Customer Relationship Management – CRM – everyone’s talking about it, yet it means many different things to many different audiences. Essentially, it’s a software or app-based tool you can use to keep track of your customers, all their contact info, and all of the various interactions you have with them. As you begin to collect and track this info and your interactions, you will have greater insights into your customers’ needs and activities, making it easier to engage with and retain them.
For a small or medium-sized business, these are the 3 basic CRM activities you would want to use, at least to begin with:
Online Appointment Scheduling
- Secure more appointments by empowering your consumers to book appointments with you online 24/7
- Improve customer service and reduce no-shows dramatically with customized automatic reminders and notifications
- Reduce time spent managing scheduling when you can synchronize with your calendar
Customer Database Management
- Keeping track of customers is hard work
- Manage, grow and engage your customer and prospect lists
- No longer keep lists of your customers in a spreadsheet or in a paper-based file
- CRM tools let you:
- Take advantage of prepopulated database of customers who have called your business
- Import your existing customer list
- Tag customers for better targeted messaging
- Develop customer profiles complete with contact information, appointment history, individual preferences and notes
Outbound Marketing Tools
- Strengthen customer relationships with personalized notifications and promotional messages
- Use Email or SMS/text messaging
- Send personalized professional emails with your company logo
- Keep a complete customer history of email and SMS communications
- CRM tools integrate with various Email services
- Better segment and target direct marketing campaigns
These are the basic activities that you should look for when considering a CRM solution for your business. Automating these tasks will make it easy for you to manage appointments, confirmations, text reminders, follow-up emails, direct marketing messages and all customer history.
