Contact management is a vastly underrated principle, despite its relevance in competitive business environments.
Customer retention is arguably the biggest initiative from a sales perspective, especially when considering 65% of a company’s business derives from existing customers.
Loyal customers cost less to sell to, are more likely to refer you to friends and family, and ultimately buy more.
You can therefore appreciate the importance of managing your contacts.
Establishing contact methods which generate long term value is highly recommended.
We operate in a customer-centric business world where the power of collaboration has become more pronounced.
This can be channeled into the customer journey, where together a collective insight on customer behavior can be defined.
To achieve this, all employees must have access to customer information, to create a profile used to shape contact management.
This will ultimately strengthen the bond between consumer and company, through a tailored, personalized approach where companies truly understand their customers.
But what makes a good contact management strategy and how will your company benefit from it?
If you’re intrigued to find out you’ll definitely enjoy the following information:
Better Relationships
The modern version of contact management allows companies to store extensive information on their customer base.
This is achieved with advanced CRM software, which enables companies to collect and store data like name, location, email, age, gender, and industry.
But it doesn’t stop there. Today’s software is so good it can perform more advanced measures, tracking information like when a customer opens an email, when they click it, download content, subscribe to your email list, and when they visit your website.
This information can be used to create comprehensive customer profiles, which can then be used to understand what to market to customers, further solidifying your relationship with them.
Painting a clear picture of your customer’s interactions is a great way to better understand who they are.
By increasing your familiarity with customers and better understanding their needs, you’ll establish greater customer loyalty and build trust.
Deeper Insights
With contact management you’ll accumulate more and more information on your clientele.
The data will become more personal, more comprehensive, and more detailed, enabling you to gain a deep insight into customer aspirations.
Your understanding of customers will increase with time as you grow to understand what they’re really like.
You’ll learn their pain points, challenges, requirements, interests, and a lot more.
With this level of insight, by the time you get round to directly contacting consumers you can form an immediate rapport.
Data Maintenance
Contact management relies heavily on high quality data.
Data is everything if you’re to maintain targeted communication and rapport.
Without proper data maintenance you’ll run the risk of losing customers, and ultimately money.
Running the best contact management strategy involves effective data maintenance.
Customer information isn’t static, it’s subject to regular change.
People may change house, change name, change email address, alter their email address, and much more.
The dynamic nature of customer data is a huge incentive to update and regularly maintain data.
When everyone has access to the most up-to-date information, you’ll rightfully gain confidence in your customer relationships.
Customer Preferences
Customer needs and requirements should be kept on record, available for reference at any time by anyone within the company.
Consumer demands are relatively high in today’s saturated markets, so consumers expect companies to understand their preferences and interests.
Personalized communications are a real possibility when advanced records are kept.
Customer loyalty is achieved through tailored communication, which can be achieved as part of a multi or omni-channel communication strategy.
Timing should be addressed too, i.e. knowing the perfect time to contact customers based on the profile you’ve built.
When you identify how and when to interact with customers, you’ll have a sure fire recipe for success on your hands.
Increased Productivity
Contact management, as a branch of CRM, enables the automation of various manual processes.
This frees up time for staff to focus on core competencies, naturally leading to increased productivity.
Things like the scheduling process can be automated, alongside data entry and many other processes. This gives you an idea of how functions are developing as technology changes.
Freeing up time to spend on high-value tasks is conducive to high-performance, especially when there’s more time to devote to customers.
Less Expenditure
Implementing an all-in-one CRM will alleviate business functions like sales, marketing, and customer support.
This combined with greater automation results in significantly less investment needed.
Not having to invest in separate functions will save significant costs, while you reach more leads with less effort.
This notion additionally contributes to increased revenue, boosting the ROI for your contact management strategy.
Contact management seems set to stay, and will continue to develop as a means to helping companies not just understand their customers, but develop meaningful relationships with them.
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WalkMe Team
WalkMe spearheaded the Digital Adoption Platform (DAP) for associations to use the maximum capacity of their advanced resources. Utilizing man-made consciousness, AI, and context-oriented direction, WalkMe adds a powerful UI layer to raise the computerized proficiency, everything being equal.