Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Managing relationships with customers effectively can have a significant impact of business profitability.

Whether it’s the need to win new customers, retain existing customers, improve customer satisfaction or service customer accounts more efficiently a systematic approach to managing customer and potential customer relationships can help improve the bottom line.

Developments in business software have given organisations the capability to capture more information about their customers. Sharing this information with the relevant people within the business can lead to improved profits by

• sales analysis to identify buying patterns and preferences


• ability to cross sell additional products or services – enabling sales staff to proactively inform customers that “customers who bought this product also bought X or Y“


• ensuring that staff can be made aware of specific customer requirements readily and not relying on the knowledge that of a few individuals within the organisation


• ability to track customer interactions across the organisation – “ the right hand knowing what the left hand is doing” eg salesperson about to quote for big sale knowing that the customer has an important customer service call logged


• improved target marketing based on better knowledge of customers requirements and buying trends


• improved communications with customers , logging of contact history


• ability to deal effectively with complex customer organisations across multiple sites, departments, functions, sites etc


• visibility of customer interactions across the organisation can enhance the customer experience as re-enforcing the impression that your employees understand their business will help strengthen their relationship with your organisation


• improving the organisation’s ability to manage it’s sales pipeline will improve it’s ability to respond to customer requirements and plan resource utilisation
  

Customer relationship management (CRM) is about utilising technology to allow your business to offer work more closely with their customer base, understand their requirements and enhance their customer experience.

An effective CRM strategy should be about

• making it easier for your customer to do business with you


• making it easier for you to do business with your customer
  

Effective CRM will improve customer retention, business efficiency and bottom line profitability whilst enhancing the organisation’s ability to grow and expand it’s customer base.

Author : John Hickey ACMA, CPA, BBS

John who if the founder of Koncept Business Solutions is a Chartered Management Accountant with over 20 years exerience across industries ranging from Food Processing, Manufacturing, Wholesaling, Service and Information Technnology.

Visit us at http://www.konceptbiz.net/