How do businesses leverage their Analytical CRM?

Monday.com

Different from operational CRM, Analytical CRM refers to customer centric analysis that takes place in organizational back-offices. Companies must be able to understand customer behaviour, reason for a particular action, the intention etc. and ACRM is what helps them with this procedure. In today’s market, ACRM aids in decision making by understanding specific patterns in consumer behaviour and information that have been gathered by different operational CRM systems.

Although there are many benefits attached to ACRM, it is necessary to keep in mind, a few areas that may help leverage it.

1. Convergance and integration: A company wide analytics solution which integrates ACRM and traditional BI solutions should be the ultimate destination in the marketplace. Usually the entire customer experience is broken down into components and assigned to different departments or lines of businesses which leads to challenges in integration. Systems and processes must be in place so as to collect and converge customer data from various channels into a centralized database.

2. Speech-Text analytical solution: Vendors across the globe are providing companies with platforms for speech analytics solutions by joining forces with text analytics solutions so as to deliver more robust and rich platforms that can integrate with a unified repository.

3. Predictive analysis: Predictive analysis is one of the keys to a successful ACRM program. Integrating this helps companies make long term decisions based on actual customer behaviour and trending data. Although it is an expensive affair ( around 10% or lesser number of companies use predictive analysis today), forecasting capabilites enable organizations align future direction based on actual data which proves to be very helpful.

4. Reporting: In today’s world, new visual applications such as dashboards, 2-D and 3-D visualtisations have replaced traditional methods such as raw data, statistics etc. Rather than having text and number heavy information, these modern tools enable users to grasp information and the context behind it, a lot better and quicker. Establishing a heirarchy of needs for loyalty programs and presenting data such that it is relevant to stakeholders is what companies should aim at.

Though these areas provide a business with a rough outline on how ACRM could be leveraged, it depends on the company and the kind of relationship they share with their customer base to get data which could help enhance their analytics.

References:

http://www.managementstudyguide.com/analytical-crm.htm

http://www.tgc.com/dsstar/01/1127/103729.html#top

http://searchcrm.techtarget.com/definition/CRM-analytics

Perks of Social Customer Relationship Management

Monday.com

Today almost anybody you want to do business with is present on social networking sites and owns an iOS or Android device. Both mobiles and networking sites provide ample access to data, which is not available otherwise and critical feedback on your product or service. Businesses sensed a serious marketing opportunity here and decided to take their customer relationship management initiative social, with an objective to deepen, improve and strengthen relationships with customers by being where they are and naturally interacting with them.

Social customer relationship management is not a new concept aimed to replace the traditional CRM. It’s basically an upgrade of how we manage our customer relationships in today’s time, where consumers are smarter, more informed and vocally empowered. In order to fully understand why businesses are adopting social CRM over traditional CRM, you need to be fully aware of the numerous benefits it offers to businesses.

Data :
One of the main objectives of any company to adopt customer relationship management is to ensure repeat sales and customer loyalty to brands, as the cost of generating a repeat sale is much lesser than the cost of generating a fresh sale. Keeping this in mind social CRM provides marketers with ample personalized data about their existing list of customers as well as prospects, making it easier for them to cater to these customers’ demands proactively and to maintain a strong bond with them.

Leads :
Social CRM makes it easier for marketers to generate more leads through referrals of their existing list of customers and capitalize on these, as personalized information about a customer’s interests, preferences, dislikes and behaviour patterns are easily available.

Feedback:
Daily one to one interaction with customers help brands get genuine feedback about their product or service in real-time. Feedback is easier to generate because it comes naturally to customers on social networking sites. Companies save a lot of survey and marketing money due to this.

Trust:
In the past, brands could rely on their reputation and market saturation to educate their customers because if you were the biggest player in the market, customers would rely on you for information. Over time that trust has shifted from institutions to individuals. Social CRM provides brands the opportunity to establish relationships and build trust with not only the customers but also the people they trust.

Communities:
There are many brands that are widely admired and enjoy unswerving loyalty and high levels of engagement from their fans. For instance take Harley Davidson or as a matter of fact the top motorbike companies in the world. These are brands that are appreciated by people world over, even those who know nothing about motorbikes or have no desire to own the product. Social CRM help brands create sustainable and flourishing communities online for their loyal customers and fans to interact with each other and to rub off their enthusiasm towards the brand on others. This promotes brand loyalty and repeat sales and generates referrals and new leads.

Social customer relationship management has been the talk of the town for quite some time now and has generated enough debates and arguments on various blogs and publications. It is only a matter of time before it gets adopted by businesses universally.