The individualized management of long-term productive relationships with each of the clients of an organization, better known as CRM, is today a reality of easy application, if you have an interactive contact center and a defined strategic plan to do so.
For a long time, the dream of every company has been to personalize the relationship with its customers and, based on this, achieve their loyalty, permanence and profitability.
Everyone knows what the village grocer did a few years ago: he saw a customer pass by his store and immediately recognized him, called him by name and invited him to dialogue with him. He immediately handed him the new brand x blades, while saying: “Don Francisco, I had these blades ready that promise softness and avoid cuts on your face. You who suffer so much with shaving !!… I left two packages for you to try… I put them in the account…. Have a happy day and many greetings to Mrs. María. ”
This apparently simple spontaneous operation involves all the elements of a modern CRM:
a) Identify the client, which implies not only knowing him but also recognizing him. To know from your name and that of your relatives, your place of residence and your credit capacity, to your specific needs in this case regarding the shave, your tastes, desires, expectations and obviously its potential. This grocer simultaneously skillfully handled the supplier, without staking, since he knew in advance which of his customers would need the mentioned blades.
b) Differentiate their clients by their personal characteristics, needs, desires, tastes, preferences and potential. In fact, the grocer's reflection is: “Don Francisco has not passed here today; if I don't see him in the afternoon, I call him and send the blades to him ”. The differentiation allows him to discern between Don Francisco and his wife Maria, despite being a single account for him. Also, the mere fact of remembering or mentioning something "familiar" to the client is a form of loyalty.
c) Interact, with your clients, but intelligently, as shown in this simple example. This is different from the typical promotional action of niche marketing, where the merchant is surely groping, asking for posters and shelf talkers, and patiently waiting patiently for customers to demand the blades.
d) Personalize, the individualized offer one by one, based on the three previous elements.
Now, doing what the village grocer did was relatively easy, because he managed a small circle of customers and because his brain was sufficient for the efficient administration of these elements. But the modern company has thousands, tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of customers. These do hundreds of operations per year. They have different needs, tastes, preferences, behaviors, expectations and potentials with each other. Management is complex and difficult. For this reason, the best alternative for many years was niche marketing, which took the weight of individualization from us, one by one. It was easy, and still is today, to classify customers by segment: "My product or service is aimed at men and women between 15 and 60 years of age, located in all urban centers in the country."Fixed issue. Let's offer them all the same and treat them the same. If some are dissatisfied or leave, what are we going to do to them! Maybe I don't even know who they are or why they leave.
Don E Schultz, famous marketing writer and professor at Northwester University, notes: “Technology has ended mass, niche and segment marketing. This market is dead, but we refuse to bury it, because it is what we know how to do. ” Mass marketing goes on and on forever. But the difference will be marked by the individualization of the relationship with customers. Today's "niche" is the individual. To do this we must apply relational marketing strategies, which thanks to new information technologies, today is available to any large or medium-sized company, even small, efficiently and intelligently managing customer databases, from a contact system interactive.
In other words, from a modern Contact Center or contact center. Why if it lacks a Call center, the client will be exposed to receive general treatment. Except in the exceptional case that the official on duty identifies, knows, recognizes, differentiates and interacts intelligently, the relationship will be impersonal.
A contact center doesn't have to be a large department with hundreds of booths, or expensive outsourcing. In fact, if your database to work is small, it will be enough with the exclusive dedication of a single person, supported by an integrated computer and telephone, and possibly with a simple excel sheet. The important thing in this case is the strategy. Before technology strategy. Now that if your database is several hundred or thousands of records and customers in turn have different options and make several transactions in relatively short periods, it must rely on the multiple tools that modern Call and Contact centers offer today in day.
Applying CRM and one-to-one marketing strategies is an obligation of every company that wants to survive in today's competitive market. Customers are increasingly demanding and want to be served in a timely, agile, personalized and intelligent way. Perhaps this is the reason why the contact center industry has developed rapidly. 72% of American companies use the system either internally or via outsourcing. In the United States, 11 million people, equivalent to 6.1% of the economically active population, work in call systems and contact centers. 23,000 centers already operate in Mexico and in Bogotá approximately 300 companies already have their own system.
Where to start a CRM from a contact center?
This is the question that I am most frequently asked as a consultant for the establishment of contact centers. Like any new project, a contact center system generates opposition within the organization: Fear of change. Often the general management is interested because they have heard, seen or studied the subject. The marketing division, except in the case of consolidated companies with a clear direction towards marketing, tends to oppose it because it does not "believe" in the program. The truth is that fear emanates from ignorance about CRM. Once started, it is precisely the marketing department that is the main driver. In fact, the responsibility for the strategies, processes and mechanisms to be applied with the new tool falls on it. After a while,the marketing division “cannot live” without the contact center. Another opposition comes from sales: "They are going to replace us with machines." The systems department itself is sometimes opposed. And obviously the main one comes from the financier, who does not understand why they are going to spend so much money.
I have visited hundreds of companies in the continent to promote the establishment of the contact center. Until today we continue in the evangelization process, because the subject is not easily accepted by the organization. In many cases, the difficulty of some managers and directors, who avoid the subject, or when they already have some degree of decision, come with the systems man and forget the marketing one. So my first response is: “Don't start with technology. CRM is a fundamental business strategy and must be applied in modern companies, but it is a marketing decision ”. The first thing you should do is have a strategy, be aware that the market is your own database and that the individualized management of relationships with each of your clients will consolidate the future of the company.
If business awareness is aimed not only at acquiring new customers, but at retaining, retaining them, and establishing long-term relationships with each of them, the organization will be ready to undertake a CRM project from a Contact Center system.
The new tool will support customer relationships for customer acquisition, maintenance, transaction, promotion, recovery and loyalty activities.
The Contact Center can be used for any activity that the Company develops in its value chain, from basic information, customer service, order and order management, market intelligence and data, to individual customer relationships, capture and attention to requests, help desk, marketing, sales, collections and support services, among others.
When starting an internal project, it is important to define the return on investment. For this reason, my experience in more than 100 contact centers in various countries of America allows me to add something to the question: where to start?
The disciplines of a CRM are four basic:
a) Technology enabled for sales
b) Customer service and support
c) Marketing analysis and
d) Standard electronic commerce.
We should start a CRM project with all disciplines, capturing, loyalty and profiting customers through individualized management. But that is not a process that is done overnight; takes time. You have to start with something that pays off the investment and is attractive to financial management.
That is why in most of the contact centers that we have had the privilege of setting up, we have started with the first discipline, doing telemarketing in and out for specific sales functions. Management of relations with new clients, especially the capture of requests for information, taking the process to closing or negotiation.
Simultaneously we make an out bound or outbound calls to promote and attract new customers or to follow up on the best prospects generated by advertising.
The good handling of information, the level of service and the multiple tools of negotiation and handling of the transaction, makes it possible to obtain excellent results, which justify the investment in the contact center.
With this in our pockets, we are gradually implementing the other disciplines, continuing with customer service and support. Although each contact and each applied relationship marketing strategy represents a cost for the value of the call, operator, soft, etc., the compensation comes immediately through the increase in sales, the decrease or optimization of the advertising pattern and improving the quality of care.
In short, a Contact Center is the best opportunity to create a dialogue with customers, listen to them, answer their concerns, satisfy them, collect valuable information about them, build close long-term relationships, generate loyalty and obviously achieve a greater number of sales.
