Customer retention strategies in CRM

Today business dynamics have changed the way in which companies do business in
managing relationship and streamline their operations. Businesses today spend much more
time in acquiring customers than in keeping them. Customer retention is the process by
which customers become loyal advocates for the company as the companies exceed the
expectations of the customers by satisfying their requirements and providing them with
more than what they expect.

Source: Select Hub

CRM tools uses tools such as big data and data analysis for effective customer retention
strategies. The steps used in data analysis using CRM tools are
1) Collecting and storing data seamlessly
CRM tools today uses contact management processes to provide a storage warehouse to store
customer data. Companies collect data by counting landing pages on website or using social media
to collect information about you.

2) Data analysis
Data should not exist in a vacuum. Only storing it and not putting it to any use is not enough.
Business intelligence tools are used to gain insights after CRM has collected customer information.
Some of the ways to make this happen are:

 Personalizing interactions: CRM software allows storing customer information in

personalized profiles. This data can then be accessed to have interactions with customers.
E.g.: Sending them emails or offering them special discounts on their birthdays.
 Boosting engagement: It is used to track how well your campaigns are received by your
customers and how the customers respond to it. For e.g. it can help you test your campaigns
by measuring which one has higher click rate by customers. It also helps in optimizing your
new campaigns so that people are more likely to be engaged by them.

CRM tracking email metrics

 Identifying top customers: You can also monitor the most loyal customers for you. It
becomes easy to then build a loyalty program to reward your best customers so as to make
them feel more valued. This helps in creating a first-class customer service to them.
 Building a customer journey map: Customer journey map portrays how customer interacts
throughout the campaign starting from marketing to customer service. This enables to
create a process which is more customer-centric.

3) Customer Campaigns
After tracking customer data one can get a clear view into their patterns, habits and behaviour.
When combined with marketing automation it helps to avoid customer churn.

Let us take an example. A company notices that a large portion of their customers have not bought
anything in the last quarter. Using CRM they set special discount for 20% to attract that particular
portion of customers to take advantage of the sales. With customized campaign options in CRM we
can define the criteria about who will receive the campaign and can target any customer group that
we need.

4) Knowledge Management
Customers need to be provided with high quality customer services. CRM’s have knowledge
management capabilities where a new employee or a team can get up to speed quickly about your
customers. It also provides steps to standardize customer service responsibilities. Hence customers
receive consistent experience on whether they are interacting with an experienced employee or
someone who has been in job just for a few days.

5) Email workflows
Combining data analysis with marketing automation capabilities allows companies to send campaign
that take advantage of upsell and cross-sell opportunities.

Sample email workflow using CRM system

For example, if a company sells electronics they can use data to find who purchased a new personal
computer and send emails offering tools such as mouse and keyboard accordingly.

Hence, we see how using data analysis using CRM tools help your business gain firm footing in an
unstable market landscape.
Customer Acquisition strategies in CRM
Customer acquisition is one of the key areas for growth of a company. It involves identifying
potential customers, knowing their weaknesses and strength, assessing risk and making
acquisition strategies. Recent boom in the market related to increasing customer segments,
media vehicles, products and distribution and the intense competition has made acquiring
new customers a very complex process. Today people demand more, are more informed
than ever and are willing to express their likes and dislikes to get what they want. This has
led to marketers taking a more focused approach towards customer relationship
management. Machine learning and data analysis have been used by companies in this area.
Steps in customer acquisition using CRM tools are
1) Preparation of prospect list
A prospect list shows a list of customers who are likely to be interested in your services and
products. CRM tools should be able to help companies to target a particular set of
customers (e.g.: retired people, bike purchasers, new parents, etc.). Data analysis is used to
eliminate people who do not meet company’s criteria and eliminate them. CRM systems
help you to tag data (assigning contacts to specific campaigns) to find the ROI (return on
investment) in your marketing effort as well as in finding likely prospects
2) Setting up test campaigns and evaluating responses
Test campaigns need to be set out to collect data for analysis in the CRM tool. Test
campaigns are set out to your prospect set of customers using Internet based tools
generating information request forms. Then, using predictive analysis these tools help you
to segregate your prospect list into people who accept your product, those who reject your
product and those who have not responded just by mapping their responses.
3) Changing positive prospects to customers
The final step involves acquiring positive responses to customers. CRM tools help in
establishing relationship and loyalty of the customers towards the company by providing
your customers with exactly the prospects they need.
Latest trends and technology in customer service and relations
A company cannot work in a vacuum. It has a need to communicate with people outside heir
company. Hence, every company needs to develop a contact centre.

First, we will look what are the needs of a contact centre. The answer lies within the observations
and points stated below

1) Customers need a central point of contact for their comfort

2) A company grows when their customers can contact them from any place, at any time anfd
by all means possible.
3) They should be able to easily obtain information from the company.

A good contact centre can help an organization achieve its objective as well as gain profits. Revenue
generation, efficiency and customer satisfaction are interlinked with one another. Hence to generate
high revenue a company must maintain customer satisfaction and for that they need to have proper
contact centres with the customers.

Some of the recent trends in customer service and relations are as follows:

Latest trends in providing customer services

1) Providing an omnichannel customer experience

This helps to provide a first-class experience to all the customers irrespective of how they
interact with the businesses. It puts customers and their experiences as the most important part
of every customer interaction. It means the customer should have a good experience for the
service provided in all the modes online, on the phone or during their visit to the store. Here
CRM technology which empowers every support and sales agent to access the same view of
customer journey. This requires a single resilient and robust CRM to provide seamless customer
experience.

2) Use of chatbots to provide real time value to customers

Chatbots give an opportunity to provide solutions to the immediate needs of the customers. It
provides customer care services for everyone right at the given moment. However, care must be
taken that they cannot yet provide solutions to high level problems. Also, customers lose their
trust easily hence the chatbots should be able to direct to customer representatives immediately
for high level problems

3) Customer engagement on social media

Every customer interaction provides an opportunity to impress. Hence company should use the
social media platforms effectively. This involves responding actively to the customers on social
media as a complain raised there is available for all the customers and even the potential
customers to see

4) Automation services for delivering great customer experiences

Automation can truly help a company get best practices for customer services. Many companies
reduce errors by humans using automation and allows the company to get high level of
customer services.

Some examples include gathering customer data, send tracking numbers and manage email
sequences based on customer needs and expectations

5) Use of AI (Artificial Intelligence) tools

USE of AI related tools

AI tools can be used by services and sales team to perform in call analysis of customer voices
such as observing speaking patterns, analysing word choices of customers and other patterns to
determine the emotional state of the callers to offer real time guidance regarding the customer
state of mind. It would tell the sales or the service person when to sympathize more with the
caller or give him or her more time to talk or slow down their speech. This allows them to handle
customers effectively and provide them with best of services

There are tools capable of building personalized emails in different languages and send to the
customers based on their buying patterns.

6) Removing time zone constraints with distributed support teams

Company should be able to meet customer service around the clock regardless of the time.
Hence a remote workforce needs to be set up and they should have access to technology that
allows them to remain in loop with the customers and also have access to the local team’s data.