The core of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is developing a great relationship with your customers. It’s about a lot more than just having your contacts organized and having your demographics understood, although these things can certainly help. There are many ways that you can develop a CRM strategy that really works:
1) Really develop emotional bonds with your customers. If your staff can show empathy and sympathy when customers contact them, your customers will feel much more satisfied with the communication they receive from your company. To develop empathy between your customers and your staff, work with your staff to determine some of the frustrations customers may face, and make sure that staff understand that their paycheck comes from customers, not really from the company. How well customers are satisfied and how well they feel comfortable with the company determines whether you can afford to pay your staff. Make sure that your staff understand this and understands that dealing with customers on a personal level — even when those customers are frustrated or angry — is what allows your employees to live in their home and keep their families fed.
2) Consider whether your company needs scripts or not. Some companies enjoy having scripts for telephone
calls and enjoy having canned responses for e-mail correspondence. This automates responses and allows customers to get similar quality care no matter who they talk to on your team. While some experts advocate scripts as a great way to ensure that a company grows, other experts claim that scripts get in the way of the staff developing a good relationship with the customer. Depending on how well your staff ad libs, you may wish to introduce or remove scripts in order to provide better customer service.
3) Develop VIP services. Your best customers and your most valuable customers should get preferred service. This may include special pricing, special promotions, and especially special treatment on the phone and via e-mail. You can use the Relenta CRM system to set up a VIP department that allows you to take care of your most valued customers especially well. You can train your staff to answer your VIP customer calls faster and answer the e-mails more quickly as well. This helps VIP customers remain satisfied with the company and keeps them purchasing from your business.
4) Keep your staff enthusiastic about CRM. CRM strategies will simply not work if only management believes in the business strategy. One excellent way to ensure that all your team members believe in CRM and are enthusiastic about the concept is to tie benefits, raises, and other incentives with CRM performance. Another option is to use a very simple CRM program that delivers plenty of features but doesn’t overwhelm your staff. A program such as Relenta CRM doesn’t require you to install lots of software on company computers and doesn’t require your staff to learn a great deal about a completely new program. Relenta CRM is as simple to use as a standard e-mail program, but offers useful databases of contacts, calendars, file sharing, and everything else needed to implement an effective CRM strategy.
