Customer relationship management (CRM), is a process businesses use to keep track of customer contact. CRM can include tasks such as making follow-up phone calls, sending promotional emails and inviting clients to webinars. Loyal customers are those who give the same place repeat business because they are satisfied with the products and how they are treated. There is a connection between CRM and customer loyalty, because having a superb CRM process can help a business have higher customer satisfaction.
Companies can measure how CRM and customer loyalty go hand in hand in their business by conducting what is known as an A/B test. A sales team divides a list of recent customers in half and one team waits a week to conduct a follow-up phone call with clients. The other team waits only a day to conduct a follow-up phone call with clients. A week later, both groups are sent a survey regarding their overall happiness with the company. It is likely that those who got a follow-up call sooner will give the company a higher rating and will be more likely to buy another product from the same company.
Loyal customers like to be kept in touch with and offered special perks. Having a CRM system with tracking features can help a marketing and sales team see which customers have received what offers. CRM and customer loyalty specialists can use software to figure out what time of day specific customers tend to open their email and which campaigns consumers opened or deleted from their email boxes. Using these results, marketers can begin to send customers only the types of emails they like at the time of day they prefer, leading to a higher level of customer loyalty and satisfaction.
Keeping notes on a customer and remembering things about him or her is another way to keep a customer loyal. CRM and customer loyalty professionals can use a CRM platform to do just this. Every time a sales associate ends a call, he or she should make notes in the system regarding issues such as whether a customer wants to be called back in three months to discuss an upgrade or needs to reschedule an appointment because he or she is going on vacation. This way, when a reminder comes across a sales associate's desk to call a specific client back, the associate can reference what was discussed in the last conversation — something many customers will find thoughtful and impressive.
