Sponsored Post
Customer relationships are at the core of your business. When you nurture relationships with your customers, you help them connect with your brand. By leveraging a customer relationship management (CRM) solution, you can stay connected with your customers on a deeper level, increasing the chances that you will keep them as customers for many years to follow.
Stay organized and listen carefully
The key to effectively connecting with your customers is to know important details about each one and keep all that knowledge in one place. Among other things such as building out a logical sales pipeline, CRMs exist to make sense of your contact data. When you collect and maintain holistic contact profiles, tagged or grouped in a useful, searchable manner, you can put your customer data to good use and directly engage with your customers in meaningful ways. It also makes it easier to deploy and track activities of your sales force.
By looking at the contact profile you’ve created, including purchase history, and how frequently they engage with your brand, you can gauge how often each customer wants to hear from you. Anyone on your team who interacts with customers needs access to the most recent, relevant account information. When your sales teams have updated account details, they provide better service and answer customer questions quickly.
We all know that customers don’t want to be sold to. They don’t want you to talk at them. If you want to communicate with your clients, you have to listen to them. Of course, great customer service is the first line in listening and responding to your clients’ needs. You can even listen before they reach out to you. Likewise, your customers don’t want to explain every detail of their account to someone every time they make a call or send an email. Technology like a CRM system that helps you provide consistent service levels. It makes customers comfortable and support faster, which leads to more efficient problem solving at the initial contact. Anyone who’s ever sat on hold with the cable company, understands this concept.
Be socially aware
If your social media outlets are on autopilot, you’re missing out. It’s easy for SMBs to send out one post to several different social media accounts and think that’s enough. If you cannot manage live interaction with your customers over numerous networks, consider cutting down to one or two social media accounts or hiring someone to represent your brand for you. Effective social media means constant, meaningful interaction.
Having a dialogue with your customers over public channels shows individual customers they are valued, and your other followers see that you value each customer as well. In addition, you get more data about customers the more you interact, which, when paired with an intuitive small business CRM, provides you with information for future marketing efforts.
We’re all human, after all
Customer relationships are the heart of any business. It’s not easy to keep every detail in mind. However, a CRM solution promotes information sharing, and a companywide commitment to service creates an atmosphere of long-term customer retention and satisfaction.
Over and above a CRM solution, always keep the golden rule in mind. You aren’t managing accounts or clients. You’re working with people. People respond to personalized service and businesses that actively try to improve their lives. Sharing customer information throughout your company – and making it easily accessible – ensures that employees can speak to customers on a personal level, and you’ll build a personal connection keeps customers engaged.
About the sponsor
Insightly was designed as a simple to use yet powerful Web-based CRM system for small businesses. With integrations to widely used applications such as Google Apps, Office 365, MailChimp, and Dropbox, Insightly CRM keeps you connected to the right information at the right time—including contacts, sales information, project activities, and more. Because we handle all of the technical issues like server upgrades and security fixes, you can focus on growing sales, not maintaining an IT support staff. Insightly CRM helps you concentrate on what matters most, running your business.
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