Written by Faizan Abdul Khaliq, and Razi Uddin
If we talk about the most basic customer relationship management the smiling salesperson on a shop that treats you politely obliges each of your requests, and treats you with respect stands a big chance to create a repetitive relationship with the customer. We have seen many salespeople that are charming enough for you to tolerate them but their greed to make a sale can be detected, and the sincerity that they portray can be detected by the seasoned customers as a façade just for making a sale. This phenomenon needs to be avoided when engaging with customers. A majority of customers know when they are being given sincere advice, and the customer relationship managers in most cases the salesperson must be sincere when it comes to dealing with customers. A customer deceived once can give a good return once but a customer whose heart has been captured will give exponential returns of years to come, and all successful businesses have managed to make it big due to an army of loyal customers. This is what a customer relationship manager, the person interacting with the customer should understand, embrace, and practice. Customer relationship in essence is a thankless job where the majority of the working day is focused on the problem, and conflict resolution, empathizing and removing the pain for the customers, dowsing water on metaphorical fires. The only definition for a job well done in customer relations is to always leave a customer happy, and satisfied
Our businesses are transitioning from traditional setups towards more modern brands, and companies, and it is the need of the hour for them to focus on customer relationship management more than ever. Although physical change is hard yet achievable, a change in the mentality is harder to achieve. The existing culture requires a shakeup from existing norms towards a more customer-centric focus of our business. Our business owners need to understand price, and quality matter but the catalyst to creating a repeat customer is always great customer service. With good price point, and quality your customers may be loyal but they will be hostages, doing business with you due to a lack of options, and given a choice will never prefer your service over a customer-focused competitor, and in most cases, the price point tends to get ignored a little, and a pricier option could be chosen just due to better service.
Setting up a CRM system
On an extremely basic level, spreadsheet software can offer the best platform for creating a CRM database for small businesses that are in their initial stages. This information can be stored on the cloud, and accessed, and edited via smartphone as well to enable ease of data entry, and provide safety of data due to sync to cloud features.
If we talk about how we can set up a CRM system, there are several options one can opt for depending on the scale of the requirement by the organization. There are several options available in the market for ready-made systems available that can be scaled to meet the needs for organizations Oracle, SAP, Salesforce, IBM, and several others are readily available. Considering cost factors locally made CRM systems can also be developed through local software houses that offer cost-effective solutions or have it made in-house by hiring the development team as employees to create, and maintain the system. The goal of setting up a CRM system is to create a customer database, and log all interaction for that customer, and log all information gathered related to that customer to enhance the knowledge a business has related to its customer this helps to upsell, and effectively target customers, and also be mindful of a customer’s preferences. The cycle of data building starts when a customer interacts with the customer relations for the first time. Take examples of credit or debit cards that require activation over the phone, and this builds the first log in customer relationship records, moving this relationship forward the bank monitors the cash inflows, and product usage, and then sales representatives target customers with other financial products. A debit cardholder can sell personal loans, and credit cards, etc. If we take an example of pizza delivery they keep your phone number as an identifier, and previous order delivery address saved. Customer service calls also yield important information logs of which are kept in the customer’s file.
One aspect of CRM is the software-based or cloud-based system the second more important factor is the human who is actively engaging with the customer be it via voice or text, and through whichever platform hiring the right fit, and training them is vital for the success of any system. The quality of talent available in the market remains an issue with CRM related jobs often not the best paying ones and not the first choice for most of the top talent in the market. Therefore, when you can’t find what you want the best option is to mold what you have into what you want with the right training there is no doubt that this can be achieved, and this highlights why when setting up a CRM system a robust training program must be designed alongside to effectively manage, and help the system drive results.
Whenever a CRM system is installed it has to be able to deliver the required data with appropriate filters, and data analysis should be a matter of clicks. Simplicity is the key for interfaces especially in cases where the system is locally made the freedom for design modifications is far more as compared to commercial CRM solutions. In these cases, it is important to have the system experts, and the people responsible for decision making based on that system-generated data need to be aligned. Misalignment usually results in inefficiencies, and the long run poor performance.
CRM today
Today customer relationship management is transitioning towards social media relationship management. We see most brands have an active presence on social media platforms since today’s generation engages more on social media as compared to emails and phones. Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp for business, Instagram, and other social media platforms present companies an opportunity to engage with customers over social media, and provide a personalized experience, and increase the reach into the customer’s phone.
Many brands have created chatbots on their Facebook pages to provide basic information instantly. Human controlled social media channels are also growing, and companies are increasingly becoming active on these platforms to engage customers with their evolving preferences. There is a growing recognition by companies that social media is the place where the majority of customer interaction will take place.
There is one thing that businesses need to understand that when they are in growth phase they need to create a CRM system that enables them to accommodate the increasing customer traffic, and also to enable businesses to effectively utilize the increasing amount of customer data that is available, and also the need to secure that data from other external forces as well.
CRM, and Information security
When a CRM system is created and managed the safety, and security of this database are extremely important. The database and the personal information of customers must remain safe, and this data must not reach unscrupulous hands. If customer data is breached and leaked the customer trust will be damaged irreparably for the business. In this regard selection of CRM systems, and their security must also be ensured by the business.
CRM, and data analysis
Businesses in Pakistan especially small, and medium scale enterprise are yet to extract ultimate value from CRM however a few that have done so are reaping benefits of the rich data generated by the hundreds of customer interactions, and analyzing that alongside sales, and market data to formulate customer-focused strategies that provide the customer with enhanced product experience, and allow for better targeting, and segmentation of customers. Especially for products where personal selling is important such as financial products can be targeted to a better-suited audience to get a higher proportion of fruitful results.
Challenges for CRM
The first, and foremost challenge for customer relationship management is our antiquated mentality of doing business. Most businesses are still operated by conservative management that is resistant to the status quo and tend to find it hard to leave their well-established norms, and transition towards a more digital, customer-focused model of doing business. It is hard to convince people that relationship management is required in all business sectors even monopolies like utility service providers need a good customer relationship system today because monopolies will never last, and at the end of the day business can generate greater value from satisfied customers as compared to disgruntled ones. Another challenge is the cost of setting up and operating an effective CRM system. Most of the options in off the shelf software are too expensive, and locally produced software may have reliability issues initially like all newly built ERP solutions that demand frequent troubleshooting and debugging the appetite for which does not exist in most business leaders. The third challenge that is faced in our market is that our businesses fail to gain the trust of the customer at times they try, and compensate for the gaps in customer service however at large people responsible for customer relationship are unable to serve the customers, there are many examples of promising ventures that are just lagging due to a mediocre customer relationship management.
How can we bridge the gaps?
Change is inevitable, with the next generations of traditional business owners coming into the family business, and actively taking over decision making roles. The direction for many businesses will shift for some the process has already begun. Similarly, Pakistan origin software that can reliably serve customer’s needs for a CRM system, and not cost huge license fees will motivate business owners to invest in CRM. Most importantly a shift towards decision making based on data, and analytics will encourage the adoption of CRM systems to provide customer data for effective decision making, and strategy formulation.
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