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If you are responsible for customer service, either in your own business or within a company, you will realize good customer relationship management (CRM) can never be good enough for some capricious people. The competitiveness within the service industry is fierce and if satisfaction is not received people can, and do, very easily take their business elsewhere. The obvious place to start identifying problem areas and sectors that need improvement, is by asking your existing customers. Setting up and maintaining good customer relationships takes commitment and can be a quit some work. There are ways to make this easier. For example a simple questionnaire can highlight issues that might never have occurred to you. If you work at a customer care department and there is a special complaints department, analyze all the information gathered by your colleagues and implement new procedures or changes there where needed. Some of these criticisms may be very simple to fix but might have a major impact on your customers. Customers like to be listened to. Customer care is extremely important in any business since holding onto existing consumers is considerably easier and cheaper than attracting new ones. Marketing can be a costly business and one of the most cost effective marketing strategies is customer loyalty. Happy customers will keep returning and even help you in advertising by referring your business to friend’s or colleagues. This type of loyalty can only be attained by providing excellent customer service every time. Typically, people who have a poor service experience will gladly tell everyone about it, whilst in comparison people who receive excellent service only tell a few. Bad service makes a far more interesting story! Customer service is relative because the experience one customer may be entirely happy with could frustrate and dissatisfy another. Because of this, try where possible, to be flexible within company procedures and in your handling of the customers by treating each one as an individual, not as one of the others. Take each situation, either positive or negative, as it comes along and deal with it the best you can. In business it pays to always make yourself available and reachable to customers and treat them politely and efficiently. Personalize your service by introducing yourself, have your staff wear name tags and use customer names. It also helps with customer complaints if one member of staff is allocated a particular complaint until it has been dealt with, this way people don’t feel as if they are being passed around the company. A successful CRM strategy involves a combination of a human approach and high tech software. CRM programs will only lead to malfunction if restricted to software installation only, there also has to be adequate training and motivation for the employees to become skilled at and have their input. Australia has a few CRM companies who are at the same time consulting companies, providing current CRM software solutions to allow businesses to manage customers efficiently. A few of these companies designed their won software which are designed to retain existing customers, bring new ones in and get more value from both. Consultants are experienced in setting up CRM packages and first-rate CRM software solution implementation know-how. Look out for CRM companies who offer Oracle Siebel CRM software solutions which range from simple contact management to sales strength, service and marketing automation, to venture wide CRM packages. Updating your customer relationship management style will allow you to accommodate continually shifting marketing trends. Information can be shared within the company and with other businesses, which will ultimately lead to more customers and sales. In any business first impressions are the most important, so invest in a CRM package and make your first impression count. Michiel Van Kets provides articles for Bright Blue a company who are experts in CRM and CRM Solutions. They provide several CRM packages, CRM software, CRM systems, consultants and specialized software like SIEBEL.
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