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xstreammedia Gain market share by implementing effective eCRM….
xstreammedia
Gain market share by implementing effective eCRM. In other words make eCRM work for your company, fast and with ease, even if you don’t have deep pockets! eCRM can benefit any company or business that has customers, and contrary to popular belief, is not just for call centres or large companies. For most companies simply offering better products than their competitors is not enough. You need to provide a better quality of service to customers to ensure they do not take their business elsewhere. A company of any size can implement a successful eCRM system without breaking the bank to do so. These are the claims of xstreammedia who go on to answer a number of questions. Why do we need CRM?
The internet is here to stay. It is pervading business in every way, and we are seeing this in the development of e-business. E-business has already gone through two waves of development and is now entering a third. In the first wave we saw websites that were really just glorified brochures – content. The second wave concentrated on transactions – placing orders. The third wave is the most difficult, but also the most lucrative if you get it right, and this is relationships. CRM Customer Relationship Management means different things to different people. Most suppliers of CRM software will choose the description that most closely reflects the strengths of the system they have to offer. It can be extended to include almost any front office system. Companies should decide upon their own definition for
CRM.
In the process of finding this definition, focus will be on aspects of relationships with customers that are most important to the business. This process will naturally give a good indication as to what type of system is being sought. xstreammedia believes that Customer Relationship Management is about better communication with customers. Making sure that the right hand knows what the left hand is doing. To achieve this you need a database that links details of all customer contact whatever the medium, i.e. telephone, email, fax, web, post or face-toface meetings. Whenever the customer contacts you, whoever responds will know exactly what has been happening with that customer and respond in the most appropriate manner.
eCRM
e-Customer Relationship Management can mean using the internet technology to achieve CRM objectives to share knowledge company wide, or extending CRM to include customer interactions taking place over the internet. xstreammedia believes it is both. Additionally, eCRM should allow you to take a proactive role so you can help customers before they know they need help. For instance, if someone is filling in a form on your website but they get stuck, there should be a mechanism that allows them to ask for live interactive help.
What are the benefits of eCRM
Market and customer intelligence eCRM will integrate all sources of information about customers into one easily accessible place. This enables businesses to see an accurate picture of their customer base, giving a solid foundation from which to take strategic decisions about market segmentation and sales channels. Projections from Datamonitor show that the way we communicate with customers is undergoing huge change. Systems used to track customers need to reflect new methods of communication like web chat, collaborative browsing and voice over IP telephony.
Turns browsers into buyers
Figures issued recently by the government show that UK SMEs (Small and Medium-sized Enterprises) are leading Europe in the use of e-commerce. If your organisation is using the internet to contact your customers or you are planning to do so, turning browsers into buyers is going to be one of your biggest challenges. Research indicates that only 2 per cent of browsers ever get around to buying. If you could increase that figure by just 1 per cent you would double your sales.
More repeat business at a lower cost
By giving your customers high-quality after-sales service you build customer loyalty and perceived added value for your brand. This leads to increased repeat business and prevents customers moving to competitors. This in turn means that each customer becomes more profitable, particularly when compared to the high cost of finding new customers.
Streamline your e-commerce operation
Thirty-one per cent of people find websites confusing. If you add to this the fact that most sites do not respond to e-mail within 24 hours, it is no surprise that people do not complete their online purchases in the majority of cases. Gaining a market share in the online shopping world is going to be very lucrative. Companies invest time and money developing a website that reflects their individuality and this in itself can lead to confusion as every website is different. People surfing at home often have only one phone line. This means that if they want to ask a question they have to drop the connection in order to make a telephone call. In practice they probably just won’t bother. eCRM will enable you to ‘chat’ to visitors to your site whilst they are online either by means of a virtual agent, text-based web chat, or utilising voice over IP to speak directly via their PC. This means you can offer real time help to your browsers and help reduce the abandoned shopping cart syndrome.
So why do we hear so much about failed CRM projects?
Fifty per cent of technology-enabled CRM projects fail. The reasons for this high failure rate are: Timing. This is critical. If it takes 18 months to implement a system, then it will be no good by the time you come to use it because the market has moved on. Because CRM can be such an all-encompassing concept, projects typically become very complicated as more and more issues are uncovered as it goes along. Time constraints add to the pressure, sometimes meaning that parts of the project are left out or glossed over. It is vital to know what you want to achieve in advance and allow enough time. Then you need to find the simplest, scaleable solution that will allow you to meet those objectives within your timescales. Integration. One of the main attractions of implementing a CRM system is so staff can have access to all customer data from within one system. This usually means integrating to all the legacy systems that your business is already using. The biggest challenge here is to integrate the CRM system with the website and software that supports other channels of communication. Customers should be able to use each channel interchangeably and at the same time, without having to explain who they are and what they want each time. Finding a CRM package that can easily export and import data from and to other systems will overcome this problem. Instead of trying to replace all systems with one huge one, it is better to find a system that will glue them all together and can be implemented in bite-sized chunks. Only one department buys in. One department in isolation will not be able to implement a true CRM system. CRM is not just a marketing tool! It covers all staff that are customer facing, including sales, marketing and customer support as well as IT. To ensure a project is successful you need representatives from all of these areas, as well as board level commitment.
What’s the answer?
Solutions for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises. You don’t have to be a large corporate to want to get more profitable business from existing customers. You may have all the same challenges in terms of sharing customer knowledge across the organisation, but the solution can be a lot simpler and a lot more cost effective.
How can XeRM help?
XeRM is the latest eCRM solution from xstreammedia, designed specifically for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). XeRM is a modular product which means that you can choose the combination of functionality that exactly fits your requirements – you don’t have to buy the whole system. XeRM consists of the following modules:
call management
CTI to desktop
E-mail management
electronic facsimile processing
web chat
web collaboration
customer profiling
remote data access
database integration
Frequently asked questions
What if I don’t even have a customer database? In many ways this is good news, because it means that you can start from scratch. The tools supplied with XeRM can build databases very simply and quickly. What if I don’t have a website? You can still benefit from the CRM aspects of XeRM and if/when you are ready to deploy your website, the system you have will be ready to incorporate the new channels of communication from your customers and partners from day one. How much should I budget for? The main server software will cost around £10,000 to £15,000. After that you need to allow around £1,000 per concurrent user. Concurrent user licences are based on the number of people that are logged in using the system at any one time. Most CRM packages are licensed by number of seats. This is the absolute number of people that will have access to the system and will obviously be a much higher number – one of the reasons that traditional CRM systems can be so expensive.
Questions
1 Currently xstreammedia’s promotion is through the electronic media. They know that they are ‘ahead of the game’ in developments in this field. They are considering using some form of sales representation to boost sales and have asked you to provide guidelines in the form of a report as to how such a salesforce should be recruited, trained and incentivised.
2 They are also considering other kinds of promotional campaigns and have sought your advice as to whether this should be based on a ‘push’ or a ‘pull’ strategy. Advise the company and give justification for this advice.
