S

till keeping track of customers in spreadsheets?  Or in a rolodex?  Or just in your phone?  There is a better way.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a term used in large organizations to keep track of and manage customers.  For example, when you phone a call center for customer service, information from the call will be captured in their CRM system.  A good customer system, and associated business process, would ensure that all customer issues are resolved quickly and efficiently.  For example, outstanding issues may be automatically escalated to a team lead after 24 hours of no resolution.  Or if a customer calls back, the history from the previous call is automatically brought up while the customer is on hold so that the new representative is up to speed.  Or better yet, the system ensures that subsequent follow ups to the issue get routed back to the same person to provide a more personalized customer experience.

These are some common use examples of how CRM can be used for large organizations.  Similar principles can be applied to small and medium businesses as well.  Customers today demand the best in customer service.  Good customer service means a good experience and this can result in repeat business or business by referral.  CRM can also be used for a number of different areas.  The following are some examples:

  • it can be used to increase sales by sharing information across your company

  • it can integrate with your marketing personnel to help manage your marketing campaigns

  • it can help manage prospective customers by enabling you to follow up on quotes and business opportunities or qualify leads

  • it can help provide superior customer service via any channel (phone, email, social media, blog)

We can design solutions such as this or others to help improve your view of your customers and improve your customer’s view of your business.  We can also streamline or automate some of your processes if you wish. The simplest of CRM solutions will let you keep track of all of your customers and your interactions with them, enable you to share the data with all of your team, and can have a significant impact on your bottom line.

There are numerous CRM packages available in the marketplace today, and we can help pick and customize an appropriate one depending on your budget, requirements, and future plans.  All the packages we have chosen reside completely in “the cloud”, meaning that there are no costly servers or complex maintenance to worry about.  Your solutions will be “switched on” when you are.

Solutions are completely scalable – from 1 user to 1000.  There is no limit to how it will grow.  Similarly you don’t need a large user base to justify your investment in an IT solution.