Lesson 3 - Benefits of CRM

I am sure we would all agree, in times like this we need to look after your existing customers effectively and concentrate our efforts in finding new clients. The more you know about your customers, the better the relationship, the better the relationship, the more trust you have and the easier it is to identify and increase your customer base.

Even with years of accumulated knowledge about your contact you can always improve. Each and every one of your customers need change over time, their likes and dislike change, their contact base change, and this technology can make it easier to record and find out more about customers and ensure that everyone in an organisation can exploit this information.

As organisations become aware that the intensifying customer relationships, including retention, satisfaction, and loyalty, are the responsibility of the whole organisation and not an individual department or team, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems are becoming organisations primary objective.

Experienced organisations have realised that CRM enhances performance, client relationships and interactions or ‘touch points’ through accurate and organised documentation, knowledge of their clients, and professionalism.

In basic terms a CRM helps you bring together all your customer information into one centralised location. It helps you manage and use the customer information you have to your own ends more effectively- whether that is marketing, customer service, selling.

These are just 10 ways a CRM system will improve your business

1. Improved Organisation Performance and Productivity
the centralisation of data results in faster customer service, improved data accuracy and the ability to quickly and easily access and share information to boost your productivity

2. Improve Decision Making Through Better Client Knowledge
have a sharper competitive edge, enabling you to sell more effectively and attract new customers.

3. Improve Call-Centre Efficiency and Service:
in a call centre, a CRM system enables employees to quickly and effectively access the client information to decrease the time of the call. Call Centres can also automatically identify incoming calls and instantly loads a complete client history ready for the employee.

4. Any time Information Access:
the web access option gives mobile employees instant access to the centralised data to support their all their activities to improve their time efficiency while also being more prepared and knowledgeable when interacting with your clients.

5. Improve Client Profitability
have the information to create and sustain individual client relationships and boost client satisfaction to maximise profits. A CRM system can also help you identify and market to your most profitable customers. This approach allows you to increase your marketing efficiency while reducing the cost.

6. Store, Report and Analyse Customer Feedback
including quality control and evaluation results, to ensure a prompt reaction to any scenario that may arise.

7. Professional Quality Controlled Documentation
when your templates and documents are held in one location your organisation improves and you can easily achieve a consistent brand image

8. Better Management Information
parameter driven reports, history tables, instant data field creation for the information you didn't know you needed yesterday.

9. Enhanced Quality Checking
including a range of built-in features, such as a the Automatic Version to check you are working from the latest version and full audits of all actions between your organisation(s) and your client.

10. Minimise Delays
you can start using and benefiting from the powerful features of a CRM immediately, with migration of your current data and virtually no disruption to your everyday operations, you can carry on doing what you do best.

11. Greater Accountability and Improved Team Working
CLIM8's unique multiple organisation structure for data means separate partner organisations or external organisations can safely share core data. Each organisation can be optionally made aware of each other's activities, but security features allow them to remain autonomous on selected data and information.

12. Other benefits

• Identifying needs more effectively
• Increased sales through better timing due to anticipating needs based on historic trends
• Identifying which of your customers are profitable
• Effective targeted marketing communications aimed specifically at customer needs
• A more personal approach
• Enhanced customer satisfaction and retention
• Increased value from your existing customer

here are just a few of many benefits of Hosted CRM Software

• Quick deployment time
• Cheaper set-up and maintenance costs
• Lower hardware costs
• Less risk
• Global accessibility
• Increase return on investment
• Automatic updates and patch management

OK, so I said they would be 10 but we all like that little extra

Do you have any benefits you have noticed from CRM Software? Can you think of any more - I Know I can think of many more which I can include further down the road...