CRM: More than the Sum of its Parts
CRM is probably one of the least defined acronyms there is in the customer service industry. I have made a start with my definition of CRM. But what is considered part of CRM?
What each company chooses to use as their CRM is dependent on the type of business they are in and if they decide to use actual CRM software that’s offered by companies such as Microsoft, or choose to use individual applications to make up their own CRM package.
Having worked in many call centers throughout my thirteen year career, I have seen many different styles of CRM and the way they helped and also hampered business. Taking a look at customer service call centers, we know that the way they relate with their customers is what makes or breaks their business.
So, it’s a given that they should be looking to implement the most productive aspects of CRM possible. Probably one of the most popular aspects of CRM that’s used by almost any call center I’ve seen or heard about is call distribution software.
This software is valuable to a company for many different reasons, allowing the call center to control many parts of the customer contact. It allows a business to efficiently route customer calls to the correct department without long hold times or frustrating option menus. It’s also a way for a call center to monitor call times and other trends that effect calls on a daily basis.
Customer databases are an important part of CRM as well, because it’s the bread and butter of customer interactions. The biggest issue I tend to think call centers have is finding a database that will work effectively for them.
I would say that maybe 2 of the 8 call centers I have worked for had very effective customer databases, while the other 6 were lacking in one form or another. One of the worst databases I’ve worked with as literally skin and bones. If a customer had to call in more than one time in regards to issues or complaints, there were never any memos or indications of previous calls. Something like this leaves a customer not only frustrated but at their wits end and ready to move on to another company.
On the flip side, one of the best I’ve worked with allowed an agent to include detailed memos, concerns, quotes, or anything else you could think of in the account when interacting with a customer. There were even special pop up memos letting you know when a specific concern still needed to be addressed! Talk about helping a customer continue to have peace of mind knowing when they have to deal with this company, they won’t get brushed off! Even having a decent customer database won’t behoove a company if there aren’t policies and procedures set in place to protect what the database was meant to do, and this is all a part of CRM.
Online reference manuals are another part of CRM that is essential in maintaining a good customer relationship. These manuals are what hold every possible piece of information a call center agent might need to handle customer calls. At a cellular call center I worked at a couple of years back, that online manual was my bible. I used it every day to find information like the rates when dialing in another country, or whether there was a cellular outage in the caller’s area. Without having access to this information, the caller would have probably had to call numerous times in order to finally reach an agent that happened to know this information on the top of their head.
Again, there is such a wide arrange of products, software, and other solutions that make up CRM that it’s impossible to list them all. The above examples are ones that are most popular and seen by anyone who works in a call center, but they are by far not the only ones. All in all, the purpose of CRM is to help retain current customers as opposed to attaining new ones. Customer satisfaction surveys, voicemail systems, free company merchandise for customers, and even the way each call is answered is all considered part of CRM.
You can essentially incorporate anything that will keep customers into part of a company’s CRM which is the reason the acronym is so widely abused...
As briefly mentioned before, none of this will be useful to a company if the needs and concerns of consumers are not being recognized. Therefore, a system being developed to specifically handle these customer relations is necessary in creating a tried and true CRM.
Full strategy plans and reports need to be produced and discussed in length before implementing any plans, and before determining any long term goals within a company. Correctly using CRM tools within a business can help with sales too. This is because call centers that deal with product orders will be able to record past purchases and interests, enabling the company to offer additional products when the opportunity arises.
Finally, the return on investment for CRM products can be substantial. For example, a fifty thousand dollar investment made on a good customer database can mean millions of dollars in revenue per year for a company. Having an IVR in place that does not frustrate a customer will increase profits as customer tend to trust a company they can actually speak to, meaning the chances of them continuing business with you is increased. Any investment made to enrich the relationship a company has with their customers will come with an opportunity to create at least a decent return on investment.
