ERP – CRM

Today’s consumers represent a savvy and independent customer base.  They seek reliable and speedy customer service, but also do not want to be bombarded with superfluous information, or over-loaded with unnecessary content. By adopting CRM technologies and practices, the most adept businesses can find an even balance that solidifies long-lasting customer relationships.  Below are the “Top Ten” ways businesses can develop loyal customers.

1.  Two-way communication

By establishing an ongoing dialogue, large businesses can build a customer relationship as tight as that found between a smaller company and its patrons.  Providing prompt response, FAQs and knowledgeable customer service representatives (CSRs) is definitely important. However, outgoing contact is just as crucial.  Targeted direct mail and e-mail campaigns are an excellent way to establish two-way communication.  Alerting loyal shoppers to special sales, offers and news establishes a tighter bond between customer and company.

2.  360-degree view of the customer   

Today a call center will only succeed as a contact center. Serving as an important customer touch point, the contact center must integrate on-line and off-line customer interaction.   The foundation for building a customer conversation history and achieving a 360-degree view of the customer is creating what can effectively be called a single-threaded conversation. A single threaded conversation tracks all customer interactions across multiple channels, enabling multiple CSRs to conduct a continuous personalized dialog over time and across multiple communication avenues. To maintain this continuous dialogue, every single interaction a customer has with a company needs to be recorded in a single software system that is accessible to both CSRs and the direct marketing team. 

3.  360-degree view of the company

No matter how a customer contacts your company — whether by e-mail or telephone — it should be easy for that customer to get all of the information that he or she needs. All of your systems should integrate smoothly enough so that they are presented as a single system to the outside world.  That seamless integration needs to be conducted through all communication channels as well as an outbound e-mail campaign management system. 

4.  E-Service Portal

An E-Service portal presents a “single face” to customers, which is customized to provide all information, history, and knowledge that customers need for purchase decisions, account management, or customer service and support.  The E-Service portal harnesses the single threaded conversation, customer databases as well as customer profile information to deliver content that is tailored to the needs of the customer.  The E-Service portal also enables fast, one-to-one business transactions by providing the ultimate empowerment for today’s demanding customers

5.  Self-Service

Sometimes the best approach to customer service is hands-off. Although self-service lacks personal contact, it offers several important benefits to customers, including unlimited access and the ability to avoid long telephone queues. Self-service also allows consistent access to knowledge withoutforcing a customer to face a disparity of information across different customer service agents.   By utilizing expert search functions combined with on-line chat, customers can often help themselves navigate a site. 

6.  Garner Feedback and React

The most successful businesses today have grown by listening to their customers’ requests.  These companies seek customer feedback from the Web site and offline communication tools.  Every industry has a unique customer base that requires a specialized form of communication.  In the technology industry, customers may be more adept at navigating the Web for answers, while in telecommunications customers may prefer to interact over the phone. 

7.  Expert Customer Service Representatives

A major issue that customers have with contact centers is that CSRs are often not able to answer customer inquiries.  Customers are sometimes passed to two or three different CSRs before getting an answer to their question.  With a workflow management system for e-mail and telephone correspondence, companies can route each customer inquiry to the appropriately trained CSR, resulting in a quicker response time.

8.  Personalized Marketing Techniques

With a solid knowledge base built with analytic technologies, companies now have power to recommend products to the shopper based on their previous purchases. The ability to cross-sell and upsell based on historical data specific to that shopper can increase profit and encourage the shopper to return.

9.  Accurate and Customized Responses to Queries

By creating standard answers to frequently asked questions e-mail response is streamlined.  Utilizing intelligent e-mail notification systems, typical customer inquiries can be answered with automated responses immediately.  Unique questions are passed on to trained CSRs, who in turn have more time to provide better service to these customers.

10.  Multi-Channel Contact

Never before have there been so many ways for a customer to interact with a business. Inevitably, each customer will prefer a different method of communication and it is up to the company to offer the highest level of service possible regardless of the communication channel. Without a streamlined process in place for both inbound and outbound messages from each communication tool, it becomes difficult to monitor customer interaction.  

Regardless of the communication channel, whether customer interaction is taking place via Web contact, Web collaboration, e-mail or telephone, the company needs to provide extraordinary customer service at each customer touch point to survive in today’s marketplace.