Have you ever heard about a CRM program? Keep your interest, since this is the focus of this article. Let’s find out.
What Is a CRM Program?
A CRM program is an approach to customer service and relationship management. CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. It is a systematic process of the data collection, analysis, reporting, and optimization of the whole process of the relationship with a customer.
The goal of this program is to improve the relationship between a company and its customers. It means that when a company builds a solid base and relationship with its customers, it will be easier to sell its products or services to them.
The main goal of CRM is to be able to promote existing relationships with clients and to create new ones.
Customer Relationship Management is an ongoing process that consists of data collection, analysis, reporting, and feedback. The focus of this process is to provide better customer service, loyalty, retention, and satisfaction.
How Do You Build a Solid CRM Program?
There are some essential steps that you should follow to build a solid CRM program in your company:
First Step: Set up some goals. What do you want to accomplish? Are you planning to increase sales, or to increase customer retention and loyalty? You should also define how you will measure the success of your program.
Second Step: Define a set of objectives. These objectives should be clear and focused on achieving your goals.
Third Step: Find the data that will help you achieve these objectives. Keep the CRM system under constant review.
Fourth Step: Decide what information should be collected and what should not. Some information might not be important for a company to have. For example, a car repair shop doesn’t need to know what color a car owner drives, his/her favorite music, movies, etc. However, this shop needs to know when a customer bought a car, how often he/she visits the shop, and where the car is usually parked (it helps to find the car when it’s stolen).
Fifth Step: Define the process of analyzing data to update and optimize the CRM program’s performance data. Analyze the data regularly to see if your program is moving in the right direction or if it needs some changes.
Retail Businesses Using CRM Programs
Banks
A bank’s job is to manage customers’ money and help them to invest it in the right way. A bank can also offer them mortgages, loans, and other financial products. It means that a bank is one of the biggest companies to sell or provide financial services. This is why banks are naturally interested in building a good relationship with their clients.
Retailers
Retailers use CRM programs to increase customer loyalty and retention rate. For example, a supermarket chain may use this program to have an overview of all its customers’ purchases. Based on this information, the supermarket can create more personalized offers for its best clients (persons who have spent more money in the last months). This way, the supermarket chain can try to keep its best clients by offering them discounts or special prices just for them.
Hotels
Hotels are also interested in building a solid base and relationship with their customers. They often offer special prices for loyal customers; however, they need some data about their customers first. A hotel chain might use some data about its clients’ preferences, interests, and behavior obtained from an external CRM program that was developed by another company (for example, by Google). However, hotels also often develop CRM programs that they can use inside their hotels (for example, using RFID technology).
