Customer Relationship Management systems (CRM) is a necessary tool for any company with more than a handful of customers.
When customers step into the breakfast shop at the entrance, the owner always remembers the regulars and their preferences. Greeted with a smile, customers feel at home and keep on coming back. Just like an individual’s interpersonal relationships, a CRM acts as a company’s institutional memory about their customer (individual or business, potential or actual) and their needs.
At 6 months pregant Ms. Li purchased the ice cream from mother and child supply website. This consumption history was recorded by the CRM from the platform. The marketing staff can follow up this record and send information to Li about products they think she might be interested in like a special offer for mom’s other maternal and child supplies. After about four months, the baby was born. After a few days, Ms. Li received a congratulatory card from the site and a discount coupon for baby milk powder. This is a way to use CRM marketing. Through CRM insight into the possible needs of consumers, you can actively meet and exceed expectations as much as possible and customers will never forget you!
A few years ago, Enspyre performed a phone survey of a large number of Taiwanese Small and Medium Enterprises. Only about 25% of the companies who answered our survey reported that they have a CRM. Please note that we even included having an Excel sheet with a list of customers as an CRM. The rest of them basically said they just have customer information in emails threads and such.
There are probably thousands of CRM systems that a company can use and some of them are even free. MUSA Trademark, a Taiwan Trademark Agent, uses the free version of Hubspot. It of course has its limitations, but for a small company it does fine and they are ready to update as soon as they feel it is necessary. With the CRM system, MUSA is easily keeping track of their hundred plus clients and their influencers in the Taiwan business community and the deals. Hubspot is then set up to be integrated with their website and an email sending platform like Mailchimp to make it simple for MUSA to stay in contact with all customers.
So you can see that having a proper system does not need to cost an arm and a leg. But it does take time and effort.
Maintaining the validity of your data requires ongoing maintenance/updates to your CRM. B2C/C2C can update customer data via web/community activities. B2B companies, in addition to physical activities (such as seminars) to collect business cards can also use telemarketing. Like your mama might have said, why don’t you check in once in a while just to say hi?
