CloudWorks Consulting

Managing Customer Satisfaction	Mingle Magazine, March & April 2010
Customer Relations Management (CRM) systems marry innovation with old fashioned customer service.
Any business can have good products, a good management team, a good business strategy, and good employees. Without customers none of it matters. There are a lot of options out there for your customers to choose from, which means to compete you have to be better than good- you have to be at your best. Your customers may not always be right, but as long as your business has competition, they have the right to be fickle. With this in mind, three key concepts can help you gain new customers, and keep them.
Every employee is a salesperson.
Consider how your employees are reflecting your business. Are they positive about the organization and their role in it? Are they aware of and supportive of the organization�s goals? Can they present a good �elevator speech� (a brief description that defines and differentiates your organization)? Ideally your employees are able to talk to someone from outside of your organization and excite their interest in it.
Every employee can lose a customer.
We�ve all dealt with bad customer service. We certainly recognize it when we receive it, but do we recognize it when we deliver it? You can be sure your customers do. The strength of your customer service has to equal or exceed the strength of your products and services, otherwise you can only hope your competition delivers a worse experience. If any of your employees are disgruntled and unprofessional they have the power to negatively impact your organization�s image and reputation.
Communication is one key to customer satisfaction - acting on it is the other.
Customer communication is more than just broadcasting. I like to think of it as both a conversation and a constant negotiation. Your customer has needs and wants, your organization has needs and wants, and sometimes they don�t align. Assuming each side has something to offer the other, a conversation can help identify what each brings to the table, while a skilled negotiation completes the sale. A good Customer Relations Management (CRM) system offers a framework for tracking your client activities and communications, and can be tailored to reflect your business. It helps you keep the conversation going � by helping you effectively monitor client needs, purchasing, experiences, feedback, and more. It can even help you access other pertinent information about your client and other perspective leads, for example, which trade shows they attend and where else they�re doing business. A CRM system ties an organization together and keeps customer relations transparent. Everybody in the organization can access what they need to know to best serve a customer. Let�s say that John (in customer service) speaks with a client today about a problem. In reviewing their client file, he�s able to see that it�s something Mary (also in customer service) has been trying to fix for months. In the mean time, Fred (in sales) knows not to sell that same product to someone else because there are issues, so he finds an alternative, compatible product. Susan (in engineering) is able to keep everyone updated about fixing the problem and Linda (the Account Exec) is able to use this information to keep the conversation going and the customer informed. The result is a positive, efficient client experience. In business, there will always be challenges but choosing the right tools can help you face them properly equipped. A good CRM system gives you the tools to grow your customer base and to make sure that the most important person in your organization � your customer � gets treated like the most important person in your organization.

Managing Customer Satisfaction