Knowing your customer is critical to building and managing sales in your business. Face it, you have to work really hard to win over a customer and then retaining them is a further challenge. Since its 85% more profitable to retain a customer than it is to get a new one, you want to make sure you do it well. A Customer Relationship Management system can't do all the work for you, but it'll make the process of collecting relevant information easier and will arm your client facing staff with the knowledge they need to build great lasting relationships with your customers.

CRM in Outbound Marketing

Knowing what is important to your customer is the key to increasing sales. Consider what a disaster it would be if you bought your executive, indoor bound wife a skill saw for her birthday. Her response is likely to be one of disbelief (I can't believe you even thought that would be a good idea) hurt (you don't know me or care about what I like and don't like) and possibly anger (why did you waste my time and your money on something I don't care about.) 

Now I know that this example is extreme, because the relationship with your partner is generally alot more intimate than the relationship between your business and its clients, however on a smaller scale, the same rings true. 

If you are bombarding your customers with non targeted marketing messages they are likely to feel like an unidentified number, get annoyed and disengage. If you use a CRM system the right way all recipients of an outbound marketing campaign would have been selected from the customer database, based on their relationship status, buying behavior, industry, organization size plus anything else that has been recorded and is relevant to that campaign. This way you can consistently engage with your customers in a personalised, timely and appropriate manner.  

CRM in Customer Service

If I have contacted a business 3 times over the last week in regards to an issue that I am experiencing with a product or service, it is probably quite important to me that the issue is resolved. If I get through to 3 different people and have to start at the beginning each time, explaining my issue 3 times, I'm not going to be happy. A good CRM system can help in this scenario in several ways.

Firstly, when a staff member is talking to me they are able to look through my relationship history, see what I've purchased, be made aware if I've had similar issues in the past, and make me feel confident that I am not just a number in a queue. 

Secondly, a service case is logged the first time I contact the company - all of the details about my current issue are keyed into the system and available for anyone else in the organization to bring up next time I call. 

Lastly, if the CRM system has a client interface system, I'll receive notification as soon as the service case has been updated or resolved, so I am receiving communication as it happens.