In the past Customer Relationship Management was seen as a nice to have rather than a must have for the day to day running of a business. However this has changed significantly over the past few years as more and more businesses look for a ways to streamline their internal processes in an attempt to improve efficiency, effectiveness and ultimately profitability. What’s more, companies are seeing the business benefits of building relationships with existing customers and prospects. After all, it costs more to attract new customers than it does to retain existing clients and in the current economic climate the benefits of retaining existing customers are even more pronounced
So what is Customer Relationship Management?
Many organisations hold their customer and supplier information in a number of places including on spreadsheets, in people’s heads and on various pieces of paper. However, this often results in different departments working independently of each other. Customer Relationship Management provides a new way to manage relationships within an organisation, as all customer and supplier data is held centrally within one database, therefore anyone within the organisation can access the customer data, providing they have an internet connection. Essentially CRM is all about building and retaining relationships with existing customers in order to keep them coming back. It also helps to build relationships with new clients.
However, the ‘Customer’ part of the term Customer Relationship Management is misleading as the strategy, software and processes apply equally to all relationships, not just those with customers. This can provide real advantages to many organisations as often they want to manage every relationship that they have, not just those with customers. This is a concept which Microsoft refer to as xRM where the ‘x’ can be replaced with anything. The concept of xRM will deliver real business benefits including:
- Improved communication
- Automation – making it easier to perform administrative tasks
- Enhanced staff efficiency & effectiveness
The Future of CRM
The world of CRM is changing rapidly. It is moving from being a static source of information to a fully interactive business management tool. This movement has occurred as a result of the explosion in the world of social networking. Websites such as Facebook, Twitter and Linked In have made the transition to the fully interactive world of CRM a must.
Social CRM provides marketers as well as sales people with a new medium through which they can communicate with customers. It also enables them to monitor conversations which occur across social networking sites and offer information and advice to organisations.
The popularity and success of social CRM is yet to be proven, but it certainly looks like it has the potential to be a popular medium through which organisations can communicate.
Concentrix is an independent CRM provider and supplies best in breed solutions including Sage CRM, Microsoft Dynamics CRM and FrontRange’s GoldMine.
For more information about xRM or social CRM, please contact Concentrix on 01509 410500 or email [email protected]
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