Your customers are the lifeline to your business. Without them, your product and/or service doesn’t have a purpose. Ultimately, it’s a customer’s happiness, satisfaction and expectations that need to be exceeded. Therefore, you’re looking to enhance and personalize your customer relationships by learning and knowing as much about them as you can. From order and sales history to personal information and purchasing patterns, your customer information is key to everything. Of course, it’s not like you’re taking care of one, single customer, which would be easily manageable. Like many growing and thriving businesses, you’ve developed a customer base, in which every customer is different and unique, with their own preferences, patterns and history.
Today, most businesses have multiple options as far as doing business with any number of organizations. In short, you have competitors out there planning and working to earn your customers’ business and loyalty. The need to build strong relationships with your customers is more important than ever. So take advantage and make the most of the tools available to you, including a solid Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software solution. Here are a few ways to improve customer relationships and service with your CRM system.
Storing a customers personal information
A good CRM system will collect, store and keep track customers’ personal information and details. Your CRM is more than just a place where you’re keeping tabs on each customer’s purchasing history. Knowing and storing their personal details helps to better understand them as people. This personal information includes everything from birthdays to interests and social accounts. Doing this will give you a deeper understanding of your customer as an individual, a long term benefit, one that they will truly appreciate.
Updates on the regular
Great customer service is all about bonding time. Like you would for your best friend, you can send updates to your customers. Take advantage and make the most of your stored customer information by sending out regular and timely updates that’s important to them and their business. But don’t stop there. Use the same database to send a timely “thank-you” for their business. That’s right; for virtually nothing, you’ll make your customers feel valued, involved and more appreciated. By making them part of your business family, you’ll stick out in their minds and they’ll remember you the next time they’re gearing up to make a purchase.
Quick response time
No one’s perfect; and no matter how hard you try, you’re bound to get a customer complaint at some point, and often it’s beyond your control. Whether it’s something major, or an issue that’s easily resolved, one thing you can control is response time. Quick response time shouldn’t be limited to complaints, but to customer questions and queries as well. While a happy customer will vouch that there’s nothing better than a quick, concise response, that same customer will also note that there’s nothing worse than a long, delayed response, or none at all. Like any relationship, we want to put our best foot forward, and your business will be judged on the quality (or lack thereof) of the customer service provided.
Customer buying pattern analysis
Ask yourself this question, how well do you know your customers? Implementing and practicing regular pattern analysis will go a long way to improving your customer relationships. By practicing sound pattern analysis, you can send out updates that are tailor-made for certain customers. By really sitting down and understanding the buying or shopping patterns of your customer, you’re showing them that their business is more than just a transaction or a purchase. They’re more than just a number, and that they’re important. Sound analysis includes integrating your CRM with other data tracking tools to provide a clear representation of a customer’s activity. That’s everything from shopping history to personal preferences, likes and dislikes. Once you’ve performed a sound analysis for your customer, you can sharpen your presentation and sales pitch.
CRM software recommendation
I encourage businesses to look at Dynamics 365 CRM (aka Microsoft CRM), one of the most popular CRM products available today. I have been using D365 in all my businesses since it was first released, and it continues to serve my business well. Dynamics 365 CRM is built on the Microsoft Power Platform which hosts over 5 million users worldwide and has become one of the most reliable and scalable open platforms available today. Gartner, a leading independent research firm, recently recognized Dynamics 365 CRM as a Leader in its “Magic Quadrant for Sales Force Automation”. Why not take advantage of a CRM system like Dynamics 365 CRM to help improve marketing, sales, and service engagement to drive organizational efficiency?
What about financials?
What if you could have your financials, sales, marketing and service on one platform? Well, let me introduce you to Gravity Software® (Gravity). By utilizing the Microsoft Dynamics 365 platform, Gravity makes it simple for your business to operate from anywhere without all the startup costs associated with other accounting applications. Small to medium size businesses having the distinct advantage of having their Financials and CRM fully integrated on one platform.
Gravity’s cloud accounting software will help you better manage your business by bringing the applications that run your finances and sales together with the familiar Office apps they already know. So, when your business starts to grow, and you’re looking for a CRM system, why not choose one that can handle all your lines of business? Make the change and Schedule a demo today!
Gravity Software
Better. Smarter. Accounting.
