It’s the dream of many sales and marketing managers: a seamless multi-channel customer experience so that no matter where a customer chooses to contact your company, or how they choose to interact, they receive the same care and attention as they would via another channel.
Email? Check, you’ve got that covered. Social media? Yes, that too. Customer service inbound calls? Done!
Yet with many legacy CRM systems still acting as if they’re a “sales only” club, it can be difficult for managers to achieve these important customer satisfaction goals.
The Value of a Good CRM System
Forrester Research offers insight into how you can quantify the value of your CRM system. Although the exact figures will vary according to your company’s revenues and expenses, you can estimate the value of an effective CRM system by understanding three data points:
- Revenue: How can improving the customer experience increase revenue? Think about opportunities for add-on sales, bigger shopping carts, and repeat visits. All of these lead to increased revenue.
- Operating costs: Consider how much you’re spending now to monitor multiple channels manually. If you have separate departments monitoring call center volume, social media interactions and email inquiries, how much could you save if these were all rolled into one interface?
- Improve efficiencies: Older IT systems and CRM systems tend to cost more and more each year to manage. You may feel like you’re constantly patching, tweaking, and retooling what should work easily. New CRM systems not only improve the customer experience; they can decrease IT costs by reducing inefficiencies.
Gathering these inputs, figuring out revenues versus expenses, and assessing the overall brand impact that improved customer service may make on your business isn’t a quick process. But a thorough examination of these facts may lead you to the conclusion that a new CRM system is indeed a valuable asset.
The More You Integrate, the Better the Picture
The more you can integrate the different customer data inputs, the better the picture you’ll be able to paint of your individual customers. That can help everyone in your company do a better job exceeding customer expectations.
- Accounting data will help your team understand the average dollar value of a customer and their purchasing history.
- Return data shows you any problems they may have had with merchandise.
- Sales, warehouse and fulfillment data can show you the status of any open orders so that you can give customers an accurate shipping estimate.
- Marketing data shows you which promotions were sent to customers and when.
Think about the great artists of the past. When they painted a masterpiece, they used colors from many different tubes or jars of paint. These are blended to create beautiful colors that, when used together, form a picture.
Your customer data is like a tube or jar of paint. Blended by a good CRM system and used skillfully by employees, it can be used to paint a masterpiece that will enhance customer experience and transform complaints into satisfaction.
Great CRM Starts with BAASS
If you’re ready to enter a new world of CRM, contact BAASS Business Solutions today. We offer Sage CRM and other business solutions that will help you achieve your productivity and revenue goals. Alternatively, attend a webinar to learn more - ournext webinar will be held June 16, 2016 at 1PM ET.
