What’s in your CRM wallet?
Small businesses are widely believed to have the edge when it comes to customer service skills, and not without reason: they have historically had a higher level of interaction between customers and management (since the management is usually also the staff!) who are empowered to make for good customer experiences, and also a greater incentive to provide those experiences, than their larger competitors. Many a small business has bootstrapped its way to something bigger on the back of a sterling reputation for customer service in an otherwise already crowded market.
Something that has been happening with the increasing number of web-based startups, however, is that the traditional low-level interaction between management and customer has fallen off. Indeed, since the relationship is at some remove over the Internet, its harder for any staff to judge the level of satisfaction in most transactions. Without that face to face, person to person contact, all you get is a credit card number. Add to that the increased volume that even small startups can see in traffic and customers, and it's flat-out unmanageable by traditional means.
Dan Kennedy points out why this simple lack of attention can kill your retention rate. Most entrepreneurs know that it's cheaper to keep a customer than get a new one, yet many of us are letting customers slip away without a second thought.
What technology has taken away, it can also give back, though. If you can automate and globalize your sales process, you can do the same with your customer relationship management. Software and other web-based services, such as Salesforce, Getsatisfaction, and Salesboom, can keep track of your customers and keep you connected with them. Many of the offerings out there also offer easy integration with your other transactional tools, meaning no extra effort is necessary beyond the initial setup. It's small things that often make the difference, and a small touch like an automated, but personalized, follow-up e-mail might still mean the difference in a customer's mind between you and the big corporate conglomerate three websites over.
May 4th, 2010 at 10:27 pm
i love capital ona, i have cc, cd and reg account. it is noce to do business with them