spirit of good CRM, the answer is simple, but loaded with implications: a customer is anyone, anywhere, who uses your company’s product or service. Yes, that sounds very far-reaching, but that’s the truth. Focusing on the current customers is very limiting, you have to also consider your prospective customers.
After setting the record straight as far as who your customer is, now comes the practical side of things, which involves clearly separating who is already doing business with you, and who you need to go out and get their business. Of course, the main reason for differentiating them in this manner is that you will have to have a different strategy for each: increasing the business you get from your current customers requires a totally different approach from getting the business of those which you’ve identified as prospects.
Who do you know better than your current customers? Well at the very least, you know more about them than you do about your prospects. Here’s what you would need to know: who are they? what’s their opinion of your product or service? when did you contact them for the last time? do they refer additional business to you? if they do, who are those referrals? do you fulfill all their needs or do they spread out their purchases? You will have to have this information available about your current customers so that it can be tapped into by anyone within your business that is in need of it.
Your prospects should first be thought of this way: what’s the reason why they’re not currently using you as a supplier? Who in your competition currently counts them as buying customers? Are they meeting your prospects’ needs to their complete satisfaction? Do you already have an employee trying to get those prospects? If you do, do you have a record of what they’ve been doing towards that end (calls, in-house visits, mailings…)? Do you have a record of what results have been achieved and what is recommended to be done next? You need to have that information stored in a central location, and available to interested parties
If you’re asking why all these questions, it’s simply because there’s no way to overemphasize the importance of having a record of what you’ve been doing, both for your current customers and your prospects. This will prove important when you have employees leaving your companies, to be replaced by new ones: the newcomer will find this information already available, and that may be critically important for keeping that customer instead of losing it. You might also bring in someone with new, fresh ideas, but if they know the history of your accounts, they will have a better chance of getting that new customer you’ve been courting for several years.
Good and effective customer relationship management goes beyond which tool you actually use, because what you feed into said tool is way more important: put in useless stuff, and you’ll get useless stuff at the other end. Having a written record of what has been done with each customer and prospect is vital. Once that mindset is firmly ingrained, then the tools that you use will just yield you much better results.
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