Building strong customer relationships

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a broad term that encompasses all of a company’s interactions with its customers, both potential and current. While according to the recent survey* only 47% of the North American and European businesses have implemented a CRM solution, Gartner analysts report that senior business leaders name growing the business, improving customer satisfaction and responding to changing customer needs as the top priorities for 2013 and 2014.

Indeed, every business’s got customers, and strive to ensure that those relationships are effective. The role of CRM is hard to underestimate here. Being a unified storage for all your customer, sales, marketing and service information, a CRM system can be invaluable in assisting your organization with high-quality customer interactions, which will in turn increase your profits.

A crucial element to your business’s success is your ability to determine what your customers want and need beyond the actual physical product you are selling. You will keep customers coming back if your purchasing process is smooth, your customer service is outstanding, and you maintain an ongoing relationship with your clients in some manner. With CRM solutions in place, you will be better able to make your customers feel they are a valued part of your business operations. For example, in the past, relationships between businesses and customers typically involved interactions with only one person on each side, and sometimes only one contact between them. However, today’s CRM involves customers becoming involved with people, systems, and processes throughout the business they are working with.

With CRM software tracking all interactions between your company and your customers, you as a manager will be able to analyze your cycle of service to see if any processes need improvement. In order to be successful, an organization needs to be constantly willing to develop, test, and implement solutions to any problems they see.

No surprise Forrester Research, one of the world’s leading research and advisory firms, names business process management (BPM) as one of the top trends for customer service in 2014. BPM tools are being used to standardize service delivery, formalize staff actions, minimize training times and control costs. Thus, a CRM solution with in-built BPM engine will be beneficial for your business.

*According to the Q4 2012 Forrsights Software Survey

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