Friday, June 29, 2012
As businesses have increasingly realized, customer relationship management (CRM) tools can yield major benefits. However, there is a great degree of variety in terms of quality and focus when it comes to availble CRM options. To make the most of the technology, organizations must choose a CRM system that features certain key traits.
According to Ed Shepherdson of Destination CRM, one of these critical traits is timeliness. If a CRM system cannot offer results and insights quickly, the business will inevitably miss out on a variety of opportunities.
To illustrate this point, Shepherdson cited the example of a customer issuing a tweet concerning his dissatisfaction with a company's product. If the company's CRM product is not reactive enough, the organization may never learn of the tweet. This can significantly damage the company's standing in that customer's mind. Last year, Maritz Research found that 83 percent of individuals who issued a complaint via social media liked or loved hearing back from the company they criticized.
Just as importantly, complaints and other social media data can help companies improve their service offerings for other customers. If the organization's CRM system finds the critical tweet and puts that information into the hands of a customer service agent quickly, that agent may be better prepared to offer customer support to other individuals with the same problem.
