How do you measure the success of your business?
Revenue generated in a year?
Profit Margins?
The number of customers?
Even though all these factors are essential to determine the success of any business, let’s not forget the driving force behind all these factors; customer satisfaction.
Any business owner, sales, or marketing person would be well aware of the term “customer satisfaction.” The word itself is pretty self-explanatory and symbolizes how happy and satisfied customers are with the products, services, communication, and after-sales support of any business.
That being said, customer satisfaction or the level of satisfaction is not just based on how good your products or services are, instead it is based on the entire experience a customer has from the moment he enters the sales cycle till the very end of it.
The stages of the sales cycle typically include
Awareness stage: where someone gets to know about your business or products/services for the first time.
Interest stage: he/she becomes interested in your product/service and shows interest by searching for you on the internet or visiting your website. This is a stage where your potential customers are first classified as “leads.”
Consideration stage: this is where your leads are actively looking to buy your products but are also exploring your competitors to find the best solution.
Preference stage: your leads become a prospect as they prefer you over competitors. They take actions like hitting the contact us button, filling contact forms, scheduling calls, etc.
Purchase stage: when your prospect finally buys your products and becomes a “customer.”
These are the five major stages any customer goes through once he enters the sales cycle.
Customer satisfaction requires keeping your customer happy in each of these stages.
Now the question is since business usually deals with multiple leads at once then how do they deliver satisfaction to each one of them?
The answer to this question lies within the treasure box of technology; customer relationship management software, popularly known as CRM software. But what is a CRM exactly apart from being a buzzword and how can it contribute to customer satisfaction? Let’s unveil in our upcoming sections:
So a customer relationship management system or more popularly known as CRM is a digital solution or software that can be used by businesses to effectively manage their relationship with their customers. Now as we have already discussed, customer relationship management is multi-dimensional. On every level of the sales funnel, there’s a need for a different type of communication and relationship-building with customers. CRM software assists your sales team to effectively communicating with your target customers at each level of the sales funnel by providing them with necessary information.
Using a CRM system has numerous benefits for businesses and customer satisfaction is one of them.
Wondering how CRM systems can help with customer satisfaction? Here are some of the ways how it can be helpful in delivering customer satisfaction:
Communication is the key to customer satisfaction, especially the right communication at the right time. According to a survey conducted by Holmes, an average organization loses up to $62.4 million annually due to a lack of proper communication. Effective communication with your potential customers can only take place when you have the right data such as their position in the sales funnel, their demographic, their intent, the buyer journey, etc. A CRM system is an efficient tool for gathering all this data and converting it to valuable insights that your sales team can use while communicating with leads.
A CRM also helps in automating communication, scheduling follow-up emails, personalizing communication, and much more!
There’s nothing your potential customers will like more than personalization. With the help of a CRM system, you can personalize the conversations with your customers and leads. The data stored in a CRM allows you to use the first name of your lead whenever you’re sending out an email.
Interesting fact: 62% of customers open an email because of a personalized subject line.
CRM is a great tool to understand your customers. It stores data regarding customer touch-points, communication, products they have browsed, products they ended up buying, their movement across the website, interactions on your social channels, etc.
Your sales team can use these insights to better understand customer psyche, their likes, and preferences, browsing patterns, etc. With these customer insights, your sales team can approach the leads in a better, more convincing manner. It also helps in modifying the offers and tailoring them specifically to meet your potential customers’ needs.
CRM is the best way for consolidating all your customer-related data in one place. Your customer data is crucial for delivering satisfaction and therefore, it should be accessible for all your team in a single place. By having all the data in one place, your team can efficiently use it while communicating with customers, tailoring offers, understanding customer preferences, and thus assisting them in the best possible manner to enhance satisfaction.
Put yourself in your customer’s shoes and imagine how you will feel if you are suddenly bombarded with marketing emails, or go months without hearing anything from the company you’ve shown your interest in!
Quite annoying isn’t it?
Nobody likes inconsistency. With the help of a CRM system, you can deliver consistency to your customers. You can promptly schedule communication and automatically send it with the help of CRM.
So these were the 5 ways in which CRM can play a crucial role in customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction is one of the most crucial metrics of any successful business. And a CRM not only helps in improving customer satisfaction but also makes the work of your sales and marketing team much easier and improves their overall productivity.
When it comes to automation solutions for business, OneHash is a pioneer solution provider. From CRM to ERP, OneHash can help you with solutions that can help in improving your overall business efficiency.
To talk about our solutions and explore how they can help your business, book a demo call with us here: https://calendly.com/onehash/anand
-Blog written by Anvesh
