CRM Marketing Basics? Part 2

Is every department working together for the best total results? Is every department using the CRM software? Identify the opportunities and take action. Here's a basic overview from Wikipedia:

From the outside, customers interacting with a company perceive the business as a single entity, despite often interacting with a number of employees in different roles and departments. CRM is a combination of policies, processes, and strategies implemented by an organization to unify its customer interactions and provide a means to track customer information.

CRM includes many aspects which relate directly to one another:

• Front office operations — Direct interaction with customers, e.g. face to face meetings, phone calls, e-mail, online services etc.
• Back office operations — Operations that ultimately affect the activities of the front office (e.g., billing, maintenance, planning, marketing, advertising, finance, manufacturing, etc.)
• Business relationships — Interaction with other companies and partners, such as suppliers/vendors and retail outlets/distributors, industry networks (lobbying groups, trade associations). This external network supports front and back office activities.
• Analysis — Key CRM data can be analyzed in order to plan target-marketing campaigns, conceive business strategies, and judge the success of CRM activities (e.g., market share, number and types of customers, revenue, profitability)

Weak points in CRM will effect cash flow, customer satifaction, customer retention and many other business performance factors.

Who's Calling?

When was the last time you called your own business? Hopefully you are pleasantly surprised. To be sure you are putting your best foot forward with clients; try calling at different hours of the day and requesting different information or posing as different types of callers. Obviously you may need to get some help from a friend.

Keep in mind that someone trying to sell something will be sure to provide all of their contact information in hopes of the return call. A customer on the other hand may be completely different about providing information.

Be sure to also evaluate an automated answering system that directs callers to various extensions. Is the system pleasant and up to date? Do you have someone screening your calls? Are they good at it? All these items should also apply if you are paying an answering service.

Lastly, is there a tracking system for the source of inbound calls? This information can be a huge help to evaluate your marketing efforts.

CRM Marketing Basics

Working with clients everyday, I try to always ask how they are doing with Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Here's a description from Wikipedia:

Customer relationship management (CRM) consists of the processes a company uses to track and organize its contacts with its current and prospective customers. CRM software is used to support these processes; the software system can be accessed, and information about customers and customer interactions can be entered, stored and accessed by employees in different company departments. Typical CRM goals are to improve services provided to customers, and to use customer contact information for targeted marketing.

While the term CRM generally refers to a software-based approach to handling customer relationships, most CRM software vendors stress that a successful CRM effort requires a holistic approach. CRM initiatives often fail because implementation was limited to software installation, without providing the context, support and understanding for employees to learn, and take full advantage of the information systems.

It's amazing how much insight you can gain from a free source like Wikipedia. Included in the initial entry is why most CRM initiatives fail. That really points us to an opportunity that can make a difference to the bottom line. Many times a company has already invested in the software package, it's just not being fully used. 2009 is a great opportunity to review your CRM approach and take full advantage of every opportunity.