Finding, Winning and Keeping Customers – Are you being able to do them all successfully?

Finding, Winning and Keeping Customers - It is a big and exhaustive topic to deal with in one blog.  But they need to be discussed together because they are linked arm in arm. Any small business owner who wants to fast climb the ladder of success and outdo its larger counterparts needs to equally work upon all these three areas. And thankfully all small businesses are doing this sincerely.

But the BIG question is, how much are they successful in doing it?

Earlier it  was observed that far too often small business owners devoted maximum attention on the chase and the sale and not enough on customer service, experience and engagement. However,  this did not yield good results. Because for the obvious reason that customer acquisition is only half of the equation for being successful. Customer Retention is the other half.

Fortunately we witnessed a paradigm shift in the mindset and came the new breed of business owners who vowed to pay balanced attention on Finding, Winning and Keeping Customers. Great!! So was this a happy ending?? (You wish)

The grave mistake of implementing standalone applications

In the rush to attract and retain customers, small business owners hastily invested on multiple standalone sales, marketing and customer support systems  at different points in time.

What was the outcome?

These applications turned out to be the chewing gum that is sweet initially but soon loses its taste and becomes flavorless.  These applications handled short-term needs but held the company back from growing efficiently over the long term. After a brief period of benefits, businesses found themselves stuck in a poorly planned architecture.

These disparate business software systems did not gel together. Each system functioned independently, compelling the business to work in siloed watertight departments. It took hours for one piece of data to get shared among different teams. Staff got the headache of maintaining and referring to multiple databases while the business got trapped in a thick software web.

Instead of focusing on customer identification, acquisition and retention, small business owners found themselves grappling with business process inefficiencies and software integration challenges. This tangled web of siloed software systems reduced the flexibility and productivity of the businesses and slowed down their growth.

Customer acquisition became minimal while retention of the existing customers also came under the scanner.  That is because the presence of siloed software systems accelerated customer churn.

For instance, customer support agents had to sift through mounds of data to reconcile any piece of information for the customer. Delay in service for one or two occasions were excused. However, soon customers got irritated that the support agents couldn't get issues resolved in a timely manner. Satisfaction level got lowered and customers contemplated of switching their association elsewhere.

Customer Acquisition and Retention from a single, integrated solution

The above-mentioned plight experienced by small businesses has acted as an eye-opener to the remaining SMBs. And as expected, there has been a major shift in the approach and attitude. While SMBs are still as driven as before (or perhaps more) towards customer engagement – they have become wiser.

Key changes noticed in SMBs towards Customer Engagement:

1. Customer Care Officer: Many SMBs have appointed a Customer Care Officer, in charge of mapping the customer journey and designing transformational customer experiences. These officers coordinate and collaborate with sales, marketing and service departments to get insights and include structural processes that foster moving on to the next stage smoothly. This new role in customer management generates value and empowers SMBs to have a tighter grasp on the customers.

2. Long-term Perspective: Small businesses have adopted a long-term perspective in customer engagement, FINALLY!! The old-school thinking to concentrate on solving just the immediate customer problems has been dissolved.  Small business owners have realized that functioning in a survival mode will not work, especially if they aim to stay ahead of the competition and transform themselves into a customer-centric company. So SMB owners have broadened their focus which involves tackling immediate customer challenges as well as capitalizing upon long-term customer engagement opportunities.

3. CRM: Small businesses have invested on new-age technology to support their organization-wide customer engagement strategies. However, this time instead of spending on multiple cheap software solutions and integrating them together – they have opted for one centralized solution i.e. CRM.  And the benefits of doing this have been galore:

• Cost Effective - New-age CRM software solutions function as a comprehensive business management platform that provides all the functionalities of the disparate solutions. That means, be it sales, marketing or customer service – SMBs can do all from one source point.  It is a BIG advantage for them since they face financial constraints.
• Single Repository – CRMs have given small businesses a comprehensive view of the customer for delivering a smooth and seamless experience. Irrespective of how many channels customers choose to interact, under no circumstance agents have to ask customers to repeat information that they have already provided.

CRM centralizes and orchestrates all mobile, web and contact center interactions that occur throughout the customer journey. As a consequence of which, sales, marketing and customer support professionals are successful in achieving a 360-degree view of the customers from the CRM and deliver proactive high quality and better managed customer experiences.

Customers switching channels is no longer a pressing concern to the SMBs because they know their agents can get a complete view of the customer in the CRM, to quickly judge the context of the current interaction.

In short - Finding, Winning and Keeping Customers, its all a piece of cake for the SMBs now.