CRM: Recession Proof your Business?

You don’t need me to tell you times are a bit tough right now. Buyer confidence is low, and that means that keeping the customers you have is even more important—let alone attracting new customers.

Can a customer relationship management system be the way to do this?

A white paper published by VendorGuru.com claims it is.

While everyone’s avoiding the R-word (recession), most businesses as well as consumers are tightening the purse strings. Customers are suddenly more valuable than just a short time ago.

CRM systems can help a company of any size ensure these customers keep returning—and it’s common knowledge that existing customers are cheaper to retain and more likely to buy than new customers.

“Businesses could find an effective CRM approach will give them an important competitive advantage under recessionary conditions,” states the white paper.

With an effective CRM system in place, businesses may retain profitability and grow even during a recession. Some view recessions as a bit of “natural selection” in the business world, allowing the fittest to survive and paring away those without the strength to weather tough times.

The white paper highlights three strategies for surviving—possibly prospering—during a recession.

Increasing customer penetration is the first. Customer relationship management tools can work to boost profitability as much as 70 percent, according to the white paper. Acquisition costs for new business tops the cost of servicing current customers; there are also opportunities for cross selling. CRM software guides your sales force by offering scripts for cross selling and showing the customers’ order histories.

Achieving efficiencies is second in line; streamlining a business from within is key during lean economic times, and unproductive salespeople can be identified and helped. In fact, CRM can help a company automate processes and develop greater efficiency throughout the entire sales cycle.

Finally, the white paper says CRM can help to use resources effectively. During slower times, keep your staff busy by trying new CRM strategies and solutions.

CRM the Game?

Entellium just announced it’s going to release a “gamer influenced design” which is intended to create a CRM application that is both rewarding and challenging for salespeople. This new version which is due out in May, is called “Rave CRM“. I thinkEntellium has the right idea and is definitely thinking outside the box, but a gamer design won’t be the answer.

Isn’t CRM fun enough already salespeople? Umm….no. The only way I see CRM becoming more sticky for salespeople is to do something like embedding fantasy sport scores and myspace comments on their splash screens. That way every morning when they get into work, they’ll have a compelling reason to login in. Why not? They look at them anyhow — might as well make it easier right?

Seriously, here’s a better idea that management would actually approve. Salespeople are competitive in nature and strive to be the top salesperson. Why not take advantage of that and create a leader board listing each and every salesperson in order of total pipeline or revenue generated? No, I’m not talking about the weekly management email — I’m talking about build it right into your CRM system. Make it real-time. Have the sales rep close a deal and quickly click over to the “leader board” page to see if he moved up a notch. Competition is how you turn your CRM system into a game and add to your bottom line.

He-5 Resources: Triple Crown CRM Software Applications are Functional and Available

NEW YORK -- The New York office of HE-5 Resources (other OTC: HRRN.PK) is proud to launch the web based Triple Crown CRM software suites. CRM (Customer Relationships Management) meshes people, business processes and technology, to enhance interactions, eliminate inefficiencies, and increase profitability.

Our first commercial program for immediate release is “Mustang-Look.” Secure, encrypted, W3 (World-Wide Web) access to your information is but “one internet connection".

We are a developing service company, offering innovative and proprietary software solutions, to deal with "customer relationship management" (CRM). Our integrated software suites are designed for the needs of companies to increase profitability and improve productivity of the "front and back office operations," (e.g. billing, marketing, finance, e-mails, etc...).

With business relationships, and CRM data that needs to be tracked and analyzed, the proper tools will encourage cost-efficient customer oriented relationships. Furthermore, with the accelerating shift to "software as a service" (SaaS) delivered via the internet and the incorporation of social media (web 2.0) in the person's private and work environment, the versatile CRM software, which forms the base of our TBB ( Trading Barter Bank ) platform, will become a necessary and advantageous software for businesses and individuals.

define CRM

A simple search on Google for define crm will display its main definition as customer relationship management. While it sounds interesting, what does it really mean? Well, the expanded definition gives some hints - CRM could be interpreted as a way to manage the relationship you have with your customers (business relationship). While this is a shallow definition of CRM, it points however in the right direction, it's all about the way you do your business so that you gain, keep and maintain a good relation with existing and future customers.

But in the process of getting new customers and maintaining an excellent relationship with the existing ones there are other factors involved. For instance, let's assume you produce airplanes (not in your backyard though), and let's see which factors involve the relationship with your customer:

• Sales and Marketing. To be able to have a relationship with your customer you need first to have a customer. Now that's a pickle. You have to have well trained salesmen and marketing strategies to touch the right niche and grab your customers.
• Suppliers. You got a customer, now you need to start working on his product. To create an airplane you need good materials from your suppliers and delivered in time (if you don't have the materials when you need them, the customer doesn't get the plane in time so the relation is damaged).
• Customer preferences. Now since an airplane involves high costs, you might through in some special customization for your customer. But for that you need to know what the customer preferences are (wouldn't be a good relationship if you would deliver a pink airplane when he wanted a white one).
• Internal processes. You have the parts, you know what the customer wants. Now it's time to produce it using your knowledge, services and people.
• Customer communications. It doesn't take a couple of hours to create the plane, so while the plane is being created you want to be sure that the customer receives the proper information about how the production goes. So you need to communicate with him for a better relationship.
• Delivery. How shiny it looks, now that is ready. However, it's not something you can send via Fedex, so you need to be sure that it's delivered to your customer without any scratches or pee smell on its tires.
• Training. Well it's no use if you give him the plane without an instruction manual. While a manual might work for how to use the radio, to use the plane your customer would need serious training.
• Customer support. Not everything is perfect, and even if it is then your customer still needs some support because he doesn't know why the tiny red button now looks brighter. You want to offer support when he needs it and right to the point.
• Customer followup. Now it's been about 4 months since your customer is been playing around with his new toy. Wouldn't be excellent if you would call or meet him in person to ask if he needs new tires or a new surround system for the passengers?
• Performance management. You're happy and your customer is happy. That's a good relationship. But could you have done something better that would have resulted in a better product or a better service (or even driving costs down a little bit)? It's time for an analysis, so you process all the information gathered and you draw the conclusions. And since this is a process that will be repeating with each new customer, anything you do now to improve it will just improve the relationship with your future customers. But don't forget your people. They did a good job too and they need to be compensated so that they'll do the same good job in the future too.

The above list could go on. As you can see customer relationship management involves a lot of functions and is influenced by a lot of factors. Maybe now we're able to give a better definition for CRM: A business process that has as its main goal your customer satisfaction. Because if your customers are happy, then they'll purchase from you in the future too and also recommend you to others, so your revenue will increase from a healthy customer relationship. Supporting this CRM business strategy is not done with a pen and paper (at least not only with). There are lots of CRM solutions from big names like Oracle, SAP, Salesforce and many others, that include the usage of CRM software. However, to be successful with your CRM strategy, you must align the usage of CRM software with the type of your customers and the particularities of your product.

A little bit more about CRM software and how it helps in the relationship with your customer. A typical CRM program allows you to gather, store and analyze not only the information about your customer, but also the information about the other factors that influence the CRM, such as your partners (suppliers, vendors) and your own people (internal processes). Beside this function, a CRM program also allows you to: plan and execute your sales and marketing strategies, offer customer support and training, manage the performance of your your own processes. Also, there are 2 major types of CRM software: On-demand and On-premise. In a few words, CRM On Demand is the type of CRM program that is accessed as a web service (either provided by a third party for a recurring fee, or installed as a centralized solution in your company), while CRM On Premise is the type of CRM program that is actually installed on your computer and you don't access it as a web service (though communication and data sharing are key elements too and are available in CRM On-Premise too).

So now can you define CRM? defining CRM is not as easy as saying customer relationship management. It's much more than that, because of everything else that influences the business process.

Four Ways Social Media Impacts CRM

Social media is all the rage, and not just with the kids--we use these networks to share information and, increasingly, to conduct business. We’ve seen the statistics on the staggering growth of social networks, most notably Twitter and Facebook. We are now beginning to realise the potential when used correctly by businesses.

The most interesting aspect of social media isn’t the individual social networks, but the evolving ecosystem engendered by their openness. This results in unprecedented creativity for network integration, application development, and content management for businesses. This is where customer relationship management joins the story.

Customer relationship management (CRM) has always promised the vision of managing customer interactions at the right time, in the right place, and in the right style to maximise customer value to the company. The tipping point of social media gives us the perfect opportunity to revolutionize CRM and build true customer relationship programs. Social media offers four of game-changing extensions to existing CRM capabilities for the creation of truly unified customer experiences.

1. Listening

Customers are talking about your company, your products, and your competitors. The information waiting to be harvested from social media conversations is invaluable. Social media monitoring isn’t just about public relations or periodic brand audits; it is about listening to what your customers want. Listening to social media is an active process that generates insights that should inform all of your activities: direct marketing campaigns, Web site management, search marketing, offers and promotions, call center scripts, and competitive intelligence.

2. Responding

Once you are listening, it will be abundantly clear that your customers are using social media at this very moment. Buying behavior, or lack thereof, will be the ultimate outcome of these sentiments, but by then it’s too late. Social media gives CRM practitioners the ability to participate in these conversations in real time and talk directly to the most engaged and active customers and prospects. This involves using social networks for customer service: proactively reaching out to customers who are having problems. It means identifying and mediating potential problems before they explode in the public consciousness or in the media. Finally, it means engaging with influencers and the networks where customers are active to be a participant in the story of your brand online.

3. Consolidated Customer and Prospect Profiles

The first two ways CRM intersects with social media is as a participant, but now it’s time to starting using this information to address individual customers and prospects to directly generate more business. The CRM system already knows each customer’s promotional and transactional history, and social media provides another facet of information about each individual. It provides information on which social networks customers use, what they are saying about you, what needs they have expressed, and what the sentiment of their activities is. This expanded customer profile supports the development of a more productive customer experience across all contact points. In B2B CRM situations, it provides critical color for sales reps as they manage customers through the sales cycle.

4. Self-Managed CRM

If enterprises can successfully engage Social Media as a component of their CRM strategy, then customers and prospects should expect to self-manage their participation in CRM in the future. These efforts have already started as many organisations offer self-service portals and Web sites, but it is going deeper as customer service reorganises into genuine communities where the enterprise and customers collaborate. These activities will span existing public social networks as well as enterprise-sponsored communities where customers and partners opt in to participate.

These four capabilities are major changes to the CRM playbook. In the long term, these will become seamless as social media becomes fully integrated in CRM processes, data management, and execution at customer touch points. But despite this inevitability and feelings of pressure to get on the social media bandwagon, organisations need to carefully consider their approach to bringing social media into the mix and determine what is appropriate based on their own industry, CRM goals, and organisational maturity. Social Media is a component of CRM that is still evolving--as are consumers’ expectations. Everyone is learning together on this journey; this is a golden opportunity to make CRM everything it was intended to be.

Mastering the Customer Experience

Focusing on the customer is not something new. Customer Relationship Management theories embraced in the 1990’s hold true today – the operational, collaborative and analytical aspects of the ‘CRM Ecosystem’1 still need to be adopted and adhered to. However, Customer Experience Marketing (CEM) is a subset of an organization’s overall customer experience management strategy and drive to become customer-centric. CEM is about managing every single part of the interaction and experience a customer has with the organization; from the visual experience of advertising, to the actual experience of interacting with a website, customer support line or physical layout of a branch office, even to the standard of the product or service delivered.

CEM tackles marketing at a human and emotional level, causing the customer to feel not only connected, but delighted and loyal and able to be a consistent advocate for the brand. This customer centric approach helps create the only true competitive advantage a company can achieve outside the commodity battle involving the features and price of their product or service.

There is much evidence to suggest that customers will take their business elsewhere after even one isolated bad experience, and CEM tackles this fragility of customer satisfaction and relationships. John McKean, Executive Director, Centre for the Information Based Competition, drives home this focus on customer experience, “70% of the reason we buy anything is based on how we are treated as a person during that experience.” Marty Brandt from Truebrand, concurs saying simply, “Everything you do or say affects your brand,” which underpins the importance and value of managing every aspect of your brand. Today the marketing department therefore must either lead, or be part of, the Customer Experience Management strategy so that when it comes down to the part marketing can play in creating and interacting with customers through marketing and sales processes, a personalized experience based on acknowledgement, trust and respect can be orchestrated for each customer.

To get to this advanced position on the customer experience journey, marketing, information technology and organizational competence must be developed, or else this capability will never be achieved. There are many potential points of failure in delivering a great customer experience, It is futile for marketing to do an excellent job if they are, for example, to be let down by the customer service team, billing system or an executive who drags the brand though the gossip columns of the newspapers.

The primary strategy to support CEM that marketing needs to implement is the generation of a core competence in Customer Information. This competency requires mastery of three components: data gathering, analytics and insight distribution. It is impossible to truly understand customers on a one-to-one human level unless we have the appropriate data, and also the ability to analyze, interpret and act on that data to improve the marketing and buying experience. These components all have data, technology, process, and skills implications for the marketing department.

First, to feed marketing analytics and deliver actionable insights, it is necessary to gather appropriate data. This means bringing data into a master repository, managing that information for accuracy and completeness, and making it available for analytical and execution processes. This doesn’t simply involve marketing data such as customer contact information and campaign history. To drive CEM the data must reflect everything the organization knows about a customer, their purchase history, behavioral information from their website and customer service interactions, financial metrics, and data enhancements from third party marketing service providers.

Once a complete picture of the customer base is prepared, marketing can set about to run processes that track the success of CEM efforts, identify new opportunities and predict customer responsiveness. Successful implementation of the marketing analytics capabilities will hinge on acquisition of appropriate reporting and analytics technology, as well as developing staff skill sets to create and interpret analytical insights for the organization. Building skill sets and a focus around the analytics of marketing will help drive the competence of the marketing organization.

The final step is to turn the intelligence generated by analytics into activities that drive CEM. In order to act on and execute this intelligence, and to ensure every aspect of a customer’s interaction with an organization is planned, monitored and nurtured, it is essential that marketing is able to intelligibly coordinate and integrate its processes with those of other customer facing departments.

Marketing needs to commit to building the right infrastructure. This may involve employing or training marketers with the right analytical skills, investing in a marketing technology platform which provides an integrated set of applications built on top of a single data architecture or sourcing a business partner able to add their domain expertise in data management. For example: the correct infrastructure is intrinsic to the success of marketing’s management of the entire customer experience process.

Marketing is a journey to master this fundamental, differentiating, intellectual property of an organization – Customer Information. So while marketing is on its competence journey the rest of the organization needs to be on theirs, from a leadership, culture, people, organizational, process, technology and information perspective.

1 METAGroup (Acquired by Gartner in April 2005), developed this conceptual architecture

Search engine marketing is a much cheaper alternative to direct mail, email, and telemarketing. Everyone seems to be shifting budget that way, but is

Media messages delivered across an ever-growing number of channels, from email to SMS to Tweets, surround consumers throughout the day. These have an undeniable impact, but the difficulty lies in combining these media in the unpredictable pattern that will lead consumers to make a purchase. It is the integration of all these media which has seen marketers busy spreading their advertising efforts across a variety of different channels.

Response One recently commissioned research aimed at discovering the effectiveness of different media at driving Web visits, and poinpointed the top four channels for driving consumers to a Web site:

1. Customer e-mail
2. TV and newspaper advertising
3. Direct mail
4. Search engine links

To look more closely at the role of online and Web site searches, Response One asked UK consumers whether they were able to satisfy the majority of their pre-sales queries online and found an unsettlingly even split: 49 percent of consumers were satisfied by the information they found on the company Web site; 51 percent were not. It is likely that a significant portion of the unanswered questions relate to campaign-specific information and could be satisfied if search were suitably integrated with the campaigns running at the time.

The way consumers interact with brands--claiming the information they want at the moment, reviewing, criticizing, and sharing experiences with other users across the globe--has developed at breakneck speed. Marketers are still trying to understand how to harness this constantly evolving touchpoint. How and when people access the Internet is an area that still requires exploration. Research earlier this year revealed that 70 percent of Britons go online while watching TV and 27 percent search the products advertised in commercials. These findings tell us that consumers can be driven onto a search engine by other media. The customer journey may involve more than one or two steps, so why has search not yet gained its proper status as an advertising medium at the planning stage?

The experience consumers have of a brand is holistic in that it is composed of experiences ranging from across channels. Nevertheless, advertisers and marketers still cling to an outdated and wasteful approach towards communications that is best defined as a “silo” approach. Sometimes a few elements of the campaign are integrated, such as email and direct mail, or follow-up direct mail on display advertising, but most organisations are happy to stand back and let each channel run its campaign independently of the other. The result of this behavior is that it is difficult, if not impossible, to track response and efficiently measure return on investment (ROI).

Search in particular is a victim to this mentality, as it is practically never taken into consideration at the media planning stage of a campaign. This is probably due to its lack of an established role in combination with other media. Generally speaking, when a cookie is put onto a landing page--informing the system that a potential customer has landed on a company Web site via a specific search engine--search engine marketing is then regarded as accountable for that acquisition. It is, of course, evident that the effect a television commercial has on footfall, for example, is much less measurable than other factors such as competitor campaigns. As a result, traditional media is concerned that a significant portion of the sales conversions derived from the single campaign will be attributed only to the last trackable medium, which is often search.

Integration of search at the early planning stage can instead prove that this is a revelatory medium that helps attribute uplift rather than polarize results. If keyword searches increase after television advertising is launched, sales conversions due to that advertising can be realistically measured. The same can be done with the subsequent rise in campaign-specific word searches after an item of direct mail or a promotional email is issued. Search can in fact prove invaluable in revealing which channels had the greatest impact and helping inform future broadcast channels, times, and dates.

Although search is already commonly optimised for the company e-commerce site and traffic is driven to it both organically and through sponsored search, this effort is rarely made for single high investment campaigns. Far too often, companies do not even extend the key terms they bid on to include those used in their campaign-specific advertising. Surfers cannot find what they were looking for and response analysis results skewed as it fails to register the impact of other channels.