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The Importance of a Well Designed CRM in Your Business

No matter what size your business is, the importance of a well designed Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system should not be underestimated. Over time it will become your greatest asset for delivering more sales.

When you decide to start a business I would like to think that you are doing it because, not only are you passionate about it, but that you have done your homework and found a niche in the market where customers will come and buy your products or services.

So surely the first thing you do is start to plan a sales and marketing campaign and target your likely customers and build a customer database. Whilst a spreadsheet may be effective just to get you going, depending upon what you are selling, this can very quickly turn from 30 or 40 customers to 100’s in a very short period of time.

So you suddenly go from knowing who your customers are to just a list of contacts who do business with you through the year.

This is where CRM is most valuable to growing businesses because it gives you back the control and knowledge of your customers, no matter how many customers your have, so you can continue to treat them as personally as when you did that first deal. This is where there are some big benefits associated with a well-designed CRM.

Research indicates that CRM systems play a huge role in boosting sales performance across the board. For example, consider this statistic: 79% of MQLs (marketing qualified leads) are never converted to sales if a CRM system is NOT in place. That’s huge!

An effective CRM system means you capture the details of each customer from their personal details (with full GDPR compliancy) to how they found you, what they bought, the value, when they bought, how they use your product/service and so on. This also gives your customer the feeling that you understand their needs and show a degree of care which in turn delivers a great customer experience. This customer experience will hopefully develop into customer loyalty which will help to generate referrals for your business.

But CRM is valuable across your departments. It should not just be siloed in sales and marketing but be accessible across the business e.g Customer Support teams can effectively manage after sales issues. Operations can track supply chain and Finance teams can view sales forecasts and values.

When a customer contacts your business, generally because there is a problem, no matter who picks up the call, a quick look at the CRM will identify the full history of that customer so any issue can be dealt with efficiently hopefully leaving the customer happy with the outcome. An unhappy customer wants to have a quick resolution to their problem, no automated “press 1 for…2 for…Sorry but…etc.”, just someone to talk to.

Your CRM database is the backbone of your business and is a valuable asset in its own right. It should follow the workflow of how your company does business e.g. is it all managed internally or is there external access required from a field sales force.

If you are currently working from a spreadsheet, consider looking at a CRM solution that meets the requirements of your business workflow (see Customised or Online CRM blog) . You can look online but they are designed to be all things to all businesses so you will find yourself working around the functions that they offer.

The choice of CRM really depends upon how your business workflow operates so if you you don’t want to be beholden to the online offerings it may be better to have your own, customised/bespoke database so you get exactly what your business needs when it needs it. Another difference is that you own the database so is a better investment in the long term.

If you want some help with setting up your CRM or you want to get your team to use your existing CRM more efficiently, contact Jamie here.

80/20 Rule. Get More from your Existing customers

Step 1 – Profile Your Database

The 80/20 Rule. 80% of your revenue is generated by 20% of your customers so you need to know which ones represent your 20%. Concentrating on your top 20% will generate your typical customer profile which you can use to get more business from existing customers as well as using it as a brief to target new customers. The rest of the database, the 80%, can also be profiled with a view of getting them up the value chain.

Step 2 – Lets Survey Your Chosen Customers 1 to 1

Through surveys, telephone and online interviews we can find out exactly how your customers experience doing business with your company and understand the customer journey across all touch-points.

Step 3 – Report, Analyse and Discuss

Once we have received the data we will then discuss the findings in a workshop to show what your typical customer profile might look like and what your top customers NEED from you. As a result, your business will become more customer-centric i.e you will be putting the customer’s needs at the heart of your business.

contact me : Call 07786 228553 or Email: ja@jamie-allan.com

Is Your Business GDPR compliant?

Whatever business you are in, especially B2C, if you have a database that you are actively using for marketing purposes, you now need to be GDPR compliant. For B2B companies there are still discussions going on and the current ICO situation is as follows:

“It is reasonable to allow the use of e-mail contact details within the context of an existing customer relationship for the offering of similar products or services” (Section 33)

Furthermore, if you have received or bought a marketing database from a 3rd party GDPR compliant source, this is not enough to satisfy current and future legislation if your business is not itself GDPR compliant.

Your Privacy Policy needs to be written so your customers can understand it and that it complies with GDPR requirements. Having a well-written policy demonstrates that your business is serious about protecting privacy and customer data. You also need to review your Data Protection Policy to cover areas such as:

• The personal information you ask customers for and where (i.e. what data you collect when an order is placed, or when a service is provided)
• The reason for capturing that information and what you’ll use it for
• Where and how you store that data – needs to be located in the EU
• Whether it will be transferred and of so, how?
• Will it be disclosed to a third party?
• What your process is to delete it.

You’ll also need to review your current IT security policy and how you collect, use and store any customer data. GDPR means that your customers have the right to ask you to share and/or erase their personal data. You will need to look at your current systems and gather information to demonstrate that you are able to track, disclose and delete data easily if you’re asked to. Here is a list of the key areas:

• What personal data do you collect?
• Can you track and erase personal data? You will be expected to do this within 72 hours if requested by a customer.
• Do you store any personal data?
• Where is personal data stored (on computers, servers, in the cloud)?
• How is personal data used?
• Is data disclosed to anyone else, or shared/transferred?
• How and where do you backup data?
• Do you have a business continuity plan and a disaster recovery plan?

Failure to comply by the due date will mean you are at risk which may result in a significant fine.

Having said that, if you are a small business and you can demonstrate that you’ve done your best to comply to meet the requirements of GDPR, regulators will work with you on any problems that might arise.

However, preparation is the key so if you’ve not yet started to prepare for GDPR, all is not lost. You need to start planning now to ensure you’re ready for next May and there are useful links below.

For help in getting your database compliant contact me here.

The Customer Experience(CX) and Customer Centricity – vital components for Companies Today.

CX strategy starts at the top with a vision from the CEO/MD leading the company toward becoming a Customer Centric organisation with everyone knowing what their role is when interacting with the customer at all touch points. These touch points include everything from when they first engage (via the website, mail, phone) through to sales, marketing, operations, finance, service and support.

Let’s start with a few stats delivered as part of the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) CX course from research done by Dimension Data.

• 81% of Companies recognise CX as a competitive differentiator
• CX is the No.1 most important strategic performance measure
• 79% of Companies can evidence cost savings
• 84% of Companies can evidence an uplift in revenue/profits

Businesses fail to recognise that looking after their existing customers is a far more cost effective way of investing their marketing budgets.

86% of Customers will pay more for a better Customer experience with that company.

However, 82% of Customers stopped doing business after a bad Customer Experience.

When it is 5 to 10 times as much to win a new Customer than nurture existing ones, a CX strategy has to be the number one priority.

5 Things that you can do now:

1. Profile and Segment your customers by value – the 80/20 rule
2. Describe in detail who your ideal Customers are for each of your products and/or services – the Who, What, Where, Why
3. Get to know your customers via surveys, market research, Social Media
4. Understand what your brand image stands for with your customers to indicate the “health” of your brand
5. Break out your brands’ attributes – the Rational (functional), Emotional (subjective) and the Societal (relationship to what others think)

Also, according to a recent Forrester report, 91% of CEO’s in top performing companies view Customer Experience skills to be a top priority for the future. Interestingly, only 48% of CEO’s in low performing companies see it as a priority.

One statistic stands out which is from the US where Sprint saved $1.7billion dollars by paying more attention to their customers.

Get in touch today and let me show you how you can make your Company more Customer Centric.

You’ve Got Loads of Customer Data- But What Are You Doing With It?

As your business has grown, you have accumulated multitudinous amounts of Customer data which lies within your IT infrastructure across your company’s departments.

So much Customer data can appear disorganised and disconnected from those who really need to access it especially if you are in the Marketing and Sales operations where data intelligence is vital if you want to find out about Customer interactions and I am not just talking about CRM systems.

Understanding how your Customers engage with your business starts with interrogating all the data from different departments and systems such as Operations and Finance and find out where the relevant Customer Touchpoints are. You can then integrate this with your CRM system which will have the other data such as web analytics, social media management, call centre/ support, values etc and organise it in one manageable area.

Once your Marketing and Sales team knows how your Customers are engaging with you, you can use this information to reach out to your Customer base and start to generate regular communications with them in the form of surveys, follow ups and referrals. This will also help you to understand who your “ideal” Customer is across your products and/or services.

Adding this customer demographic segmentation and profiling will further enhance your knowledge of the data so you can develop the top 20% of customers and move the other 80% up the value chain. All this will undoubtedly give you an edge against your competitors as many businesses don’t manage the data as they should, especially when it comes to finding out more about their Customers.

Let’s meet up or have a chat over the phone so I can explain how you can do this and provide a complimentary “proof of concept” on how you can get more from your existing Customers.

Call me on 07786 228553 or contact me here NOW and I look forward to hearing from you.