What Can Customer Relationship Management and Innovation Achieve?
Customer relationship management and continuous innovation are often key to the success of a business.
 One company did a land mark experiment that proves for all time the value of customer relationship management. The company was a manufacturer of building products. Their customers were 45,000 large building contractors. Their traditional methods: publish an annual catalog, mail it out, and wait for the phone to ring. The company was very profitable.
A management consulting firm suggested an experiment. Let us take the top 1,200 customers and divide them into two exactly equal groups: 600 in a test group, and 600 in a control group. The control group we will treat exactly as we treat all of our other customers. We will wait for the phone to ring, and be very nice to them when they call. For the test group, we will try outbound relationship building. They assigned one customer service specialist and one building products engineer for the six month test. These two people called every decision maker, influencer, and products user they could find in the 600 test companies. They did not try to sell. They did not offer discounts. They tried friendship and providing information. In summary, what they did was to: Ask about customers needs including communication Follow up on bids and quotes Schedule product training Remind them of pricing specials Give product comparison information Give new product information & samples
What was the difference between the purchases made by the control group and the test group after six months?
The test group made 12% more orders than they had in the previous six months The control group made 18% fewer orders The test group placed 14% larger orders, the control group 14% smaller orders than before
In total, the test group bought products worth $2.6 million more than the control group during the six month period. The total cost of the test was about $50,000. How’s that for a return on investment? What this illustrates is the power of pro-active communication and relationship building with your customer and how it builds loyalty and increased sales. "When we combine customer relationship management with innovation it becomes even more powerful to build loyalty and increased sales." Communication about the status of the delivery is essential although we can easily drop the ball given our very busy day to day lives and the pressures we are put under with ever changing priorities. When we introduce innovation it makes the task so much easier. We become forewarned and therefore able to be forearmed using the SendReceived service. In the rare circumstance there is a problem we can implement a resolve far more quickly than would otherwise be the case. In many cases mitigating any impact on our customer. The delivery of goods to your customer is a crucial part of your business and is key to establishing excellent relationships. Therefore it arguably represents the single most important opportunity for getting the process correct. Sadly, it is often the most neglected part. "Innvovation can also help build relationships."The SendReceived service is an excellent example of how we can acheive this using a simple automated follow up system that provides for interaction with our customer and shows you care. Even if there is no problem with the delivery the automated nature provides valuable data on the performance of the delivery company. Also, a reminder prompt may stimulate either the customer or yourself to interact further e.g telephone call. This may lead to further discussion on products and in turn sales. Examples may include condition of goods supplied, matching of the goods to order / what is required, training aspects, other information etc. The combination of a customer relationship management philosophy and innovation can help build customer loyalty and increase sales. SendRecieved.com is a low cost automated technology innovation that can substantially assist towards attaining this objective.
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