CRM (Customer Relations Management) Software, great–fantastic–amazing–tools that are a must-have at any business. Quick definition, it manages all interactions between your customers and employees via email and can also be setup to record all inbound phone calls to create an accurate record of the customer experience. The systems are usually setup to have reminders that will tell you when to either call or email a follow-up with the prospective customer and sometimes automatically send an email if contact hasn’t been made with the prospect. Later on, the information from the interactions can be used to figure out where you might have failed to get the customer to actually buy from you or maybe show you at what point the customer decided to buy.
Great Tool, needs to be setup correctly, constantly tweaked for improvements and most importantly everyone needs to be super-users. I don’t care if you have sold cars for 100 years and started back when Ford had just one model of vehicle. The times have changed, automation can be your friend and CRMs can exponentially grow your business. All employees need to know that any email outside of the CRM that is sent to a customer is unacceptable, any email addresses that are captured during the sales process need to be added properly to the CRM with extreme accuracy. If there is a customer complaint or maybe they gave you a reason why they aren’t buying from you, then document it (that is the only way we can ever fix those problems). Finally, all CRMs have a spot for notes or a field defined as “How Did You Hear About Us?” that question is crucial to figuring out what part of the marketing mix is actually working and if it isn’t filled out then there should be no commissions paid. Harsh I know…..but people will only pay attention when they have to and threatening their livelihood with something that is easily fixed is a quick way to get compliance.
Next, this is where we come in…….taking a look at a CRM follow-up process and relating it to what you “think” a prospect expects in the form of follow-up often takes an outsider. I’m a consumer, Farfetched Studios employs consumers that don’t work and have never worked directly in your field. The benefit of this is a more accurate customer experience. Build your processes for follow-up on a consumer’s approach, not on an industry experts approach. Take experiences like your first home purchase, car purchase, furniture purchase and even clothing purchase, that is often times the best way to find a unique idea that sets you apart from anyone else competing for that person’s business.
Lastly, there are several companies that use mystery shopping and one of the biggest companies that uses mystery shop is Disneyland. Every experience at your business should end with “Wow, I can’t wait to go back there.” We have several partners that we work with that enable us to offer a web-based mystery shop that also includes phone calls. Above that is actually physically purchasing and we have partners that offer that more complete service as well.