Customer relationship management, customer relationship analytics and salesforce automation are some of the enterprise systems that capture the customer view. However, customer expectations are not static and will constantly change so they must be determined on an on-going basis. Customer systems by themselves don’t create relationships – the right customer engagement does.
What does ‘customer relationship’ mean for customers?
In many suppliers’ perceptions, customers want cost-effective products or services that deliver required benefits to them. In reality customers want to have their needs satisfied, which are distinctly different to and far broader than a product or service. Meeting customers’ needs and expectations is a prerequisite to building a relationship, and requires far more than a CRM system based on internal processes.
The costs of buying the customer relationship
The cost of customer relationships is not just the price per seat of a CRM system. Catching, capturing and maintaining customer related information and transactions happen across an organisation in multiple systems and processes. Adding up the costs of all of these things gives a surprisingly high figure, considering that most of the processes involved are internally focused and not directly related to actual customers.
Businesses can prevent most customer frustrations by recognising fundamental issues all customers have with their product or service. Logging of customer interactions is sometimes more important than classifying incidents or interactions to measure performance.
How much of a customer relationship can you have in your sector?
There are a number of sectors where businesses are building massive customer profiles in order to manage the customer better. Unless it’s a very complex product or service (like construction, for instance – which involves many actors and transactions ) most businesses don’t need this level of complexity to enhance the relationship with customers. If a consumer goods company wants to target customers directly, but doesn’t have direct market access to its customers, it won’t achieve higher sales regardless of the sophistication of its customer systems.
Relationship management or communications management?
Communication is central to any successful relationship. In terms of customer relationship management, communication needs to be consistent and high quality: timely, focused, relevant, reliable, and clear. This shouldn’t be limited to outbound process related communication but also in the response to enquiries and complaints. Improving customer communication – with or without a CRM system – usually leads to more sales success.
73% of companies have no process for re-engaging and nurturing leads after sales.
Customer systems that support customers first
Customers have predictable needs and expectations depending on where they are in the customer lifecycle. Early in the lifecycle customers might need simple advice and recommendations, while more personalised offers might come later. Trying to capture and support customer interactions in all phases of the lifecycle is expensive and often not very effective. Catching customers when they need information or assistance in making a decision is a more targeted and represents a real opportunity to convert the customer.
On average agents spend 11% of their time looking for information needed to manage customer interactions.
Make the CRM system work for staff
CRM processes are usually built around operational efficiency and transparency. However, successful customer-facing staff work with the customer to arrive at a mutually satisfactory and sustainable solution and just use systems to retrieve or record information. Identifying the key system transactions and leaving room for staff to be empathic and supportive creates opportunities to win customers.
Use existing systems to engage customers better
Most organisations have made massive investments in CRM systems and processes. You can capitalise on this investment by taking the customer’s perspective on the relationship and deliver the things that they value most like speed, help and timely information – instead of creating internal customer views that don’t contribute to their experience.
One of the largest insurers in the Nordics realised that a customer transaction is not a process, but an interaction between a person in distress and his service provider. Agents were trained to listen, instead of following screens and flows of the CRM system. Capturing needed information through conversation instead of interrogation resulted in higher customer satisfaction, better information capture and reduced call handling time.
