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What It Takes to Delight Customers From a Distance

Posted on by Matt Bernot

Well, here we are. By now, you’ve developed your fair share of new habits. Your customers have too. Like it or hate it, it’s been unavoidable. Seeing that we lack the ability to time travel, only one option remains—to march onward. To do that, you and your business need to start by addressing the elephant in the room: COVID fatigue. 

Listening to Others

You’re tired of being cautious and concerned about every minute detail of, well, everything. From anxiety to anger and everything in between, you’ve felt it all. It affects interns and CEOs alike. (Don’t forget blog writers, too.) Everyone handles similar hardship in different ways. Despite the global pain and hardship, there’s something to be said about the spirit of resiliency arising from this moment—when we go through tough times together, it brings us closer. 

Let your customers know you’re there for them, and they will reciprocate. As a unified front, you and your customers can not only survive this new climate, you can help shape it. Prepare to rush once more unto the breach, dear friends, because tough times can be conquered—as long as your business and your customers are in it together.

Your Customers Need To Be Heard

Odds are, your business looks little like it did at this point last year. Change is inevitable—but sometimes it is forced upon us. Businesses that have thrived during the COVID-19 pandemic have shared several commonalities. But these commonalities, in many ways, have nothing to do with their products or services.

During tumultuous times, communication is king—in life and in business. Successful businesses have been able to maintain an honest, productive dialogue with their customers. People respond well to being reassured that their needs are being met, and this is especially true when it comes to personal safety. As the world navigates through uncharted waters, make sure your customer knows you’re there for them. Delivering clear, concise, and empathetic messaging will make all of the difference. 

Your product may be superior, but don’t hang your hat on that alone. If the message you are delivering to your customers lacks an empathic and compassionate tone, your customers may begin to look elsewhere. Start by acknowledging and understanding the issues that your customer is going through. Routinely ask your customers what their concerns are, and monitor your business’s data to assess if there are any recurring issues that need to be addressed. 

Importantly, if you find issues, take action.

The takeaway here: show your customers you care about them. Take the time to connect with them on a personal level. Those extra few minutes personalizing an order or chatting from your business’s Facebook page will go a long way to retaining their business. As their priorities change, yours must change with them.   

“Be Water, My Friend”

Over half a century ago, I don’t imagine that Bruce Lee foresaw himself being mentioned in a 21st century, mid-pandemic business tech blog. Nevertheless, his insights are as relevant as ever.

Water is fluid and ever-changing—it takes the shape of its surroundings. It adapts, moves quickly, and makes sure that every crevice is filled. It goes with the flow. Just like water, your business needs to be constantly evolving to fit the world around it.

Since the onset of COVID-19 in the United States, 75% of consumers have tried a new store, brand, or different way of shopping. While these new spending habits were born out of necessity, many people began to willingly change their long-held beliefs about what products and services they were loyal to.

As a business owner, now is the time to take control of your business’s narrative. As new customer habits emerge, reinforce them—stay on top of the trends that will keep your brand in the forefront of your customer’s psyche. Monitoring, understanding, and acting in service of the shifting habits of consumers in your industry will allow you to stay ahead of the curve.

Invest In Your Future

As you plan for the remainder of the year and beyond, you’ve undoubtedly taken a broader and more detailed look at your business’s future than ever before. This year has ushered in the rethinking of your supply chains, customer transactions, and overall business plan. Your business model has always accounted for market disruptions, but referring to 2020 as a standard “disruption” is a dire understatement.

jar of coins with bonsai tree future investment

The only real constant is change—you should embrace this opportunity for change with open arms. Keeping ahead of the curve is key to the future resiliency of your business. As your business adapts and grows, utilize technology to facilitate that growth. 

“Companies need to leverage a systematic approach to strengthen the resilience of their current business models to ensure their ongoing operation during COVID-19,” says Daniel Sun, VP Analyst, Gartner. “CIOs can play a key role in this process, since digital technologies and capabilities influence every aspect of business models.” 

Digital technologies influence every aspect of your business model, and almost every aspect of people’s lives at the moment. Make sure that your business follows suit. Even if you are operating from a brick-and-mortar establishment right now, advertising, customer service, and—most importantly—transactions can and should be more easily handled via a streamlined, virtual process.

The Way You Say It: Managing Customer Expectations

Posted on by Scott Hammer

A few weeks ago, my local Motor Vehicle Commission reopened. Drivers had been waiting for months to renew registrations and licenses. New, hopeful drivers were looking to get their first licenses, a rite of passage that comes one year later for teens in New Jersey than in many other states. In any case, there were papers to be signed, fees to be paid, documents to be transferred.
When the MVC was finally cleared to re-open safely, they swung their doors to angry customers in lines that wrapped around the entire building. Occasionally several times over.

Who could have predicted such chaos? Such anger? Such an apt visual representation of the frustration and bureaucracy the MVC has been trying to shrug off for years? Who knew all of the customers would come at once?

Well, pretty much everyone who gave it more than a second’s thought. Customers had been waiting weeks for these services. But the organization had no process in place to handle the surge of business that was bound to come. What could have been a good thing —back to business!— turned out to be a nightmare.

Anticipating What Your Customers Expect

Many people I speak with have had the same experience ordering takeout, speaking with contractors, getting maintenance requests filled, ordering items from small businesses online. The list goes on. There’s a common thread through every interaction: people aren’t really that frustrated with the time a transaction, call-back, or shipment takes. Instead, they’re upset that there’s no communication about the fact that things have changed.

Increasingly as consumers of both products and services, we’ve become quite accustomed to disruptions and delays. We inherently understand issues with supply chains or that safety precautions mean we’re going to wait longer than we used to for a haircut, a sandwich, or a driver’s license. Really, all we want is to be told.

How To Communicate Changes and Delays

The other day, I went to order some music online (yep, I still do that) from Kings Road Merch and saw this message:

customer shipping delay message

A relatively simple explanation, with a peek behind the scenes, that sets my expectations as a consumer. When I read this, I say “of course, that makes sense.” I’m not angry, because how could I be? However, it might have been a different story if my order had taken twice as long and I hadn’t been informed. I’d probably have assumed it got lost in the mail and I’d have to check back in with the company.

The Small Business Advantage

Setting and managing customer expectations is especially challenging for small businesses. They don’t have the distribution and shipping power of Amazon. Automated responses are less common when dealing with small business services. And when they’re overwhelmed with customer demand, processes can move even slower.

5 Ways to Set Customer Expectations

We’re always racing in business, and especially in technology, to do everything faster. And big corporations with the most money may seem like they’ve won that race and made it impossible for small businesses. But the latter have the power of creating and leveraging personal relationships with customers. 

Even in a completely automated transaction, I’m struck by simple messages that remind me who’s at the other end of things. I go back to the last part of that pop-up on my ordering screen:

excerpt of customer delay message from small business

Genuine gestures of appreciation. Reminders of humanity. It matters less to me that I have to wait longer for a package to arrive. I’ve been warned. But this doesn’t read like a warning or an excuse at all. Because I know full well what small businesses are struggling with right now— we all do. Ultimately, I feel much better about giving them my business.

Customer Expectations Are Always About People

Many small businesses might be “Covid-proof” in the sense that customers will keep coming, and sometimes in droves. It’s a reassuring thought. But it doesn’t mean all businesses are equipped to handle shifting customer demand, rearranged operations, or new processes. 

The key, every single time, is communication. If only my local MVC had sent a message to customers in anticipation of long wait times. If only they’d have reassured us of their mission, and the fact that they’re a collection of great people who want to help. If only they’d sent it out before the lines formed. I wonder, then, what would have changed. 

We probably shouldn’t have to be reminded of these things. But the truth is, those messages bring out the best in customers and set better expectations. They remind us what business really is: people working to help improve each other’s lives. Even if it means we’re just trying to renew our vehicle registration.

Bringing Back the Dead: How to Revive Your Lost Leads

Posted on by Sharon Parker

You’ve done it all: you’ve invested money in a software system with CRM capabilities. You’ve set up your system to personalize the customer experience, so customers feel that you’re invested in them. You’ve spent countless days charting that customer experience with all the right touchpoints to lead them up the mountain. Your sales are up, but some leads aren’t converting – you’re losing them to the abyss. Why?

And how do you bridge the gap?

two business people on laptop

As Entrepreneur points out, a dead lead doesn’t necessarily mean game over. “Just because you lost a client, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t follow up—you never know when fortunes might turn,” writes Tina Garg. “[CRM] provides clarity on potential roadblocks in the process. [It] gives you the ability to review all your past deals and uncover common challenges underlying the same.” 

You might be able to resurrect those dead leads. CRM software allows you to master analyzing your lost opportunities, at what point you may have lost them, and consider how to resurrect them for potential future conversions.

What matters in the end is how you approach and re-engage those lost opportunities. You need to evaluate each lead carefully, and deploy a strategy that addresses the needs of each individually. 

It’s called resuscitation marketing. And here’s a simple 3-step process to make it work for you.

Evaluate Your Losses

Your first step in the resuscitation marketing process is to analyze the types of leads you’ve lost and categorize them.

crm software

There are several types of lost leads:

  • The ‘MIA’ lead. A client came to your website and left, or a client dropped the conversation without indication of their decision
  • The delayed lead. You can categorize this client as one who indicated they will purchase, but not until a certain date or time frame
  • The dead lead. This is a client who purchased from a competitor or opted out of buying

It is possible to have multiple combinations of these lost leads, by the way. You may find that your potential client came to your website, filled out a form, and never responded to your email because you took too long to get in touch. They went on to engage with, or buy from, your competitor in the time it took you to respond. 

You may find that other leads indicated they were looking for a specific time window to buy, and when you didn’t follow up again in that time frame, they forgot about you. Even if they start the process over again and your name comes up in their search result, they may not contact you—or worse, they’ll remember that you didn’t follow up at the right time.

“By understanding why your lead failed to convert and constructing an offer to suit their needs,” writes Jia Wertz for Forbes, “your campaigns have a much greater chance of success.” Segmenting these types of lost leads can help you organize your approach to each, and establish pathways for similar future interactions.

Find The Catalyst

The next step is to evaluate how to reignite the spark without burning the bridge.

crm software

Re-engaging lost leads can get a little tricky—it’s always a good idea to ask someone who has years or even decades of knowledge in providing great customer experience. We asked a few experts to weigh in on a successful re-engagement strategy. 

“If you accidentally let a prospect or lead ‘fall off the radar,’ don’t make excuses about how it could have happened,” writes Shep Hyken, customer service and experience expert and NY Times bestselling author. “Just be transparent. Obviously, apologize first and then let the prospect know you have a system that someone failed. Then follow up with the assurance that you’re back on track, and offer some value to get their attention. Make it genuine and personal. Follow up with an email to confirm what you talked about, and respond quickly to any request or question they have. Your goal is to restore confidence as you move the relationship from lost to mutually lucrative.”

“Engaging prospects is a never-ending project,” writes Christoph Trappe, CCO of The Authentic Storytelling Project. “In fact, today it takes like 30 touch points to move people along in the funnel. There are a number of strategies to do that. They could include: 

  • Easy sign up for email newsletters
  • Use of tools that allow you to quickly follow up with what previously was unknown traffic
  • Constant sharing of relevant content on all channels

“The last one particularly is a fine line. The line between spamming people and the line of sharing value can sometimes be easy to cross. I am a big fan of automation—once you have them in your email database, send them useful information on a regular cadence. That cadence feels personalized to them. Remember that connecting with prospects is a marathon – not a sprint.”

Rewire the Connection

The third step of resuscitation marketing? Use the advice you glean to resurrect your lost opportunities—now.

Rewire the connection between you and your lost lead and solidify your business relationship

Let’s say you’re the travel company from our third blog on CRM software. Your opportunity was interested in Alaska, and they started a conversation chain with you about seeing the Northern Lights. Your system pushed out the appropriate information, and your potential client seemed interested, but after a few conversations by phone and email they dropped off the grid. Eventually, they reply to one of your emails to let you know they’ve chosen to go elsewhere. That isn’t what you were hoping to hear—but now you have the catalyst to reignite your lost lead’s journey a month or even a year down the line. It’s all about your avenue of approach.

One approach to consider when re-engaging is your market—especially if you’re a service-based business and you offer more than one avenue of service. If you’re the travel agency in the example above and you serve multiple regions, you might: 

  • Follow up with them after the last communication,
  • find out why they didn’t use your company,
  • ask what attracted them to your competitor,
  • see what they thought about their competitor’s services (after their travel dates), and
  • give them reasons to discover something with you.

Your touchpoint email—sent a few weeks after their return date—is the trigger for a conversation on how travel companies can better handle their overall customer experience. You find out that your ‘dead lead’ for Alaska ended up having a poor encounter with their chosen service provider. You follow up often and quickly. You use your lead’s complaints and examples to refine your touchpoints. 

You follow up again with them—where do they want to go next? Iceland’s the next destination on their bucket list, and now that you know even more about your once-lost lead’s preferences—and how best to communicate your information to them—you nail it. They travel, and they rave about their trip.

You’ve regained their trust. They went because you pursued them, listened to their needs, and delivered on a promise of better things to them. And the best part is: you’re going to be top of mind for their next journey.

Conclusion

Sometimes the way to make a sale isn’t to do everything perfectly at the start—it’s to follow through when things get rough. It’s to regain trust and understand the pathways your customer has already explored. It’s about building a bridge with better materials to a different mountain.

So don’t snuff out your fires—let them smolder a little bit. There’s something you can do with each of those challenges, no matter what stage they’re at.

This is our final article in a series on CRM software. See our previous CRM articles to find out more about CRM, its uses and functions, and how it can help your business grow in 2020.

How Touchpoint Strategy Influences Customer Experience

Posted on by Sharon Parker

Customer experience is something that, when planned, moves mountains. 

It’s a lot like the relationship between guide and hiker. Point to point to point, up the mountain, looking for the next safe landing spot— until you reach the summit together. You turn and look at the path you charted, and your client experiences that pivotal ‘aha’ moment. The one where they stare at the beautiful scenery, and appreciate what it took to get here.

As the guide, you need to assess and visualize that view before you even start: 

business partners talking about all in one business management software
  • Where do you begin? 
  • What trails do you lead them along? 
  • At which points do you stop and engage them along the way? 
  • What do you supply your client with so they can successfully plant their flag at the top?

There are a couple of concepts that can help you with this. Developing an accurate customer profile can tell you a lot about where they might want to stop to see a particular feature. And anticipating your customers’ needs and desires allows you to leverage your experience to establish trust with your client as they make their way up.

But what are the transformative moments of conversation between you and your client that make the journey truly worth taking—that gets them to follow you?

Those moments are called touchpoints. A touchpoint is any form of communication a consumer uses to interact with a business. And creating a strategy around your touchpoints can make or break your customer experience.

Evaluate Your Customer Strategy

customer experience management software

While many businesses have disorganized ways of acquiring customers, strategizing based on touchpoints and deploying them via CRM can lead to the most successful and coherent customer strategy. Having an outlined strategy is also better for the individual customer, because you are giving them a natural starting point at the bottom of the mountain.

Creating a customer strategy requires you to ask some questions while you envision the summit:

  • What is indispensable to your customer’s experience? 
  • What types of touchpoints can address that experience? 
  • How will you implement those touchpoints?
  • What types of customers do the touchpoints you create – or that are organic – drive to your business?
  • Do you have multiple touchpoint plans plotted out for different types of customers?
  • Which touchpoints do you choose once a contact becomes a lead?
  • How do you funnel them toward a sale— what types of touchpoints will inspire their trust and continued loyalty?

“Linking your customer strategy to your company’s value proposition goes beyond lining up the right processes from marketing, sales, and data analytics,” write Thomas Ripsam and Louis Bouquet for Strategy+Business. “It means aligning the emotional elements of your customer strategy, and all customer touch points including pricing, with the strongest capabilities your company has.”

In a nutshell: figure out what you want your customer to experience, nail down how you want them to experience it, and decide what will best promote what makes you attractive.

Use CRM to Layer Your Touchpoint Approach

customer journey management software

When you’ve gone through and answered the questions above, you should deploy the touchpoints that work best for your company. This is the step after visualization, where you actually create the path you want the client to follow. Knowing how to utilize language that supports each level of touchpoint is imperative, because it helps to successfully create that path. 

Business owners can structure their touchpoints at the company level and at the sales level.

Company-level touchpoints set the public identity for your business. There are a number of touchpoints that can be considered company-level:

These are not housed inside of your CRM software. However, they can be utilized through the touchpoints available to you at the sales level. Sales-level touchpoints set the tone for the consumer on a one-to-one basis. Some examples of sales-level touchpoints: 

  • Sales agent-to-client emails
  • Phone calls
  • Newsletters
  • Demos
  • On-site consultations
Blog Writing

You might have user documentation on your website that prospects would like to see before they make a commitment with you. You can use your CRM system to send out targeted links containing relevant information, and record which agent-to-client emails your prospect opens. Newsletters can serve as a funnel for social channels or a link to a whitepaper. 

There are an infinite number of combinations and ways for your clients to experience your company through the touchpoint strategy that you create.

Conclusion

Designing the customer experience doesn’t require you to use all of the touchpoints at your disposal. Knowing which touchpoints to choose and how to structure the relative content is a strategy unique to every business. It’s what makes a great guide, and what consistently gets your clients to the top of their mountain.

Utilize collaboration with your team to figure out where potential contacts and potential clients are likely to encounter your company, plot out your touchpoint strategy, and continue to evaluate which ones are likely to execute your customer strategy effectively.

This article is part of a series on CRM software. Stay in touch to find out more about CRM, its uses and functions, and how it can help your business grow in 2020.

You’re An Expert. Do Your Customers Care?

Posted on by Sharon Parker

You’ve stacked your business high with experts in your field. When hiring, you’ve sought relevant experience and the deep knowledge required to really “get” what your business does. Because you’re experienced, too. The expertise you have from the years you’ve put in and the things you’ve learned is beyond valuable. It’s one of the biggest reasons people do business with you.

It’s great that you and your team are experts. But your customers don’t really care about that. And why not? Because that’s not their top concern.

performance appraisals

If you’ve ever bought a product or requested a service from a business and had your phone calls ignored, had an “expert” talk over your head, or been passed around between representatives, you know how bad that feels. You want to trust a business, but you suspect that, as a customer, you’re not their top priority. Instead, you’re putting your fate in their hands without any actual ownership of your experience. And you’re about to pay someone for that? 

When it comes to your business, that’s how some of your customers might actually feel about your team.

Fortunately, your expertise can be a huge asset to your customer base if you’re able to actually help them along their journey. Knowing what they want and need, while providing them with excellent customer experiences, is key. But you need the tools to do it— that’s where your CRM software comes in.

When most people think of CRM, they simply see a database for storing customer information. But it’s much more than that. Your CRM can actually help you harness your experience to develop a deeper connection with your clients.

Here are three ways to do it:

Give Your Team Better Access to Customers

business management software handoff

With CRM software, your data exists in a centralized place that allows you to consolidate your customer profile and kickstart sales. Your entire team has access to details relating to your sales pipeline. And with cloud-based CRM software, they can do it anywhere they need to.

That’s great stuff. But it’s the way you use your customer data, and how that information is shared among your team that matters.

Once a contact becomes a customer, your sales agent hands off all of the information they gathered through the opportunity stage to an account representative. Clients have ongoing needs that should be recorded and referenced by customer service at all times.

Your customers may have received certain information during the early stages of the sales process and not other information. You don’t want to waste their time repeating information, while leaving them in the dark on other things they need to know. CRM software enables your account representative to easily make decisions on where your customers are in their journey— and give them what they need in each moment.

When you make this process smooth, your customers will appreciate it. They’ll feel like you’re actually being helpful as they become more familiar with your business. Which is a good thing, because you are actually making it easier for them.

Make the Customer Journey Truly Personalized

business management software experience

Personalization is now the norm for the customer experience. It factors into everything, from the actual purchase of your company’s services, to how clients promote the ongoing company conversation. It is client-focused, with an emphasis on relationship-building.

Touchpoints – how a consumer interacts with your business – are the key to creating a personalized sales approach. A touchpoint can be anything—a face-to-face, phone call, website or blog, app, or a whitepaper.

Giving your sales team a multiform approach by which to make their sales promotes an organic method for personalization. Entrepreneur’s short discussion on the number of touchpoints vs quality of existing touchpoints is particularly relevant here: “By making both routes easier for salespeople, CRM systems can increase lead conversion rates by 300 percent while boosting purchase value by 40 percent.” 

Basically: the more options you have to connect with your clients in a way that suits their particular style or need, the better chance you have of making sure they get value from what they want. And that they get it from someone who is interested in making that experience even better. 

You’re creating a mindset for your customer that addresses their desire for a one-on-one, tailored relationship.

Automate- But Only The Right Things

On the surface, automation sounds like something completely de-personalized. But if you automate the right things, your team will actually be able to spend more time on building a better customer relationship.  

What can be automated through CRM? 

  • Data entry (example: adding contacts automatically from forms filled out on your website). 
  • Personalized email newsletter campaigns based on actions taken or interests expressed to a representative (welcome campaigns, too). 
  • Customer interaction, chat information, and reminders to follow up. 

Done well, automation can be used to maintain a flow of conversation between you and your clients on all levels of interaction, including the social sphere. The difference between the two is that automation is the step in between personalization and outward conversation: it guides your clients and shows them where to direct their interest. 

business management automation software

Think of the process by which a contact becomes a lead through your website: the contact browses your services online and decides to fill out your contact form. Your automation sends them an email campaign welcoming them. It then sends them targeted information about your services, and encourages them to validate your experience level. 

Maybe you’re a travel company, and your new lead indicated they’re interested in Alaska and the Northern Lights. Your system pushes out information about Alaska—along with a few emails designed to get them thinking about Greenland, Iceland, or Norway as their next adventure. It encourages them to talk to you if they have any questions about what they’ve received and to check what past or current travelers are saying online about their experiences with you in all four destinations.

All of that automation saves you a ton of time with a little initial effort. The mindset here is twofold: it creates the feeling of effortless conversation for both the sales agent and the client. And it creates the mindset that there is a path for the client to follow—that you’re leading your client through the woods past the scary wolf to grandma’s house.

Conclusion

You may think it’s hard for your business to get customers. But take a minute and see it from their side:

customer data platform

These days, it’s really hard to be a customer. There are too many choices, and everyone is posing as an expert. In the end, the business teams that use their expertise to guide the customers’ experiences while actually meeting their needs will be the ones who win.

Make your expertise relevant to your customers. And make sure you’re using your CRM in a way that uses your experience to help them accomplish their goals.

This article is part of a series on CRM software. Stay in touch to find out more about CRM, its uses and functions, and how it can help your business grow in 2020.

Transforming the Conversation: Using CRM Software to Fuel Your Customer Experience

Posted on by Sharon Parker

As the proud owner of a busy 3-year-old, I often think about the best way to explain…everything. Why he should brush his teeth at night. How to build with Lincoln Logs. What he should do when another kid at daycare takes the toy he’s playing with. I constantly grapple with helping him develop solution-oriented thinking. 

person looking at all in one business management software

Here’s what runs through my mind:

  • What will grab his attention and get my point across? 
  • How can he act on that information? 
  • What will allow him to tackle the challenges at his level—without too much influence?
  • How do I promote a conversation between us that is based on trust?


You can ask yourself a lot of the same questions about your business, and how to create an open conversation with your clients that benefits you both.

We’ve talked about the importance of consolidating your customer profile in order to kickstart sales. Now, we’re going to explore how customer conversation can fuel your growth—and meet your clients where they are.

Personalizing the Customer Experience with CRM Software

A scenario: 

You’re the office manager of an apartment property management company, and yesterday you welcomed a new tenant. Before they moved in, you gave them the option to remodel their bathroom and upgrade their washer/dryer. They accepted and are very happy with the upgrades, but their washer/dryer wasn’t installed correctly. They send the office a message through their online task portal, and you schedule their maintenance for the same day.

It’s the most painless maintenance experience they’ve ever had, and they send you a thank you. But you’ve got more up your sleeve, and you don’t stop there.

Your receptionist remembers the customer’s name when they come in and that they like the Thai place on the corner. The maintenance staff checks in regularly to see if there’s anything they need. And you keep the community well-informed through newsletters about everything from roof replacement to the starting time of Main Street’s annual Independence Day parade.

With service like that, why would your tenants choose to live anywhere else?

crm software experience

That’s personalizing the customer experience, with a strong emphasis on client relationship and dialogue. The strategy, while encased in a fictional example, can easily apply to any service-based business. As Harvard Business Review notes in their study on personalization, “nine in 10 survey respondents say their customers now expect them to know their interests and anticipate their needs…they expect to receive personalized recommendations that are helpful and relevant.”

Personalization is key to your sales approach, but you have to go about it efficiently. If you’re hyperfocused on handling each and every customer without a way to harness that information in a streamlined fashion (i.e. if you have to use 20 different programs to personalize), your employees are going to forget that your customers are actual people who just want individualized service. 

CRM software was built for just that purpose. It keeps you and your clients on track.

Using CRM to Establish Trust Through Relevancy

So, how do these actions help you attract and land new prospects online? It starts with establishing a baseline of trust with your clients and future prospects.

mental health services softwarae

After you implement a CRM system, your fragmented customer profile becomes synchronized and easily accessible. The question is: what are your customer’s needs, and how do you start meeting them more successfully? Extend your focus out past your marketing and really connect with your clients’ personal pursuits.

Here are some starters to begin personalizing the conversation:

  • Ask your clients what’s going on in their lives. Make a connection with your client first, pay attention to nuance, and take notes. How do they spell their name, and do they get frustrated when companies send them emails with it spelled wrong? Did their aunt have a cancer scare last month? Put those notes into your client profile.
  • Find out what they’re struggling with. Is there a piece of something they’d like to do that they can’t find a solution for? Why? Do you have an alternate recommendation for their situation that might fit them better?
  • What can you do better? Do it. Ask them for feedback on your services and see if there’s a way to refine what you thought was right for them.

Finally, ask for an update. When you speak with them next time, ask about their aunt. Did they end up trying the pho at that new Vietnamese place for their anniversary? How did that fix to the dryer work out? Show them you’re paying attention, that you’re a real person, and that you’re focused on what they want from you.

Push the Conversation Outward

Once you’ve begun building trust, it’s time to create a dialogue that revolves around your customer’s experience. You want to make it easy for clients to participate in your company dialog where it matters. And you want to use that conversation to reach new clients.

crm marketing software

Here’s a simple 3-step process you can follow:

  • What is your organization doing right now, 
  • Why is that relevant to your clients, 
  • How does that feed into the ongoing overall discussion?

In 2018, only 30% of businesses practiced even the most rudimentary forms of personalization, but that number has continued to grow. Personalization is now the rule, not the exception, and there are so many ways to get your clients involved in your dialog. 

  • You might create multi touch email campaigns through your CRM tailored to customers who are involved in local industries or interests.
  • Your customers will take the information you provide and answer you directly with questions or comments. They’ll use social channels to discuss it, and invite others to join in on that conversation.
  • Your interaction on a personal level with your client’s needs, as well as your participation in their online dialog, will prompt them to continue their engagement.The result is more conversation: a private or online testimonial, word of mouth and recommendations to acquaintances, and more clients. 

Tap the flow of your client’s conversation, and your client base will thrive.

Conclusion

Asking questions, creating a back-and-forth between myself and my son, and placing targeted stepping stones lead him in the right direction. The important thing is that it promotes his forward momentum and enables him to fulfill his own goals. In the same way, business relationships built on trust, commitment, and mutual benefit yield genuine results.

In their online review, your clients emphasize your trustworthiness, commitment to good business practices and the well-being of your tenants, and your initiative in recognizing changes that may benefit tenants. They give you the highest recommendation and tell everyone they know about you.

Eventually they buy a house to accommodate their growing family and vacate. Two months later, they show up on your doorstep. Son in hand, they’re holding the invite you sent them to tour the community’s holiday lights display. You’re showing a potential tenant around, and your old tenants chime in before they leave: “You’re going to love living here.”

The most effective things in business tend to be simple. Taking care of your clients, staying relevant to their needs, and finding ways to engage them in your company conversation at all levels is a vital step towards transforming your business’ growth.

This article is part of a series on CRM software. Stay in touch to find out more about CRM, its uses and functions, and how it can help your business grow in 2020.