How to use business CRM software to increase customer satisfaction – and profits

There’s no denying that if you want to grow your business, you need to grow your revenue. But this doesn’t necessarily mean putting all your effort into growing your customer base.

In fact, retaining and growing your existing customer base is more cost effective for your business than attempting to gain more customers.

Don’t go ditching the marketing budget and increasing your sales team’s upselling KPI’s too quickly, though. If you’re going to try and boost profits by utilising current customers, you need to effectively balance your wants with customer needs.

The best way to do that? Improve your customer service capabilities by utilising integrated business CRM software.

Maximising the opportunities in your current customer base can be just as profitable.

When customer service gets left behind

A lot of businesses – especially those experiencing growth – can find it hard to manage their customer relationships.

Whether it’s failing to keep in regular contact or taking too long to follow up on a request, it’s not hard to find yourself slipping behind the service standard.

In this day and age, nearly every sales interaction people have is instant and personalised – and they’ve come to expect nothing less. If a customer isn’t receiving the service they expect, they’ll go somewhere else.

In my experience working with small and mid-sized businesses, the business processes that lead to poor customer satisfaction are common ones, including:

• Disparate customer and sales data
• Clunky or non-existent sales processes
• An inability to interpret customer information
• Reliance on manual procedures

Any one – or a mixture – of these problems means you’re not able to offer your customers high level service – and that you’re missing easy opportunities to maximise your profits.

Information is the key to success

The information you gain from customers with every interaction (like their preferences and buying habits) are invaluable to your business – it’s what you can use to your advantage to not only improve profitability, but take your customer service above and beyond.

But if this information is lost in a sea of bad processes, different systems and the memories of multiple sales people, you can’t use it to your advantage.

Being able to have easy access and reporting capabilities to interpret this data gives you and your team the immediate ability to:

• Identify buying trends
• Highlight cross selling opportunities
• Offer your customers what they want before they even know what that is

You need to treat your data with the respect it deserves – and in return it will give you what you need to increase your customer satisfaction and in return, your profits.

Understanding your customers buying behaviour can be very advantageous for your business in the long term

Give your team a helping hand with HARMONiQ business CRM software

It’s easy enough to say, but actually harnessing your existing information to improve your service is hard to achieve without a quality, integrated CRM system.

HARMONiQ business CRM software supports your sales team by bridging any services gaps and handling tedious admin procedures, so your staff can get back to what they do best.

And how does this service upgrade increase your profits? Well, if you invest in a fully integrated ERP system like HARMONiQ, your CRM will work in conjunction with your existing system to provide unparalleled visibility and automation capabilities.

This will give you the ability to create and pursue selling opportunities that didn’t exist before.

• Send automatic responses or follow ups, so you never miss a job request
• Set up automatic reminders for regular customers, with the option to simply ‘reorder’ their usual products
• Alert customers to newly available stock lines
• Tell when an order is missed or deviates from the norm, so you can follow up
• Create and enforce clear sales processes that can be followed by the entire team, so you never miss a sale

These are just a few of the ways HARMONiQ can help you optimise for exceptional customer service to achieve profit growth. As a truly customisable and scalable software system, HARMONiQ is designed to grow alongside your business.

If you would like to discuss how you can start leveraging great technology to deliver exceptional, consistent customer service, let me know, or please call me on 02 9542 2000. Alternatively, you can request a free customised demo of our software below.

Author bio

Robert Butler is the Managing Director of Micronet Systems and is focused on helping business leaders overcome inefficient sales, inventory, and customer relationship management practices by leveraging cutting edge technology. If you want to gain better control of the sales processes in your business, click here to see how HARMONiQ Business Tuning Software can make a difference to your business, or click here to get in touch.