Customer relationship management (CRM) refers to the art of managing the organisation’s relationship with the customers and prospective clients. In simple terms, CRM includes various strategies and techniques to maintain a healthy relationship with an organisation’s existing as well as potential customers. It is essential Organisations ensure customers are satisfied with their products and services for higher customer retention in the long-run. A satisfied customer brings ten new customers with them, where a dissatisfied customer takes away ten customers along with them as well.
1. Content is Still King
Many organisations (big and small) still struggle with managing their websites and keeping it fresh with new and relevant content. They also often fail to meet Google’s Quality Score guidelines, which power Google’s AdWords. Customers are now much more sophisticated which means that brands (organisations) need content that is interesting and relevant on all platforms, in order to make that emotional and rational connection that is necessary for engagement. Consumers expect educative, in-depth information and they want it now, which many brands struggle to keep up.
For this reason, marketers are creating shareable content and microsites to highlight products and promotions, but also deliver targeted messages around relevant topics to support the buying stages of the customer.
Some brands are finding that content can be four times more effective than a traditional marketing campaign and therefore are geared towards digital content channels.
2. Customer Service and Meeting Customer Experience
According to google now, the customer’s life is being divided by Micro-moments and this occur when people reflexively turn to a device – increasingly a smartphone – to act on a need to learn something, do something, discover something, watch something, or buy something. They are intent-rich moments when decisions are made and preferences shaped. With all this is the digital space organisations/brands now need to preside at all the possible touch points of the customer journey and optimise what works best for their business.
According to McKinsey, 70% of a customer’s buying experience is based on how the customer feels they are treated and with word of mouth, being a power tool for your brand – meeting customer expectation with a good customer service would lead to customer loyalty plus referral business.
The key to satisfying the empowered customer is offering a holistic experience across all company touch points and developing the infrastructure that allows for knowledge sharing and smart communication is essential. Most smart organisations will streamline or eliminate the transactional parts of the customer experience that they think don’t add to the customer experience, they just get in the way.
Although, customer loyalty is directly correlated to the customer’s brand experience having trustworthy personal interactions both before and after a purchase has been made will be the number one priority of all customer-facing companies.
Marketing campaign strategies using engaging content creation, loyalty programs and gamification will continue to play an integral role in the customer experience development, but so will initiatives that enable a holistic experience.
3. Geo-location Technology
Geo-location is the identification or estimation of the real-world geographic location of an object, such as a radar source, mobile phone, or Internet-connected computer terminal.
Customers near or in digital kiosks can now receive geo-targeted messages and offers on their mobile devices – thanks to geomarketing. Various brands online can now, via mobile phone signals, track customer movements around and within a store location. Some smart online retailers can even identify repeat shoppers and keep a record of them in store behaviour on file.
With web beacon technology, it is now possible to push messages to consumers whenever online brands think they are relevant to their consumers based on their behavioural history of activity they hold.
4. Personalisation and Customisation
In order to get the attention and good engagement of your customer, brands/organisations would need to know more about their customers and use that insight to talk, engage and interact with them more often and more meaningfully in new and innovative ways (example mobile, dynamic content, apps, blogs and social media). Having static websites with no refreshed content often would no longer be enough; they need to be social, inspirational, and personal.
For example, the use of recipients’ real names in email messages is crucial now. The days of “Dear friend,” and “Hi Customer” are all obnoxious greetings for your email communications. Getting a prospects or lead’s name is one of the easiest piece of lead intelligence to gather for a customer journey. If they filled out a data capture form, at the very least, you got their name and email address, right? If not, you probably shouldn’t be emailing them.Most email service providers have the capability to enable you to customise your email messages with the recipient’s first name, so why not take advantage of it! Like it or not, 2017 is going to be up close and personal.
Most email service providers have the capability to enable you to customise your email messages with the recipient’s first name, so why not take advantage of it! Like it or not, 2017 is going to be up close and personal.
5.Omnichannel Approach
Omnichannel is defined as an approach to sales that seeks to provide the customer with a seamless shopping experience whether the customer is shopping online from a desktop or mobile device, by telephone or in a bricks and mortar store. Those companies that understand that the brand’s offline dynamism needs to be recreated online – that sense of discovery, inspiration and entertainment – will be the companies that survive and benefit substantially.
Mobile marketing is mainstream now and will continue to grow and dominate the digital landscape. Mobile will now need to be put as central and pivotal to the omnichannel journey. Encouraged by Facebook, we will see more on-demand services brought to messenger platforms. As mobile apps are the primary way people access social media. Start deliberation with mobile and progress the design up to larger screens, implementing strategies that touch the consumer’s browsing and buying journey. This includes arming the floor sales force with mobile technology to check inventory, place orders or make a sale and you would be laughing with your sales figures….
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