How valuable are your customers to your business? You hear people in the business sector say this numerous times, and we’re pretty sure you agree as well, that your customers are your most valuable asset. No matter how brilliant your product is or are if you have no customers, it’s useless to market. Customers are the bloodline of any business, right? Without your customers, you won’t have your business now.
With all that said, how do you make sure that your customers remain loyal customers of your business? Do you give them discounts, or send them freebies? Do you greet them during special occasions like birthdays or weddings? Or do you provide them with loyalty rewards in the form of gift cards and prizes?
When you do all of this you unknowingly do Customer Relationship Management or CRM for short, but, CRM goes beyond giving freebies, rewards, and discounts. And investing your time and effort in engaging with your customers can yield these 4 benefits.
The 4 Benefits of CRM
1. Better and Longer Lasting Customer Relationship
Better and Longer Lasting Customer Relationship
Why do you think individually owned shops from small towns last generations of families compared to big department stores and big businesses? Small shops owned by families and individuals have a deeper relationship with their customers, they see the people who come to their shop as friends and not money bags. They reap one of the benefits of applying CRM to customers because they do Customer Relationship Management.
Doing CRM goes deeper than just knowing dates and sending freebies. Doing proper honest to goodness CRM is knowing the small and big details of your customer’s life. And these details can be little things or big things like those listed below.
Knowing their Status in Life – and by status, we’re not referring to their social media updates, but about their civil status. Are they married? If they are what’s the name of their spouse? Is their spouse a customer as well?
Greeting them on Special Occasions – you knowing special occasions that happen in your customer’s life is a great opportunity for you to give discounts, rewards, and freebies. Giving them rewards and freebies during special, important days mean more to your customers than you giving them freebies on regular days.
Finding out their Preferences – knowing what your customer likes and dislikes opens many opportunities for you to sell products that they will love. And you can send them emails about their interest.
There are other details that you can get from your customers like how what they do for a living, how many kids do they have, where did they graduate from, where they live. And jolting down these details in a notebook or using a software makes sure that you remember all of it.
2. Happier Customers
Happier Customers
One of the advantages of CRM is a happy, satisfied customer. Because you know what they want and when to give them offers your customers feel your sincerity and how you value them. When someone makes you feel important, don’t you feel flattered? And a happy, satisfied customer becomes a loyal customer. A loyal customer becomes your brand/ business ambassadors, and you gain new customers without spending money on advertising your business.
Think about it, if you strive hard enough to make sure that your customers are happy. You’ll be rewarded by being promoted anywhere in the world by word of mouth. And word of mouth advertising plus testimonials from your customers is the most lethal of all product endorsement.
3. Greater Opportunity to Up-sell, Cross-Sell and Sell More
Greater Opportunity to Up-sell, Cross-Sell and Sell More
One of the best CRM benefits for your business is the ability to increase your Up-sell, Cross-sell and sales potential. How? CRM allows you to build a deeper and better interpersonal relationship with your customer, and relationships like this are built on trust. Once you have your customer’s trust, introducing them to a more expensive product or recommending a complementary product will be so much easier.
Trust is the building block for better revenue. Your customer knows that the product you’re recommending isn’t just a hoax or a scam to get more money, after all with CRM your customers become your friends. Would you tell your friend to buy a faulty product?
It’s important to note that trust is hard to get but easy to lose, so in doing up-selling or cross-selling make sure to offer only worthwhile products otherwise you’d lose the trust you worked to build.
4. More Chances for Product Improvement Development
More Chances for Product Improvement Development
Being able to get feedback from your customers about your product is another of the benefits of customer relationship management. Using their feedback, comments, and suggestions whether negative or positive can be used for improving your product. You can save money on hiring professional researchers for improving your product because you already have the social proof from the comments you receive.
Other methods of getting their feedback are through surveys and interviews. The data you gather from surveys and interviews can be used to do your own research without the need to get respondents. And the good thing about using your customer’s feedback as a basis for your product improvement is that guarantee of revenue when you released the new improved product.
Aside from product improvement, customer feedback is also a way for you to develop new products based on what your customers want and need. Since you know them better you can spot what they want, surveys and questionnaires are also perfect for this. You can make a new product based on what they are asking you and based on what is not available to them in the market.
In whatever way you use your customer’s feedback, it is a valuable asset that you can use for your business.
Manual CRM or Automated CRM?
There are many tools you can use to help make your Customer Relationship Management easier, you can use tools like MS Excel to keep track of customer data, or you can use Infusionsoft CRM. Traditional CRM record-keeping method is not as efficient as CRM tools. Paper records can be lost while those like Infusionsoft CRM Software are stored online and are accessible anytime, anywhere. So, if you want a more efficient CRM system, then invest in worthwhile CRM tools and CRM software.
Final Thoughts
The benefits of a CRM Singapore and a CRM system outweigh not-using one, with CRM you can build a longer lasting customer relationship, increase your revenue, get new customers, create improved products and even develop new ones. Surely, these reasons alone are enough to get you on the CRM bandwagon. So, stop dallying invest in CRM now!
