When you talk to retail managers of large retail companies, what is interesting is that they consider their CRM more critical than the Point of Sale Software. One of the first questions they will ask does it talk to Salesforce or IMS. We go YES as we have more integration than anyone I think. only then they are interested in talking to us.
These people feel I think correctly that relationships are the heart of any business, and this is their top priority. This is why we provide a CRM module free in our software.
Ask yourself this, does not every sale that is done in your shop represents a relationship. The more control you have, the more bits of information you have on the sale e.g. the customer’s name, the items they bought, how they brought it etc. the better. Bluntly these people do not care much about one of their shops in XYZ or the one in ABC, what they care about is the customer. They are spending big with loyalty programs which cost them about 1% to 2% of sales, to get this information.
Think back when you were much smaller, you probably knew almost every person that you did business with their names, maybe family members, etc. Do you think that this information helped your business?
Once your business starts to get over fifty customers, it starts to get impossible to do this with a paper note. There is too much information. Now what you will find is the information you require is scattered over many different places e.g. filing cabinets, computers, handwritten notes, someone memory, etc. and you soon lose track. Now you start to look impersonal.
Where did you put all the personal information about your customers – like birthdays, names of children and avid interests? In what file did you keep all the service issues and complaints? In which spreadsheet did you track customer responses from your marketing campaigns?
This is where customer relationship management (CRM) software comes into play.
It automates many tasks. The CRM does not forget birthdays, it does not forget that the customer is starting to run out of the perfume, dog food, photocopy paper, etc. and it knows peoples names. It puts all the information in one place, which gives you better relationships by helping you to understand your customer and the customer’s history and experience with your business.
I suggest trying our CRM module to try to get your business to grow.
If you feel after a while you want a bigger package, at least you will know more about what you need, and there is no problem with us going to something like Salesforce.
