CRM solutions are designed to maximise sales and marketing effectiveness as well as increasing customer satisfaction in an age where customers can interact with businesses across multiple channels. As well as the traditional forms of interaction such as face-to-face contact with field sales staff or store attendants, customers may now contact an organisation through call centres, online stores, email or via social media channels. In order to maximise each opportunity from a customer interaction, enterprises need to co-ordinate all of these customer 'touch-points.’
By knowing all previous interactions and transactions that the company has had with any given customer, regardless of channel, and by delivering that information to customer service staff in real-time, the next time that customer interacts the company will be in a position to both satisfy the customer and drive revenue by selling complementary services and products.
CRM solutions provide for the functionality to be able to integrate these 'touch-points' and to analyse, process and report this information to sales and marketing teams. Organisations gain both personalised and unified views of their customers, enabling better understanding of demographics and profiles that can be used for targeted campaigns or follow-up messaging.
Some organisations that have re-engineered their CRM processes have reported spectacular revenue increases and reductions in the cost of sales, while other implementations have generated minimal gains or no improvements at all.
CRM implementation projects should be managed in a staged approach starting with core CRM functionality that addresses the most frustrating issues facing the support, sales and marketing departments, rather than enterprise-wide functionality or systems integration. This approach ensures the vital involvement and buy-in of the end users of the system right from the outset. All stakeholders need to own the system and its data to both understand and enjoy the benefits of maintaining high quality data.
No where is 'garbage-in garbage-out' truer than with CRM systems.
