How Are Your Customers Looking Today?
October 18, 2013 | by Blue Ocean Systems
When you think of your customers, what do you see? Can your organisation meet and exceed their needs? Do they buy your product or service regularly? Do they feel they are being treated well by your organisation? Are they referring you to their friends, colleagues and associates? Does your company resolve their problems satisfactorily? Are they waiting for a better, cheaper, more flexible alternative to come along so they can take their business elsewhere?
These are just some of the questions small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) need to be asking themselves on a regular basis to keep ahead of the curve in today’s fragile and fickle market.
How do you know the real customer situation?
A proud CEO will of course say that his/her customers are well catered for and their business always strives to exceed their needs. But ‘here say’ and wishful thinking is no longer enough to keep customers on side for the long term.
What happens in the warehouse, in operations, in the accounting department, might never make it up as far as senior management who could be blissfully unaware of the real situation. So how can organisations gain true insights into their customer’s journey and how can this data be leveraged to improve service delivery, satisfaction and, ultimately, profit?
Your CRM. Your not-so-secret weapon.
Contrary to the belief that a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool is purely for tracking new leads and sales, this nifty software can transform the way your organisation does business – with new and existing customers.
Here’s how the CRM component of SAP Business One can give you the real story….
The pre-sales journey: sales opportunity management
- A transparent view for all sales and marketing personnel to log and track new market segments
- Track progress with prospects including meetings, updates and feedback
- Store client contact and specific details
- Log prospect & customer interactions
- Create, manage and track targeted campaigns
- Generate and issue contracts quickly and easily
- Enable your sales force to close deals on the go with mobile CRM access
- Analyse outcomes & review marketing strategies
The customer journey: customer experience management
- Log, track and analyse purchasing patterns, customer preferences, trends and behaviour – helping your business to create new sales opportunities based on accurate data
- Manage and respond to customer feedback across all web and social channels – smooth integration of all your social media feeds to gain a true picture of what your customer is thinking and saying about your product/service
- Respond quickly to customer feedback across traditional as well as via social media channels (quickly becoming a normal expectation of today’s consumer)
- Create a customer-centric support ticket process linked to your CRM to quickly resolve service or product issues (and gain a whole-company view of such issues)
- Gather and record FAQs to create a useful knowledge database accessible to customers (reducing repeat enquiries to your call centre)
The business leader’s journey: growth, profit and success management
Making your customers happy cannot be something your organisation chooses to do or not to do. Ensuring your customer’s on-going satisfaction is the only way to retain and grow your business, now and in the future. Leveraging your CRM can not only help with the day-to-day prospect and customer management, but also with your future profit and growth strategy.
The key to using your CRM for business growth;
- Create a loyal following of customers, ‘advocates’ of your service / product who buy it themselves, and then tell the whole world via their social media channels what a great decision it was. Make the great experience happen and then let the positive feedback go viral.
- Use the CRM analytics and gain insight like never before about who your customer really is – then create specific and targeted campaigns to speak directly to them.
- Empower your sales and marketing team with the right tools to allow them to focus on their special skills of selling – and build a loyal internal support base of the best talent, seeking to bring in the required results for your business.
- Streamline your sales and marketing efforts to focus on the most profitable market segments and new business areas based on accurate facts from within your existing database.
Blue Ocean Systems comprises a team of SAP Business One specialists who love working with SMEs to find new ways of doing business and improving their current strategies. Talk to them today about how your CRM could become your not-so-secret weapon in the business game.
About Lisa Covarrubias, SAP Business One Consultant
I guide clients through process re-engineering activities to maximise the comprehensive benefits of SAP B1 can bring to their business.
Blue Ocean Systems Singapore implements and integrates customised SAP Business One Solutions to help our clients increase profitability and improve operational efficiencies. Specialising in the implementation and support of SAP enterprise applications for small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs), we combine extensive experience and an unblemished history to deploy the right solution quickly for immediate improvements.