Very few companies have truly created a customer-centric strategy supported by CRM .
Although this acronym has been with us for a long time. Not everyone is familiar with these acronyms.
CRM or Customer Relationship Management are the acronyms used in English to define a customer-centric business strategy. These tools are based on the collection of information about consumers to create more profitable and satisfactory long-term relationships for both parties.
Why am I telling you all this?
Well, econsultancy recently conducted a survey of various entrepreneurs asking them what was the most important aspect of acquiring a digital culture in their organizations . The answer they got in 58% of the cases was: adopt a customer-centric strategy.
And yet adopting a customer-centric strategy remains a challenge for most organizations. For this reason, today I want to talk to you about how you can create this strategy to really listen to your customers, relying on a CRM and other customer service tools.
I don’t think I can find out everything in this post. But at least I hope it serves as a start.
Let us begin!
What it means to have a customer-centric strategy
Businesses are built on relationships.
And they grow when you are able to build strong long-term relationships with your customers and keep them happy by continuing to purchase your solutions.
This is relatively simple when we are talking about a few clients. But… what happens when we have hundreds or a few thousand?
Well, it is simply impossible to maintain a relationship with everyone and remember the last conversation you had.
Being customer-focused is not just about providing a good after-sales service, it means providing an excellent shopping experience for the user at all times in which you interact:
- since your client is informed about his problem before buying
- at the time you request an offer from us or buy from us
- after the purchase process
- and long after the purchase process
During these 4 stages you must be able to put your customer first.
When you do this right throughout the process you receive data from your client and your client receives information from you. It is a reciprocal process of information gathering by both parties. That is why each interaction between the two must be enriching for both of them.
Otherwise it is meaningless.
You do the collection of your client’s data through your CRM and you give them data through your CMS and your help desk.
Let me illustrate the latter.
When your client is going to buy, he does an investigation and arrives at your page through Google. On your page you provide information and data to facilitate their purchase decision.
That is your CMS or Content Management System.
When you buy, you arrive at your user area and the help center, where you can check the details of your order.
That is the help desk that is responsible for providing after-sales service . Ok, so throughout this process your client has provided you with billing data, address, email, navigation, etc… that are collected by your CRM and serve to feed your entire sales process and boost your relationship with them.
The challenges of becoming a customer-centric company
The three elements you need to be a customer-centric company are therefore:
- a CMS, that is, a well-structured web page with useful content
- a help desk to attend to anything related to the client
- and a CRM to save and manage the relationship with your client
When a customer has a problem with their order, all they are looking for is a quick solution to their situation. And when one of your agents or commercials wants to boost sales, the first thing he does is check a customer file.
Without a perfect integration of these three elements, you will not be able to manage relationships with thousands of your clients on a daily basis.
Let me tell you an anecdote. I recently bought in the electronic store of El Corte Inglés .
Anyone would say that their customer service must be impeccable.
Well, my surprise was huge when on the day of the order they told me to go pick it up and when I got there I couldn’t take it home because they hadn’t given me the PIN for my purchase.
Angry, I called the ECN customer service and they washed their hands.
The solution had to come from the logistics company that did have all the data and was able to give me the PIN in a matter of seconds so that I could pick up my order. Which of them is a customer-centric company? Which one has more practice with a CRM?
You will think that this is something abnormal. But in many cases it is normal.
Organizations that are not digitally native are not yet ready to develop a customer-centric strategy.
I will give you another example with a telephone company to which I contracted a 4G Wi-Fi network.
Everything went smoothly until I couldn’t connect my wifi router. Before calling the customer service number, I did a quick search on their website and discovered, thanks to a forum and one of the users, that the card had to be activated once received and that to do so, an operator had to be called.
No sooner said than done! I called and the problem was resolved.
My question is why didn’t I get that simple instruction earlier? For example when I received the message that my router was already on its way or when I paid for it.
Fortunately, your Internet Help Desk had the answer . However, a few days ago I received a notice to activate my client area. Well, I haven’t been able to yet because I haven’t known how to do it and because they don’t explain it on their website or in the Help Desk and I’m too lazy to call them.
My question is, why in the email they sent me to tell me that I have a client area they don’t give me access or explain how to get it?
Well that’s because they still haven’t got a seamless integration of their CRM, CMS and Help Desk with the customer journey .
The consumer journey is all the steps your customer must take to discover your product, buy it and finally use it. If you want to develop a customer-centric strategy, you must define your company based on the consumer’s path or journey. Attending to what they need at all times.
- what information will they require
- how will you receive your order
- etc…
To be a customer-centric company, it will not be enough to integrate your CRM well, with the CMS and the Help Desk.
You’ll also need to consider the consumer journey and all the possible steps and interactions between you and your customer.
The role of CRM and Custumers services in the digital company
According to Deloitte, organizations focused on their clients generate 60% more profits. And I think it’s true.
We have already seen:
- because a CRM is more important than ever to manage relationships with your customers
- how a CRM tool can help you digitize your organization
- because the integration of a CRM must be total with the Help Desk and your website.
- how a CRM application can increase the productivity of your marketing, sales and customer service team
Even with all this, a CRM can be a complex and expensive solution for your company to integrate. Not for lack of money or technical capacity of a good provider.
If not because it implies a change of mentality for each of your employees and a different way of evaluating them.
But I will talk about this as well as the possible solutions that you can adopt soon.
Conclusion: how to turn to your customers
The road to becoming a consumer-centric company that truly listens to its customers is long and complex.
It requires not only changes in processes and technologies but also in people.
You may be thinking that this is beyond the scope of your organization. But… the cost of maintaining one of these systems with third-party solutions today for 5 operators does not have to exceed €6,000 per year. And that if we go to the most complete ranges.
Technology is no longer the brake to digitize. And increasingly it is a question of how to integrate these into people’s daily lives.
Taking the step, as I always say, has to do more and more with people.
On another occasion I will talk about the different CRM solutions that you can find and what alternatives may be worth depending on the case.