Customer Service is the key to business development

Customer relationship management is more important now than ever before. Easy for you to say, I bet you’re thinking, you work as a CRM consultant! But the proof is all around. Research and business leader opinions continue to remind us that customer experience focus is the key to business success.

You might be reading this as one of an estimated 5.2 million small businesses in the UK, and think that this type of drive doesn’t really apply to your organisation. But no business, however small, can thrive without customers!

I have seen a real change in the role that a CRM solution can play inside an organisation over the years I have been working in this industry. CRM used to be the domain of the sales force, and then the marketing team joined in.

These days CRM is a valuable tool for the entire workforce, ensuring the smooth transition of the customer journey throughout an organisation.

It is so easy for customers to switch brand, find better deals and more competitive offers, that the traditional differentiators (quality, value) are no longer enough. Your organisation could have the best product, at the best price, but unless you provide an excellent – and consistent – quality of customer service, you could easily suffer with low retention.

What is still true throughout all the years I’ve worked with small businesses is that it costs more to get a new customer than to keep an existing customer. You must continuously strive not to let your hard earned, and paying customers, slip out the back door because you are too focused on waving new ones in through the front.

Even a simple CRM solution can be enough to provide resilient tools for your work force to make sure that they are efficiently, proactively and consistently communicating with, and delivering excellent quality service to, your customer base at all times.

And with the information you gather into your CRM system you are in a prime position to analyse and identify what works (and do more of it) and what doesn’t (and stop).

Your team makes or breaks your customer service quality

The ultimate goal of a CRM strategy is in the delivery of exceptional customer service. Good is no longer good enough and to set ourselves apart from the competition we must go further than great products at realistic prices. Our customers will remain loyal to us if the entire experience of buying from us is seamless.

An organisation can spend much time and effort in defining their customer service strategy, ensuring that the technology is in place to enable them to achieve these goals, and creating a blueprint for their customers’ journey - but if the employees of that organisation are not 100% behind the strategy then that strategy will never deliver exceptional customer service.

In most organisations it is fair to say that the most junior, least well paid and probably lowest on the org chart are often those people that first come into contact with our potential and existing customers: they answer the phones, manage the sales administration, email enquiries and are responsible for sending out the marketing materials to prospective customers. And yet they often aren't included in any of the planning and thought processes in putting a strategy together.

In my experience, taking the time to explain the CRM strategy in practical terms to ALL members of your team is just the first step in gaining their enthusiasm and motivation to make it happen. If a person is told to do something, they will probably do it. But explain to them WHY they are doing it, how it helps both them personally and their employer as a whole, and they gain belief in the value of doing it.

Give them an opportunity to contribute their thoughts and ideas on how to do those tasks more efficiently, effectively, or quickly - during the planning stages - not only shows that the organisation values their experience and ideas, but also gives them a personal stake in the success of the strategy - a responsibility to ensure it delivers.

Customer service enquiries are just one aspect of how your team can make the difference. This is a great example of ‘going the extra mile’ which I saw in an article from BusinessInsider.com

A customer asked a few simple questions to the customer service folks at online retailer Wayfair: “Do I really need both a blender and a food processor, what is the difference? Can I put everything in a blender?”

If only everyone on the other side of the customer service line was like the guy who responded to him:

Thanks for contacting Wayfair. I’d be happy to help you with your question about blenders and food processors.

What’s the difference between a blender and food processor or are they the same type of appliance? Can you use a blender the same as you would use a food processor?

Answer: While they do have some similarities and there are combination blender/processor units on the market, a blender and food processor are two distinct counter appliances. A blender’s main function is to blend or mix soft foods and liquids, while a food processor’s is to chop, shred, grate, slice or mix either soft or hard foods. The narrow shape of the blender and the design of the blade make it more suitable for blending soft foods and liquids. But, depending on the blade and power, there are some blenders that can crush or shave ice to blend it into frozen drinks. A food processor has a wider work bowl and very sharp blade designed more for chopping foods, and can usually perform various other processing tasks depending on the types of accessories (slicing/shredding disks) that are included with the unit. However, there are some blenders that are designed with a unique blade for both blending and chopping, and there are immersion-type stick blenders that have convenient chopper attachments.

To make a long story short, it depends on what you are using it for. Sometimes a blender works fine for everything you want. See the many selections we have at:

Blenders and Food processors.

Please let me know if you have any other questions or concerns! You can reach me by responding directly to this e-mail. Thank you for shopping with Wayfair.

Cheers,
Roger S.

It doesn't get more detailed than that. This rep devoted a few minutes to a simple question, and delivered a well thought out near-academic lecture on the topic.

Refreshing, for once. And a lesson to us all!

Engaging customers is no longer just the job of Marketing...

Traditionally it was always been a remit of the sales and marketing department to create new relationships (find new customers) and develop long lasting relationships (sell more to existing customers).

But it is now recognised that every role in the organisation - either directly or indirectly - affects the customer experience, where loyalty and satisfaction are born. It is now the job of every person working in and on a business to focus on customer service, even if they are not directly responsible for communicating with customers.

We are all aware of the sales and marketing team’s contact with the outside world as they create, develop and maintain the perception of the company to its external audiences. We know about the telesales team, customer support representatives and the website and social media channels.

But think beyond these business areas, perhaps to finance? How about those making/packing products to be sent to customer? Engineers responsible for servicing/repairs to existing customer products? What about the delivery team? Human resources (potential employees are your future customer service team)? In particular, don’t forget about the administrators, reception staff and even switchboard operators…

When you consider all the touchpoints (the point of contact when products or services come into contact with a customer) in your business, you may be surprised at just how many there are.

Part of your communication strategy should be to consider how your customers feel about their interactions at all those touchpoints so that you can determine exactly what should happen and thereby ensure that it is a consistent experience for every customer. This way you leave nothing to chance, and customers are reassured that they receive the same excellent level of service every time they interact with your business. This process can help to define employee roles and responsibilities so that staff are clear not only about what they must achieve, but why (more on staff engagement another time).

There are a number of stages to becoming Customer-Centric (don’t you love all these phrases!) and these begin with simply being reactive to customer requests/comments/feedback, to tentative forays into structured customer feedback, data collection and analysis, through to formal Business Intelligence reporting on critical business processes.

The fully customer-centric organisation does all of this to some degree or another. Management and staff are incentivised on loyalty and relationship building. The business is actively tracking satisfaction and loyalty, and understands the customer lifecycle and value – and most importantly is prepared to take action when any of these measurements goes awry.

Another important part of your CRM strategy is not the ways in which you will inform your customers and prospects about what you do well but rather, what you will do when things are not 100% perfect.

From the smallest business upwards, the ability to flex and evolve our business objectives and goals in order to keep delivering excellence in customer service is what will enable us to achieve just that.