In today’s competitive and often crowded marketplace, it is essential to make your clients feel valued and appreciated so that they constantly return for repeat business. Understanding a prospect’s unique needs and effectively fulfilling those needs in a personalized fashion can potentially lead to a lifelong customer. Trying to provide such a “Wow” level of service can be extremely difficult for employees, though, especially if they do not have a CRM system to guide and empower them to make informed business decisions. In particular, firms with departments completely walled off from one another will find it nearly impossible to deliver differentiated and superior client service. With no or limited insight on a client’s last interaction with the firm, employees will encounter more difficulty to go the extra mile when working with a customer.
Overall, firms that do not implement a CRM strategy and CRM technology investments into their overall customer-driven growth and client retention program exhibit the following characteristics:
- Follow-up phone calls do not occur when they were promised.
- Clients are not alerted of possible or existing delays on shipping or other key deliverables.
- Clients are not reminded in advance of an upcoming meeting or informed when an order is ready for pick-up.
- Clients do not receive courtesy check-in calls to make sure the account set-up experience was satisfactory and purchases arrived in good order.
- Follow-up emails are not sent out in a timely manner, if at all.
- Supplemental product info is not mailed out as previously agreed.
- Current products/services owned and utilized by the customer are unknown by sales and service teams.
- Most recent and historical products/services sold are unavailable.
- Most recent cross-sell/up-sell offer dates and details are inaccessible.
All of the preceding lackluster behavior will lead to significant client dissatisfaction and employee frustration. However, all of these situations can be avoided with the help of an industry-leading CRM. Designed to facilitate more of a connected enterprise, the centralized CRM system gives users one single version of the truth on their customers and fosters a more collaborative and integrated workplace.
Whether it is through the use of automated workflows/dialogues, simplified case/contract tracking, visible team support queues, or the extensive cross-channel knowledge management repository, CRM has the functionality and scale to tighten up follow-up and scheduling efforts, increase first contact resolution, and expedite client inquiry handling.
In particular, a cutting-edge CRM system transforms a client service agent into a more productive, proactive, and knowledgeable agent. Therefore, the agent’s response times, quality of advice, and overall delivery and demeanor improve to transform and enhance the customer experience.
Likewise, the agent finds it easier and more convenient to do his job with the help of CRM because data is centralized, readily available, and real-time. Thus, the client contacting the Customer Care division finds it quicker, easier, and more convenient to contact the firm. Since it is no longer a hassle, and surprisingly pleasant, the client becomes more satisfied and loyal. In the end, the client is less likely to leave and the use of CRM helps client retention shoot through the roof.
Without question, CRM is proven to help improve your operational efficiencies and give your employees more information at their disposal to better serve your customers. While industry laggards get overloaded with manual, routine tasks, market leaders continue to streamline and automate marketing, sales, and client service processes to save employees and customers time and create rewarding, lasting memories via legendary customer service.
As Tony Hsieh, former CEO of Zappos says:
Customer service shouldn’t be a department, it should be the entire company.
How is your organization providing your customer service agents and field sales executives with more insight and visibility into your client, prospect, and partner relationships?
What is your approach to aligning your products and services with your customers’ evolving and increasingly demanding needs and to differentiate yourselves from the competition?
Please share your perspectives and leave a comment below.