Many companies fail when it comes to CRM. Steve Johnson of Pragmatic Marketing finds that a customer with an unsettled complaint can tell up to nine to ten people about their negative experience. 13% of unsatisfied customers tell more than 20 people about their negative experience. The good news is that between 70% and 95% of unhappy customers will return to a company if their complaint is resolved to their satisfaction – and is resolved promptly. Obviously, companies need to pay attention to customer satisfaction – and dissatisfaction. Unfortunately, many companies make the following mistakes:
1) Not making CRM strategy and tools work together. Your company’s CRM strategy should work well with the CRM cools your company uses. If there is incongruence between CRM strategy and tools, customers are sure to suffer. For example, if your CRM strategy advises that there must be a follow-up to complaints within a week, but your CRM tools do not allow you to see who has complained in the past week, you will have a hard time living up to your CRM goals with your tools. Your best option is to define your CRM strategy and goals first, and then go looking for CRM technology that works with your strategy. The other option is to select a very flexible CRM technology, such as Relenta CRM, that allows you to personalize your CRM tools to your philosophy.
2) Thinking CRM is all about money. Many companies assume that CRM is all about spending a lot of money on software, staff, and on. This is not the case. Huge companies that spend millions of dollars on CRM departments, software, and personalized solutions often fare worst when it comes to customer satisfaction surveys. In fact, one of the reasons why customers do business with small companies is because of the superior customer service they can receive in a smaller environment. If you’re a small company, you can pay very little for a quality technology such as Relenta CRM and still enjoy CRM that is superior to that of many Fortune 500 companies.
3) Not creating staff enthusiasm about CRM. Your staff need to be enthusiastic about CRM and must be committed to making it work within the company. One simple way to do this is to use a simple CRM technology that every staff member can use and feel confident with. Many companies are reporting excellent results with Relenta CRM, because Relenta CRM is as simple to use as your own e-mail software — perhaps even simpler — but still delivers a powerful CRM punch.
4) Not changing core processes that don’t work. If there are core values, processes, or issues that are not working at your company, a fancy new CRM software program will not fix the issue. You to fix serious issues — such as staff apathy, poor response times, and so forth. Ideally, you want to fix them before you implement your new CRM strategy, since you do not want to standardize that poor service or that problematic area within your new CRM system.
