Columnist

Customer Management 101

It is a difficult time to be a start-up, and in your first year, knowing the most effective strategy to managing your customers might feel like an impossible task. Each business is different, relying on the personality types and skill sets of the individuals who make up that business to create a strategy for customer management that is effective.

In this article, we’ll examine some of the most effective customer management strategies for start-ups.

1. Select the right CRM

Technology is your best friend when it comes to building up good relationships with your customers. Whether you’re a retail business or you operate in the services sector, a customer relationship management system like Salesforce or Zoho will help you track all of your interactions with your customer up until your latest contact, and then help you to tailor your solution to their exact needs.

Modern CRM systems aim to provide a single-customer view where every known thing about your customer – from their average age, to their likes and dislikes – is known. This can then be leveraged in a sales scenario, but it also ensures that the sale process is more in line with your customer’s expectations.

2. Review your customer journey

Understanding your customer journey is central to your customer’s overall experience. To make sure you set the right foundations in your first year, it’s essential that you complete weekly, monthly and annual reviews of your customer journey so that you provide them with the best overall experience.

If you haven’t already, produce a customer journey map and review real-world examples of your customers’ experiences against the map to see how far their experience delineates from your plan.

Now you can see the differences between the plan and the execution, you can use that insight to instigate transformation in your business that will lead to a more accurate customer journey.

3. Seek outside advice

Outside consultation can also play a helpful role in helping your business to manage its customers.

Companies like Capita are experts at improving customers’ experiences, reducing costs and speeding up processes. But they can also help in the overall transformation of your business to ensure you are well adapted to digital advances and working in a single-customer view.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Capita .