C4-CRM

CRM

Aug. 07, 2007 By Gina Wu

What is CRM? It is Customer Relationship Management. Generally speaking it means customer service. As a business secretary in a trading department, I believe CRM is an important element in my daily work. I went to a lecture about CRM in Tainan city hall. It's a great lecture for free and I'd like to share with my dear fellows at Toastmaster Shin Ying club here.

You might have experienced these services as I have.

1. (operator): Press 1 for mandarin service, press 2 for Taiwanese service, press 3 for English service, press # (pound) to repeat from the beginning, press 9 to the operator …. Let's press 9 …..Sorry, all operators are busy now, please wait, please wait, please wait…..

Hang Up and call again… busy, please call back in few minutes, thanks for your calling, bye-bye.

2. (call center): Hello, I ordered some books 7 days ago but I haven't received anything, could you check for me? She said "one second, I will pass the line to a person in charge" --- pass to Sam (I repeated my question but he couldn't help) …. Pass to Linda (repeated my question, but she couldn't help either). Well, well, well, Goodness, I repeated my question for many times but no answer.

You might laugh at these kinds of service. Ask yourselves, do you like someone provide you these kinds of service? Not really like it. On the contrary, if your staff treats customers in this way, you might hire a staff to fire your customers, soon the company is closed.

Good service is a vital element to CRM absolutely.

Principle 1: Customer is always right. (What if customer is not right?)

Principle 2: If customer is not right, please refer to principle 1.

Well, customer is not always right or honest, sometimes they are mean and critical (picky), yet customer's need must be satisfied. As long as they are satisfied on our efforts and service, a repeat order is coming soon. "Repeat order" means continuous revenue and the company survives in good name.

How do we start CRM? Please do right things, for example:

1. Set our target right:

When there is a need, there is a customer. Pay attention to what they need, provide what they might need, not what we like to sell.

2. Treat customer right:

Make them comfortable while their visit, bring some local food, soft drink or souvenir to make them like home and we are family. We also have business trips to visit customers once or twice a year to facilitate relationship, a proper gift is necessary to CRM.

3. Listen sincerely:

Listen to our customers sincerely, put their opinion in our service field, in order to provide a better service next time. Most customers won't tell us about their complaint directly, only 10% will. As soon as a complaint happens, solve it efficiently, the sooner the better. You won't ever know how many people have listened to the same complaint from him or her.

4. Treat our staff or colleagues right:

No team-work no service, treat our work team as humans not slaves. This is for customer's good and for our own good too. The work-team is satisfied and then customer is satisfied properly.

Who should do CRM? Hey, it's not a duty only to the clerk, waiter or service center. No matter where we work and what's our position, we must understand "customer" means money ($), customer is our salary source, everyone should do CRM without any hesitation. Take it as our daily duty all the time. Once again, CRM is important to a business and good service is a vital element to CRM.