CRM

Customer Relationship Management
Good customer service takes a lot more than just a desire to be helpful and a big smile. In today's highly competitive business environment, it's difficult to cultivate customers to become loyal. To do that, you have to know your customers and they must get the message that you know them. The more you know about a customer, the easier it is to engage in "friendly entanglements" that make switching to a competitor more difficult. Here are some benefits to CRM...

What if you could sit down with every member of your company each day and review all your customer accounts so that everyone knows what is going on? Did each customer pay all their invoices? Who called customer service recently? Did you send a thank you cards (or gifts) for all the orders over $50k?  

If you have only a couple people in your company, it may be possible. But as you add customers and employees, it quickly becomes unmanageable. Fortunately there is a solution. Microsoft CRM is an affordable technology solution that helps automate and streamlines the three basic steps of CRM: identifying the customer, learning about the customer, and serving the customer. It provides members across an organization access to up-to-date information, and new ways to respond quickly:

1. Improved access to customer information

By integrating so easily with the company's back office system, Microsoft CRM provides easy access to vital sales and customer information. Employees can now view and update a wealth of customer data including contacts; account, sales, and order information; service records; and history and then share that information across teams and departments. With this data, office staff knows what has been communicated to the customer, understands the precise scope of the work to be done, and ensures the company delivers on its promises.

2. More responsive customer service

With so much more information quickly available to both service workers and salespeople, it's possible to respond more quickly to client concerns than in the past. This boosts both customer satisfaction and, ultimately, employee morale. No longer do employees find themselves conducting hit-or-miss searches for the information they need to satisfy customers. Now such data is easy to locate and to put into the convenient form of a printed report.

3. Streamlined processes

Microsoft CRM not only centralizes customer sales and service information; it can be integrated with other business applications so transactions don't need to be entered, updated and closed in multiple systems. For The Orthotic Group, that meant managing every customer contact, answering every question without delay, and acting proactively to make it difficult for their competitors to keep up with them.

In addition, it's customizable to accommodate the unique needs of various industries. That means businesses can set it up to work the way they do, instead of having to work around inflexible processes often preset in business applications.

The bottom line: Microsoft CRM can help your employees get information faster, serve customers more efficiently, and reduce time spent on routine processes. That means they can spend more time focusing on customers and service.