subject: The Economy Sucks!... So Don't Lose Your Customers [print this page] The news is horrible, the weather is frightful, and you want business to be delightful.
What do you do?
During an economic downturn most business go through the usual motions of cost cutting and layoffs, and while that may help solve the immediate problem of too much expenditures. Additionally, slowing or cancelling projects, expansion, or campaigns will also solve the immediate problem of too many expenditures, but what do you do once you have done all of this and your sales revenue is still shrinking?
The good news, despite all of the doom and gloom, is that you can do something that will help you keep the customers you have and attract new customers; even in today"s economy.
The key is communication. Customers love it when you pay attention to them. How many times have we called a company only to end up in some automated version of semi-robotic purgatory without that ability to talk to a real human being? Did you think that experience was a satisfying solution to your dilemma? Neither do your customers. Ok, so if your customers prefer to talk to you (a real human being) and you don"t have the resources or the time to talk to your customers, what do you do?
Customers want companies to relate with them through meaningful and relevant interactions. To do so, companies need to adapt the organization to support current and future customer needs and then apply the right customer-centric people, processes and technologies that support those efforts. What is even more challenging today is that customers are operating at a lower level of income, debt tolerance and trust.
Fortunately, there is a solution that gives you the best of both "" personalization and automation at a fraction of the time, allowing you to focus on the most important aspect of your business, increasing sales by leveraging your current customers while in quest of new customers!
The answer is a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool. CRM provides the foundation for sustainable growth and enables your company to survive and thrive in these uncertain times. But perhaps most importantly, it"s the recognition that CRM is not about what your company wants; it"s about what your customer wants.
