Customer Relationship Management

Archive for the ‘CRMA’ Category

We all know that when you are looking for a job in the customer service industry, you are going to need that ever faithful document that you send out to help you get the job you are searching for. Just like all other types of jobs, you need to have a good resume and cover letter to help employers determine if you are or are not the right person for their job openings.

When you are tweaking you customer service representative resume, you really want to write it just like any other resume that you are going to write. But you need to keep some things in mind when you are honing it for a customer service type job. I won’t teach in this article on how to use a customer service resume template — there are plenty of these types of templates online. You can easily find a customer service resume example as well just by doing a quick Google search.

What I want to show you is how to kind of modify your current resume to help you use it to win the employer over.

The first thing that I would do is look at your past job experience and kind of tweak it to read from the mind that you have had experience with working with people and that type of thing. Think about all you past jobs — there has to be some way that you can word it from a “working with people” perspective. Customer service is all about working with people and if you can word your resume to show how all your past work experience relates to that, you are ahead of the game.

Remember that there are going to be a lot of resumes coming in for the same job and that yours will need to stand out. Wording it from a customer service prospective will do just that because no one else will be thinking this way.

Usually this is enough to get you in the door for an interview which is exactly what you are going for. Once you are in for the interview, you just want to impress them with your knowledge of the company (do your research!) and how well you will fit in with the needs of the company.

Since I love working with people, I am always on the look out for new and exciting customer relations jobs that are available. You never know when you are going to find that dream job…not that my current one isn’t that good. I love it and it is in the field of customer relations management jobs. Sometimes you just need a bit of a change in scenery.

Since my level of experience has increased — I’ve been at it since 1998 — I have been looking into customer relations manager jobs online and have found a few. The only trouble is that a few of the really good ones are about an hour or so away.

I wish there were more customer relation jobs available around here but unfortunately, I live in a small town with not a whole lot of options. Soon though, I will find something good that I will want to stay with for an extended period of time.

Consistently returning and buying customers are precious to any business. This is the reason why consumer-driven brands often provide programs that reward their customers for their loyalty. Companies need to know how they can make people come back for more through customer loyalty research.

This aspect of customer service and customer relationship management helps the business owners identify how they can make their current customers happy enough to become loyal, and the new ones, satisfied enough that they ignore the competition. The key is in knowing how to prevent these consumers from switching to that other brand.

The loyal customers bring in the profit since they provide the revenues from buying. These people are also the best referral system since they will talk about their experiences to their family and friends, who believe in what they say. After all, word-of-mouth is still the best way of putting a brand on the map.

Since the loyal customers already trust the company, especially ones with examples of good customer service, they are more comfortable buying and they can be considerate about many things. A customer loyalty research would reveal that the loyal buyers could help in target marketing. Business owners can plan the strategies and promotions better while keeping the costs at a minimum. Close relationships with the loyal bunch can help too, in increasing the brand awareness and value.

To satisfy the loyalists, they should be given much importance. Conducting customer loyalty research can help one know for sure, what people want. It will help the business grow since the customers will become more attached to the brand.

Most of the time in business, it’s not all about how good the product is. Customer service and customer relationship management is of great importance, too. You may have the best solution for the biggest problem in the world, but if you don’t take care of your customers well, the competitors (who may not have the best products) will be more than glad to take over. Here are some examples of good customer service you can refer to:

Treat your customers as individuals even if they represent a large corporation when they are dealing with you. Extend a kind of personal service that they will find sincerely given even if you (the business owner) are not directly giving the service. You may have different members of your staff attending to different aspects of customer service – but, nonetheless, they have to give services consistently according to the company’s principles.

It also pays not to ignore those customers who may be visiting your store or your site and just interested to buy one or a couple of your items, and not in bulk. If this customer is happy about his experience, he will refer your company to his network. Your next bulk customer may be his referral, for all you know!

Patience should be a virtue among all members of the organization. Patience is needed in answering so many inquiries. The staff should be prompt in responding because you will never know if you’re dealing with a potential jackpot-of-a-customer. This person might be inquiring from so many other companies, but if you respond quite professionally, efficiently, and quickly, you’re getting ahead of the bunch.

A potential customer is never an annoyance, but an opportunity to sell. Giving out something extra in terms of efforts can result to getting that sale and a loyal customer.

Sometimes it really doesn’t take much to keep your customers happy. The simplest of things can already be great tokens that they can remember you by. Customer relationship management or CRM is all about taking care of the customers. A CRM strategy need not be really expensive for it to work. Often, simple acts of sincerity and consistency in customer service are sticky enough to seal the relationships.

With competition always posing a challenge to your business, you cannot be complacent about business and customer management. Your eyes and ears should always be open so that you are aware of what the market’s needs are and what trends you can apply or set yourself.

Consumers want added value to their purchases. The challenge for all businesses is how to provide this want without much impact on costs, but with significant returns.

Especially with huge companies where the business owners are often indirectly dealing with customers, the lack of personal touch is what’s missing. This is not a dilemma for any small store because the owners get to meet their customers face to face everyday. Impersonal processes could be a threat to the success of a large corporation or chain of stores, and that’s why an efficient and sound CRM system should be put in place.

The simplest of things could be sending out greeting cards during special occasions like birthdays or holidays. Offers of coupons, discounts, and incentives to encourage loyalty of customers and to generate referrals are also great ways of treating the customers.

Conducting surveys and focus groups allow interaction and connection with the target market that can simulate the owner-customer relationship in small stores.

Businesses, regardless of size, highly depend on customer retention and acquisition in order to succeed and last long. CRM allows these companies to better manage their customers so that they can provide better products, promotions, and overall service. Any good CRM strategy that is well implemented can help in retaining the current customer base and grow it some more with acquiring new ones in the process. These will provide some excellent examples of good customer service.

So many clichés have been said about how important the customer is to any business. There are those that consider the customers king, and there are those that emphasize how they are always right, no matter what the argument is about. Businesses are highly dependent on customers, that huge efforts and budget are invested in earning and keeping them. One way for any big company to go to in terms of building and maintaining customer base is through the use of technology.

A very good application of technology, which is also a great marketing tool, is nicknamed CRM. What is CRM (customer relationship management)?

CRM refers to the practice of putting the customers in focus and building the business around them. Technology has allowed the streamlining of the process for faster response to the needs of both the customer and the business. CRM helps track and organize the profile and contact information of new and existing customers.

The software application allows access to any information and previous interaction with specific customers, so that any department in the company will know how to serve them better based on their requirements.

CRM can also be used for target marketing. The regularly updated information can help the business owners analyze the market behavior and needs, so that they can be able to design programs that are more useful and suitable.

There are several aspects to a CRM implementation and every one relates to each other.

Operational – includes front and back offices. Front office refers to direct relations with customers like sales and customer support services through phone, email, or Internet services. Back office includes supporting departments that do billing, maintenance, marketing, finance, and manufacturing.
Business/Trading relationships – supports the operational aspects in terms of maintaining relationships with vendors, partners, suppliers, retailers, distributors, and other networks
Analysis – allows business owners to gain insight of the whole business and its customers for target marketing, business strategies, and achievement of bottom lines.

The advent of the Internet and the continuous improvements in networking infrastructure has led to marketing automation solutions. This is a modern way of putting together a company’s business strategies and marketing processes, so that it would be easier to generate, identify, qualify, and develop leads that can fulfill the bottom line profit goals.

Not so long time ago, marketers have started to do Internet marketing via different media or methods: email marketing, website building, direct mailing, and online advertising. Separate implementations mean separate tracking or monitoring, which could be too much work, considering technology should be making things much easier.

The advancement in technology in marketing automation and customer relationship management has made it possible to automate these marketing methods for mid-sized enterprises. This improved system is more efficient and yes, more effective.

These new marketing automation solutions can be integrated to any existing CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems in order to keep track of the leads from the first inquiry to the closing of the sale. The integration provides a closed-loop automated system that allows one to generate reports for marketing activities that have been implemented. This makes it easy for marketing pros to compute for the return and measure it against their projections and costs.

Using these automated systems, a company can benefit from:

Keeping sales and marketing aligned so that it is easy for the organization to close the loop from lead acquisition to sales closing.
Turning over leads that have higher chances of closing since these have already been scored and nurtured prior to sales calls.
Lower costs for implementing marketing activities
Increased accountability – marketers can immediately quantify the impact of the investments on resulting revenues
Increased credibility – marketers can easily identify which activities made the best results

With so many competitors waiting for you to slip and make a mistake so they can grab your customers, it is good not to be complacent (especially if you are leading the market). It is also important to aim for differentiation. You should always stand out of the brood and excel all the time. This differentiation can also help you keep, maintain, and continuously grow your market base.

Research shows that customer support ranks as the topmost factor that drives repeat customers. It is therefore important for companies to prioritize how they can better serve their existing customers and attract new ones. The base of loyal customers can help a lot in the development of strategies via customer service surveys and customer relationship management.

These surveys give the business organizations the valuable information needed to come up with effective customer service support and improvements in the overall operations of the company.

Surveys come in different forms like those little cards you see on restaurant tables, email from an online store, or a phone call from your service provider. Businesses that have been around for sometime now know that customer satisfaction is key to success. Highly satisfied customers result to higher profits and a continuous flow of referrals.

In order to measure just how satisfied your customers are, you need to ask them via customer service surveys. The results of these surveys allow business owners to measure the target market’s satisfaction and attitude towards service, pricing, and competence of company representatives. These surveys can also help business owners find out a lot about customer loyalty, which they can use in coming up with reward programs that consumers will really appreciate.

Customer service representatives are the direct points of contact for customers whether online or off for customer relationship management. These are the members of an organization that ensure their customers are well taken care of. They interact with the customers to provide all the necessary information they need, as well as give extra services as they may require.

You may be an employee looking to form a team of customer service professionals or an employee who wants to know what a customer service job description is. Here are the tasks of a person involved in customer service:

Deals directly with the customers
Replies promptly to all inquiries of customers vial email
Communicates with the customers via written or personal methods
Talks to the customers about his concerns over the phone
Processes the customer’s orders promptly
Manages the customer accounts efficiently

Now, here is a list of what a customer service professional should be like:

Willing to extend extra service beyond the call of duty
Knows about individual customers’ needs
Empathizes with the customer during difficult situations
Skilled at communicating clearly – verbal and written.
Knows his customers language and how to really talk to them
Can professionally handle the customers however unpleasant they are when they have complaints or issues with the company
Has the eye for details and could work accurately
Knows how to keep the best interest of his company and customers
Technology-savvy and knows how to access automated information systems to analyze customers
Has a friendly and pleasant personality
Willing to work out and keep long-lasting business relationships

Let’s say you have an awesome product or service of customer relationship management – something that’s different and absolutely useful. If you have a site for your products but people are unaware of how to get to it, then the awesome factor will just prove to be futile. Customer solution profits will jumpstart once you have a site and people are going to it.

Tactics for customer solution profits that have worked successfully in the past for other companies still work effectively these days. Here are some ways you can start increasing your sales via your online presence.

Dedicate one site for every kind of product you are marketing. Do not fuse everything together in one site just to lower down your costs for web hosting. The key is in finding the niche market and designing your domain name, so that they could easily relate and remember the site.

You may include reviews and testimonials about your products, so potential customers have some references. Some articles about applications of your products or services can also help motivate the customers and encourage them to buy

Give away free items that are useful to your readers and site visitors. Place these useful reports, news, or articles at the top section of your homepage. Add a link that can get new subscribers and make sure that there is a working auto responder for those who will voluntarily key in their personal information there.

Make compelling articles that people can relate to and they will respond positively.

Target your market and get the right traffic to your site. Getting one too many individuals who have nothing to do with your product will just be a waste of space and effort. Write articles that will capture the right market and lead them to your site. For every 100 people, there is one individual who is likely to buy your product. So, you must attempt to target 1,000 hits to your site every day in order to generate and average of 10 sales.