Customer Relationship Management Software Can be a Superb Tool

Customer relationship management is a total approach under which customer information is gathered and analyzed to identify customer needs and the entire organization is equipped to respond in a consistent manner to these needs. The philosophy behind this approach is that customer satisfaction drives profitability and growth.

Well-designed customer relationship management software can support such an approach. It must be clearly understood that the CRM software is only a tool; it can provide inputs; it can monitor things; but it cannot formulate strategy and control operations by itself.

So what does the CRM software do?

Components of Customer Relationship Management Software

CUSTOMER DATABASE: The key component of the CRM software is a customer database that captures, stores and analyzes customer information. All contacts and responses, all interviews, sales, support queries, complaints and other kinds of information relating to the client are recorded in the database.

Any customer service representative can easily retrieve the customer record if a customer contacts the person. The service person can then see the current status of issues raised by the customer and respond appropriately to provide satisfaction. Such an intelligent response is an integral part of customer relationship, and is often found lacking because different persons deal with a customer at different times.

By analyzing the customer database you can identify such key information as:

• DIFFERENT CUSTOMER SEGMENTS: Customers might not be a uniform group. For example, some of the customers might be intermediaries while others might be final consumers. The buying behavior and expectations of the different segments are likely to differ significantly
• CUSTOMER EXPECTATIONS & BEHAVIOR: The analysis can profile the customer in each segment, identifying expectations and buying behavior. This kind of information can be used to plan marketing campaigns, package your offers better or to develop new offers, for example.
• CUSTOMER PROFITABILITY: Here again, customers can differ. Some customers buy more or higher contribution products, and pay promptly. Others might bargain hard for low prices and/or require a great deal of support, and be quite tardy in payments. By identifying the profitability of different customers, profit goals can be achieved easier.

SALES FORCE AUTOMATION: Facilities for lead generation, customer contact management, sales orders and order processing to take care of all stages from locating customers to final deliveries.

There might be separate modules for different sales agents such as channels and salespersons, tailored to the special requirements of each group.

This component will focus on generating sales and executing orders, by providing facilities for recording all contact details, generating reminders, tracking actions and so on.

CUSTOMER SUPPORT AUTOMATION: Using such devices as Trouble Tickets, the system would ensure that all customer support requests and complaints are resolved in a timely manner. It will allocate customer requests to currently available support representatives; make it easy for the representative to gather needed information; and track all pending customer requests.

ANALYTICAL AND PROGRESS REPORTS GENERATION: The software will allow customizing different kinds of reports, and then generating the reports by analyzing relevant databases. These could be databases of customers, sales and receivables, distribution channels and so on. The reports will help management to keep an eye on progress, trends, developments and other important aspects.

Some of the customer relationship management software might also offer community-building modules that can help in creating and retaining customer loyalty, as well as providing high value insights into customer views about the company and its products.