Customer Relationship Management (CRM) - how your business can improve it's Customer Experience

By Jason Neville (General Manager)

In today's competitive business environment it is so important to deliver fantatsic customer service. Michael Gerber, in his book the E-Myth talks about delivering an "Experience", that the customer will remember. CRM or Customer Relationship Management software, aims to deliver an accessible framework by which to deliver this.

Customer Relationship Management systems are essentially database systems that allow you to "Manage the Relationship" between you, and potential prospects and customers. At any point where you interact with a customer or prospect, a CRM system can technically be utilised to organise, automate and synchronise business processes.

CRM systems centralise customer information into an easily accesible format, including customer details, correspondence, opportunities, tasks and actions amongst a myriad of other pieces of information tied to a customer.

So why use a CRM system? Well, put simply it make the process of organising, viewing and adding this type of data a lot more efficient. You can add customer information quickly, run reports on customer
conversion rates, and centralise all this information making it accessible to other members of your organisation.

Some basic areas a CRM will generally cover are:

a) Marketing - managing your marketing campaigns, reporting on ROI and managing email marketing
b) Sales - management of opportunities, pipelines and budgets
c) Customers - database of all customer information and interaction
d) Support - may manage the support function of your business including managing customer tickets
e) Reporting - extensive reporting and business intelligence tools will allow you to analyse information collected within the system

So who are the big CRM players? Well, there are a few to choose from. Some of the ones we work with are:

1) Salesforce - a web based CRM that charges you monthly. Usually $1,000+ per month
2) SugaCRM - a free CRM system that you will need to have customised to your requirements, but a good starting point
3) Dynamics CRM - Microsoft's CRM solution. Very powerful and great product but very expensive. It is a web based application but can be installed on a local server or in the cloud.
4) ACT/Goldmine - Both of these are long standing players in the CRM market and are based around Windows applications which run locally and require a server.

The CRM solution we chose to deploy at R & G Technologies is a system specific to our industry known as Tigerpaw. These types of systems which are industry specific require less customisation as they are usually quite effective out of the box. After working with a number of clients on their CRM implementations what I have discovered is that CRM tools are only as good as the training and information you put into them.

Staff need to understand how this adds value to clients, and need to be effectively trained in how to maximise use in the system. Data is the key to any CRM, and therefore care needs to be taken in understanding the current business flows, and how these will map to the new system.

CRM is extremely rewarding and there are some systems that can be deployed for little cost. I would highly recommend your organiastion begins to evaluate what a CRM solution can do for your business, as it will give you a competitive advantage and allow you to deliver a better customer experience.

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