How to Improve Customer Satisfaction by Implementing CRM
In today's society, where similar products and services are being created one after another, we will be involved in price competition.
Ultimately, it is expected to be a war of attrition and change to a market where only financially funded companies can survive.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is an essential part of surviving in these markets. What effect does it have on building new relationships with customers? And what is the best way to implement CRM and improve customer satisfaction?
Table of contents:
- Why do I need a CRM?
- What is customer satisfaction in the first place?
- How do I increase customer satisfaction with CRM?
- Things to keep in mind when operating CRM
- Aim to improve customer satisfaction with CRM
Why do I need a CRM?
It's not just to break away from price competition that modern businesses need CRM. Other reasons are responding to diversifying customer needs, improving response quality by improving operational efficiency, and improving the customer experience.
Responding to diversifying customer needs
There are not many companies that can rest easy if they continue to do business as usual. As companies cannot exist without customers, it is their mission to keep up with the changing needs of their customers. There are many factors that contribute to the diversification of customer needs. These include the dramatic increase in the volume of information distribution, the commoditization of products and services in many industries, and the increasingly stringent selection of information-armed customers.
In order to meet the diversifying needs of customers, it is necessary to understand the thoughts of customers and what they are looking for and to develop products and services that meet these needs.
The question is not how to develop a good product or service and then sell it. It is important to consider the customer's point of view from the beginning to determine what the customer and the market are looking for now.
Improving response quality by increasing operational efficiency
It may be possible to improve customer satisfaction by spending a huge amount of money. However, that would make the business lose money.
Companies must do their utmost to improve customer satisfaction within their limited resources. Therefore, the effective measure is to implement CRM to increase work efficiency and improve the quality of service.
Today, consumers are not only happy with their products and services, but they are also looking for the best experience they can get from businesses, products, and services. With this background, CRM, a database for customer contact, is essential.
From the perspective of managing customer relationships, CRM manages all kinds of information, including basic customer information, transaction history, and past correspondence history.
By analyzing the customer information accumulated in this way, you can find the optimal response pattern for each requirement and smoothly proceed while referring to the past response history, thus improving the response quality while improving work efficiency. This will improve customer satisfaction, which in turn will lead to a return in profits.
What is customer satisfaction anyway?
Before I introduce how to improve customer satisfaction through CRM, let me talk a little about the essence of customer satisfaction.
Customer satisfaction, in other words, is an indicator of how satisfactory the quality of a product or service is and whether it exceeds expectations. The higher the level of customer satisfaction, the higher the rate of repeat business, which inevitably leads to higher sales and profits.
Functional and emotional values are the building blocks of this customer satisfaction.
A functional value is a satisfaction generated by the quality of the product or service itself. In the manufacturing industry, there are no defects, and products function as expected, and in the restaurant industry, the food is delicious, and the inside of the store is kept clean.
On the other hand, emotional value refers to the level of satisfaction created through experiences such as customer service. For example, when you stay at a famous hotel, you will remember your birthday and receive a message card, which will impress customers in terms of customer service.
Optimizing both functional and emotional values is required in this era.
How to increase customer satisfaction with CRM?
So how can you increase customer satisfaction with CRM? The first thing to tackle is to strengthen emotional value.
Measures to improve customer satisfaction by improving the quality of products and services are very important. However, the cycle of understanding customer needs, reflecting them in product development and service development, bringing them to market, and improving products and services by receiving feedback from the market, takes too long and does not take overnight. Improving customer satisfaction through functional value is a medium- to long-term policy.
On the other hand, improving customer satisfaction through emotional value can be addressed in less time. I recommend that you first use CRM for sales activities and customer support. If you accumulate all your customer information in CRM and provide sales activities and support based on that information, you will surely improve customer satisfaction with a smooth response. In support, even if it is a complaint about a claim purpose, you can take it as an opportunity and responsibility.
What not to do in CRM operations
In order to improve customer satisfaction with CRM, it is not enough to focus on functional and emotional values. You also need to pay attention to various things when operating CRM, or you may not get the results you want. Here are some of the things to keep in mind.
Trying to understand customers with subjective thoughts
Many CRMs include a feature that allows you to effortlessly survey your target customers to get their opinions on your products and services. However, opinions and requests are often different than expected, and many companies seem to be confused by it.
In some cases, the results are seemingly unbelievable, and you may conclude that the content of your questionnaire or the target of your survey was wrong. However, it is very important to accept the fact, even if the results are not what your company had expected.
It is very important to rethink your products and services by accepting the facts as they are, rather than trying to understand your customers based only on subjective thoughts.
Overconfidence in CRM functionality
CRM includes many features and new technologies to help improve customer satisfaction. Recently, a CRM equipped with AI has also appeared. However, if you rely on CRM functionality to solve problems, you may get pulled into unexpected pitfalls.
CRM is just a tool, and features are for support. The functions themselves do not solve the problem, so how do you rebuild the business process after all? How do you turn into a customer satisfaction-centric organization? The team needs to discuss and determine the direction.
Aim to improve customer satisfaction with CRM
CRM is not a tool that you can feel the effects of immediately after implementation. However, it can be a tool that can bring great benefits in the medium to long term if you follow the appropriate operation methods and operate it steadily. If you have not yet implemented CRM, please take this opportunity to consider implementing it as a measure to improve customer satisfaction.
CRM is not a tool that you can realize immediately after implementation. However, if you operate it according to the appropriate operation method, it will be a tool that will bring significant benefits in the medium to long term. If you haven't implemented CRM yet, take this opportunity to consider implementing it as a way to improve customer satisfaction.