Get rid of the Negatives with CRM

If CRM, also known as Customer Relationship Management is so important to businesses then why are so many still struggling to understand their customer and meet their needs? The problem may be that your CRM solution is overlooking the issues that are most important to your customer.

The number one rule of CRM has too be retaining current customers, not gaining new ones. Why? If a customer is not satisfied with your product or service, they are will probably stop using it. You might think that one dissatisfied customer is no big deal, but think about how that one customer can choose to express their anger or distaste for your business practices. They could choose to write negative reviews of your product or service on Web sites designed for this purpose as well as blogs. They can post negative comments about your business on social networking sites you use. A dissatisfied customer can even make a formal complaint against your business to various local and government agencies.

By doing so, your company does not receive one single negative complaint. Instead your company has received several black marks against it, since this information is online it can be found by any potential new customer who chooses to look up information on your business before deciding if they should make a purchase. Enough bad reviews and the answer will be no.

Looking at the damage one customer can do, think about how much bad press a small business can receive with only a dozen customer complaints? A lot! This small number of customers could end up affecting hundreds of other potential customers' opinion of your business. When customer becomes increasingly dissatisfied with a company, other customers may not be too far behind, especially if a business does not take steps to understand and fix the problem.

The time, effort and money used to fix a bad relationship with a customer is worth it too most businesses who don't want to end up losing long-term clients and understand that a loyal customer is the saving grace of any business. Even when using CRM a large number of businesses find themselves struggling to keep customers loyal and may even find themselves losing clients. CRM cannot make up for a company with a product that does not work right and is not advertised correctly.

When dealing with CRM platforms a business is looking to save money and time not make everyone's job harder, a high-tech system with all the bells and whistles may sound great on paper but if your business does not need all the extras, don’t waste money on them. Software based CRM platforms are constantly being adapted and upgraded, if your business needs the use of additional resources in the future, you can either choose to upgrade your product or do a little research to find better CRM software for your changing business needs. Regardless of the final approach used CRM works best in stages. For example, giving your business time to implement CRM into client call centers before using CRM in sales automation can help train employees on CRM and cause less confusion for employees and customers.