Managing Your Customers

As we move into the 21st century the importance of taking care of your existing customers and of how to get new customers is taking on a new meaning. With the Internet now playing an enormous role in customer shopping habits, the media rapidly educating consumers and the wholesale warehouses being the norm… it is now possible to lose new or existing customers at the speed of light. How do we battle to keep those existing customers and to develop new customers and sales??? The answer is actually very simple. By having a comprehensive plan of how to service both your existing customers and your new potentials, you create an environment which promotes customer acquisition and retention. This plan should not only deal with pricing and products, but must also deal with how you and your employees treat your Customers and are therefore perceived by your customers. Having this type of plan creates many logistical issues and requires constant supervision to ensure proper enactment.

So, how do we control this process?

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has become the primary answer to this question and is a key to the success of business. What is CRM? CRM is a company wide attitude that comes along with procedural mandates for providing responsive and exceptional service to your customers and everyone else who is involved in your business. This is normally automated and monitored via CRM software.

CRM Software has many different uses and has been through several transformations over the past few years. Starting with simple “Contact Management” and then growing into “Sales Force Automation” and “Opportunity Management”, CRM has evolved into a series of products that, to put it simply, makes it easier to do good business with your customers. It provides guidance for your people as to how to behave, schedules their activities and ensures that the small items don’t fall through the cracks. It also provides management with real time reporting on the status of Sales, The Sales Pipeline and helps measure most meaningful statistics and usually resulting Cash Flow within the Company. The most difficult parts of doing business have usually been the tracking of what people are doing and making sure that your customers are happy. CRM is designed to automate those processes.