Why Does CRM Matter?
The customer experience (CX) is now the leading competitive differentiator, as businesses compete in the new Experience Economy. With a well-thought-out CRM strategy, your company can create superior customer experiences that increase customer loyalty, bring in new customers, and keep your company ahead of the competition.
But even though CRM now had email lists, productivity programs, contact management software, and all of the paper documentation used by companies large.
CRM and the Experience Economy
In the Experience Economy, companies that intend to lead must be immediately responsive to customers’ wants and needs.
The customer relationship is the foundation of your company’s success. How you manage that relationship to create a stellar CX at every step of the customer journey is heavily dependent on your CRM efforts. You must have access to deep customer knowledge and apply that knowledge all along the way. CRM allows you to do that. CRM collects and manages information about each of your customers in a way that enables you to turn the customer journey into a seamless process from end to end.
In today’s highly commoditized market, where differentiation on product features and capabilities is very slight, customers are now making choices about brands based on their experience with the brand and the company.
Take a look at a couple of scenarios from a customer’s perspective.
You need service on a product you’ve purchased from a brand you’ve done business with before. You’ve even registered your product. When you call the customer support line, the representative has no idea who you are or what you’ve purchased, or when. You now have to go through the tedious process of supplying information that should be readily available to the representative, like model and serial number (which can be inconvenient for customers to access). Not only are you using up your valuable time providing this information to a company that should have it on hand, you’re left with the feeling that you’re not very important to them and that they know very little about you. The next time you think about purchasing from that company, you think twice.
Now consider an alternate scenario. You make that support call, and by simply taking your name and verifying who you are, the representative has your entire purchase and service history available and treats you like a valued customer. Even with a product issue, this type of personal treatment can keep you coming back.
CRM enables this type of CX. Every interaction based on CRM creates an opportunity for your customer to have a more personal, compelling experience and is an opportunity for you to build brand equity and improve business performance. That’s how you create customer loyalty and increase revenue.