How crucial is Customer Relationship Management (CRM) for a start-up? Let’s put it this way: if you don’t pay attention to this part of your business, you are pushing clients and customers away with both hands. If you’ve ever called a company with repeat complaints only to be treated like a number, you’ve seen the issue first-hand.
You don’t want to be the startup that fails to take care of customers.
There are plenty of Customer Relationship Management software titles and apps out there but CRM is, above all, a system of reaching out and responding to customers. A successful CRM system at your company will mean:
Grabbing information
You want to gather as much information about each customer and lead. That can mean data about past and current customer orders, customer contact information, favorite products, preferences, and more.
Organizing your data
If a customer orders a product and then calls to say that it has not arrived, can you find out when it was shipped and track the package? If not, you’re going to have an unhappy customer on your hands. This is where CRM comes in– you can use tags and folders to keep client information easy to find.
Giving staff access
Giving your employees access to customer information and providing them with the authority to make things right when a customer complains can help make clients happy. To do that, you need legal advice. Before you gather, store, or share client or customer information, talk to an experienced attorney.
Once you get the legal green light, use password protection and a software system that lets you see who accessed what information – and when. Keep all information on secure servers and use tags so that your employees have the information they need to address a customer by name and help resolve any problems.
Having a system for analyzing the information headed your way
Here’s where CRM really pays off. The information that you gather can help you move leads down the sales pipeline and helps you focus on your best customers. From time to time, take a close look at your order and client information. Who is buying the most? Who makes repeat orders? Who hasn’t bought anything in a while? Once you know, you can market strategically, rewarding loyal customers and luring back customers who haven’t bought anything in months.
CRM can pave the way to your success by making customers feel good about doing business with you. When customers are addressed by name and when a business seems to really care about clients, paying attention to their needs and resolving complaints fast, customers notice. This is the way to build brand ambassadors and keep clients walking in through your doors again and again. Treating customers well doesn’t just happen. You need a strategy to pay attention, and Customer Relationship Management is that strategy.
If you’ve had a great customer service experience, it’s likely that a good customer strategy was at the heart of it. The beauty of a CRM strategy is that it puts the customer in focus. CRM lets you talk to customers by name, lets you send birthday offers and greetings, and gives you the information you need to talk to clients like a friend. Creating a CRM system for your startup so that you can treat your customers and clients like the rock stars they are.
