It’s important to understand a concept before launching into any implementation. If you wish to successfully manage customer relationships, you really do need to understand exactly what you’re doing. Over the next few posts I’ll give you my view and the CRM process any company can follow to develop a wildly successful formula.

What is CRM?

By definition we are talking about managing the relationship we have with our clients. It is knowing enough about our customers to provide, at the very minimum, a standard but pleasing level of interaction that will cause the client to:

  1. return with more business
  2. potentially begin making larger purchases
  3. make purchases more regularly
  4. provide referrals to your business so others will complete steps 1 - 3 as well.

How does CRM Work?

Getting CRM to work effectively is a lot more difficult. Developing standards and processes that are easy to follow but allow flexibility can be a minefield. Just today I wanted to buy a new motorcycle. I checked with my bank (that prides itself on service) that I could withdraw the right amount of funds and yet on the day, I wasn’t able to and, when I called the Bank, they were not able to help or change their policy.

So how is a small business supposed to make it happen?

CRM allows people within your business to make decisions that will assist your business and the experience of the customer to ensure both benefit. This, of course, means thinking through almost every process and creating a framework that people can follow.

The framework must allow for risk to be managed, services to be delivered and value to be gained.

At the end of the day the business owner requires three things most of all:

  1. a profit to be made (otherwise why are you in business?)
  2. the staff to feel they have achieved a great result from their efforts and look forward to doing it again
  3. the client to consider your business a good place to return to

How Does a Business Get CRM?

To ensure these three things happen a business needs:

  • systems people can easily learn
  • systems people can easily follow
  • processes to follow when things go awry
  • data systems to catch information (data in)
  • communication systems to add value (data out)

The problem with many businesses trying to implement CRM:

  • they have processes that aren’t documented, even at a simple flowchart level
  • experts within the business do not have coaching or mentoring skills to easily transfer their knowledge
  • there is no formal training within the business
  • there is no simplifying of overly complex systems
  • there is no recording of what is happening with the client
  • there is no “one centralised system” to capture and communicate data

If you review the above points you will have an idea of what you should be aiming for with CRM. You can do CRM with a shoebox if need be. You don’t actually need a complex and expensive system. (though, properly used, they do help.) And the bigger you are as a company, the more you will need technology of some kind, more than likely web based these days.

My point about CRM is that is is a strategy (”strategy before software”) not a software package! And any business is able to develop a proper CRM system with two pieces of very simple technology: pen and paper!

If you don’t know what you’re doing or where you want to end up, software is just going to make life far more miserable. See Point 2 of what a business owner requires.

Here are some more links about what CRM is and it’s intended benefits:

Samsinah Sudin

Customer Relationship Management

Small Business CRM

Duct Tape Marketing

Inside CRM