The hottest new CRM trends include big data analysis and public data mining along with IoT (Internet of Things) data and machine learning, which allow us to understand more about customers than ever before. These new tools are making proactive engagement based on personal information more possible than it’s ever been.
Yet, are these modern capabilities of CRM outpacing the customer-centric capabilities of marketing efforts?
It’s no secret to most marketers that CRM solutions can guide customer engagement—and play powerful roles in recognizing who, when, where, what and how to communicate with potential, new or legacy customers.
Keep in mind: Customers now hold the power in the relationship with your company. They will trust their peers and communities much more than any marketing message, so it is key to make each engagement personal, simple, helpful and effortless—a customer-centric mindset can help.
According to CMO Council research, 73 percent of marketers at major corporations believe that customer centricity is critical to their company’s success (and to their own roles). Still, only 14 percent say that customer centricity is a hallmark of their company.
In short, many organizations have the opportunity to better leverage their most powerful customer information tool, their CRM. Generating a successful strategy that leads to a constantly evolving CRM will ensure that their organization can keep up with customers, a topic discussed in this free RBA e-book.
For marketers, it starts with incorporating the three Ps of customer-centricity. To boost customer-centric thinking, consider equipping proactive marketing, predictive sales and personalized support. These are three of the most typical ways an organization engages with its customers.
1. Proactive Marketing
Contacting your customers before they reach out to you shows them that your company values their opinions and is dedicated to meeting their needs. This can be done by monitoring social media channels, using your CRM solution to alert customers to service issues, and tapping into the Internet of Things (IoT) to gather personalized data. For example, if your
company sells a “smart” coffee maker, whenever a customer’s coffee maker runs low on coffee beans, the machine sends a notification that is collected by your CRM system, which emails the customer a coupon for 10 percent off coffee beans. Now that’s proactive!
2. Predictive Sales
A CRM solution helps your employees to detect patterns within customer and market data, enabling them to quickly identify emerging customer trends. Knowledge of these trends can then be used to guide marketing, sales and customer service strategies that fulfill customers’ needs before they even know what they desire. When sales teams use this information to tailor their upsell tactics and cross-sell offers, your company can increase its subscription earnings between 10 and 15 percent, according to McKinsey research.
3. Personalized Support
Personalization is one of the hottest topics in marketing today. It’s no surprise then, that a CRM solution could also be indispensable not only for sales and marketing, but also for your customer service team. In 2016, it’s time to give customers the freedom to contact your company however they want, giving them a unified omni-channel engagement path. Giving customer support agents access to full customer history and preferences, they can meaningfully engage and determine the right time, right method, and right solution to deliver to each particular customer, ultimately making him or her feel remembered and valued. This doesn’t stop with your agents, either. Making sure all of your self-service options account for customer history and preferences can make the tools you provide just as helpful and engaging as a real person.
CRM can be a tool that helps marketers engage in meaningful ways, letting their customers know that they know who they are and that they care about them, making their journey of dealing with their organization as effortless and rewarding as possible. The secret is to make the engagement between the technology and people personal, simple, helpful, and effortless.
So, are your corporate marketing efforts fully leveraging your CRM? Bring these Three Ps of customer-centricity into your next meeting with marketing. For more information on evolving your marketing strategy with the use of a CRM, download our e-book: How to Make Your CRM Indispensable to Sales and Marketing.
