Customer Relationship Management

If it's truly easier to keep a current customer than to acquire a brand new one, why is it that so few customers seem to focus on Customer Relationship Management (CRM)? The bottom line, is that it's not always obvious how to engage with people for repeat business. As a business owner, perhaps you're just not sure what offers or information to provide a customer once the goods have been delivered. Each store's value proposition is going to be different, no two owners will feel the same about CRM, but to be sure in a down economy like we have today, a key differentiator to many potential shoppers is going to be how well they are taken care of.

Whether you're looking for a simple way to push order status to a customer or a full-fledged solution to track past orders and push personalized and targeted content to your customer base, CRM is no longer a nice to have feature for any store that wants to succeed.

Effective CRM is intended to streamline your business processes and interactions with your customer base. Time lags between customers asking questions and getting responses can frustrate people quickly, more over, lost message, or ineffective business processes on your business backend can cost you time, money and ultimately sales.
If a CRM solution works, it should include at a minimum the following abilities:

1. Tracking and reporting of customer interactions, whether that's an actual sale, or simply interest in a product line.
2. Collection point for customer data - billing information, order capture, information requests and the like. The more information you can collect about your shoppers the more effectively you can speak to their needs. Imagine if customer called you on the phone and you could instantly bring up their entire purchase history, customer communications and any other information you have about them.
3. Analytics, like website tracking itself, CRM solutions need to be benchmarked. A good CRM solution will provide the ability to track progress, such as are our CSRs responding to email inquiries within 24 hours? Do we have an escalation process for emails NOT responded to in the necessary amount of time?
4. Finally, does your CRM solution positively affect your business processes? Having all the information about customers is great, but are you too rigid in your business management processes to be adequately responsive? If you get negative feedback from a customer, how do you respond? A solid CRM solution will push your organization to best of breed practices, while finding the holes and giving you chances to fix them. Many one-off stores without CRM options are doomed to continue repeating their past mistakes, simply becaue they have no effective way to see the "forest for the trees" and respond.

NetBlazon has a number offerings This axiom couldn't be more true in the Internet space. To be sure, once someone finally does purchase from your store online, you'd be well advised to take care of that customer and treat them as the valuable possession they are, because it's too easy for shoppers to go elsewhere if they're unhappy or if their expectations haven't been met.

But exactly how does a storeowner go about connecting with a potential customer or staying connected once a sale is completed? You can also browse through our Connecting with Customers Overview or select from one of the topics below to learn more about what NetBlazon offers in this area.