Through CRM systems, companies can manage relationships and interactions with their customers and their customers, and serve them more effectively and efficiently. But many do not take advantage of the full potential of CRM in this regard, so they are losing an important competitive advantage.
In its annual review of the CRM software market, Gartner provided a very interesting perspective on the topic in 2018. In addition to emphasizing the strong growth of technologies and applications that enable a great customer experience , Gartner presented a New category called CERM, or customer experience and relationship management. CERM marks the convergence between the CRM industry get consultation from evolvous.com and the customer experience industry. It is a dynamic that arises from the need to have a unified vision of the entire customer journey in order to optimize the service and support provided.
Here are five ways you can use your CRM system to improve customer service .
Provide proactive customer support through self-service
Most customers try to figure out what they need on their own first, before calling the call center. By installing self-management channels that use CRM data, customers will get the immediate answers they are looking for without having to call or wait for an agent to answer them. Such self-management attempts typically include Google searches, website browsing, or automated service chatbots .
Knowing that the customer prefers to interact in the first instance through these channels opens up a great opportunity to contact them proactively, providing them with the content they need through the self-service channel they decide to use. In this way, your company provides self-management monitoring software for employees experiences at all times of the day that help improve contact center efficiency in several ways.
By providing the information that the customer needs through self-service, it reduces the volume of calls for simple reasons, such as resetting passwords or information about accounts, which, in turn, reduces the cost per interaction involved in the intervention of an agent human. A traditional voice interaction costs an average of $ 15, while an interaction with a virtual agent costs less than $ 1.
Use CRM data to hyper-personalize customer engagement
Customizing the subject in an email and entering the customer’s first name is a very easy detail that makes a big difference. According to Campaign Monitor , 72% of customers open an email if they see that it offers them a discount. And, personalizing the subject line leads to 62% opening them.
But that’s just the beginning. The true value is hype personalization ; that is, providing the customer with the offers and information they need with a high level of personalization and based on their interests, purchase history and other details that the CRM system captures. It’s more than a generic avatar that says, “Hello, can I help you?” And it also goes far beyond a simple profile.
Take “Charles” and “Ozzy” as an example. They both live in castles, were born in the UK in 1948, have been married more than once and have grown children. Depending on the configuration of a profile, they would be identified as very similar, so they would be offered very similar offers and services. However, a company that uses real-time customer history and context to provide a hyper-personalized service would spot the differences between them immediately. One client is Charles, the Prince of Wales, and the other is Ozzy Osbourne, the self-proclaimed Prince of Darkness.
Make the customer experience consistent across channels
The ability to provide a consistent experience is another way to use CRMs to improve overall customer service . Customers expect their experiences to be uniform or consistent across channels and devices. It does not matter if your last contact was by phone with another department, and the current one is through chat or another channel. They see the different sectors of the company as a single entity, not as watertight compartments.
By moving the information that agents have to the channels that customers use, both the message and the experience will be consistent. In addition to customers preferring self-service as their first choice, consistency improves brand reputation, as well as customer loyalty and satisfaction. Process automation is the easy and efficient way to do it.
For example, if a customer fills out a contact form on your company’s website, your CRM can send a thank you email right away, saying that someone will get in touch with him / her as soon as possible. The system then sends an automatic alert to an agent to contact that person. In this way, no interaction is isolated from the others, which is precisely what makes the responses not coherent with each other. In addition, each and every request receives the appropriate response.
Learn more about your customers and map their journeys
With data and information, companies can do much more than simply improve one-off transactions; Indeed, they can answer questions such as the following: “What is the best form of contact according to the preferences and customer history?” and “What resource (be it a human or a bot) is available now and does it have the qualifications to achieve the goal that the company needs?” They can also know what to do to move the customer to the next stage of their journey. To answer the questions, it is necessary that all points of interaction are fully integrated .
An essential factor for CRM systems to be able to provide customer support is knowing as much as possible about each customer. With real-time analysis tools, you can know what information and what products the customer wants based on their browsing history. For example, if you downloaded a document about a particular product, you can make a personalized offer when you return to the site. In this way, you improve the customer experience and generate new sales opportunities for your company.
Improve the quality of interactions by giving agents the tools they need
At the time when self-service is no longer enough and customers need to talk to the contact center, they have surely already received the simplest answers through self-management. In this way, agents have more time to offer a specialized and personalized service, and are in a better position to close more sales or improve the resolution of a claim. And this is how it works.
When customers use self-service, what they do there is recorded in the CRM. And that system delivers the information in real time to the agents. When AI automation is integrated with CRM, employees can fully see the activities that each customer has performed.
Based on the data, the system advises the agent on the next action to take, so you don’t waste time trying to think or figure out what to do. You also don’t waste time asking the customer to repeat what they have said before. Instead, you can focus on what you do best: providing a better customer experience.
Take a comprehensive customer service approach
Integrating customer service with CRM systems offers benefits to customers, agents, and your business in general. When you understand and can see how current and potential customers navigate your website, what channels they use and how they use them, you can develop a service strategy that includes the experience they prefer.