How to Manage CRM

It is important to obtain an accurate measure of your customer relationships in order to manage them.

There are several ways to manage and improve an organization's relationship with its customers. One of the most efficient Customer Relationship Management (CRM) techniques is through the use of key performance indicators also called KPIs. KPIs may be used to determine which activities are effective when it comes to improving relationships with customers and which are not.

Things You'll Need

• Excel Spreadsheet

Instructions

1. 

   Customer feedback is always important.

   Establish which performance factors have the greatest impact on customer relationships. In most cases, it may be the customers themselves who can most accurately inform of how effective customer relationships are at present. Develop surveys for both customers and employees in order to determine which factors are the most important. Document all data in an Excel spreadsheet for future reference.

2. 

   Find out how many customers visit your business.

   Determine how many customers visit the business. This is one of the most important performance factors to consider. Get actual head counts over a period of time and record the information in your spreadsheets. A key component of customer relationship management is to increase traffic to the business. It is important to know how much traffic the business started out with before determining whether the CRM techniques are effective.

3. 

   How often do customers visit?

   Analyze traffic data to establish how many customers are repeat customers, as well as how often they frequent the business. Building customer loyalty is the ultimate goal of CRM. If the business is online, tracking customers is fairly easy through Web host provided traffic data. Brick and mortar business have to take a different approach. Surveys that reward customers with coupons, data collection of zip codes and phone numbers at point or purchase, or providing a sign-up sheet for a mailing list to inform customers of special offers are all ways to establish customer data for a brick and mortar business.

4. 

   Analyze the data.

   Search data for trends or customer concerns that may pop up repeatedly. Establish priorities and address those first. Once the most important KPIs have been established, it should be relatively simple to measure and improve customer relationships on an ongoing basis.

5. 

   Track your results over time.

   Evaluate the CRM program on an ongoing basis. Continue to collect and analyze data. While some CRM initiatives may work long-term, others will only be effective for short periods of time or during specific times of the year. It is vital for a CRM program to be a long term part of the overall change management process in order to ensure long term results.

References

• CRM Scorecard: How to Manage CRM Efficiently with KPIs

Resources

• Destination CRM: CRM Magazine
• KPI: KPI Library