Business mentor: Keeping track of customers

Q. I run a small business and we've grown quite rapidly recently. I've traditionally relied on a combination of notes, card files and spreadsheets to keep track of customers and prospects but I am now finding it difficult to maintain the information efficiently. How can I better manage my customer data to support the growth of the business?

A. Warwick Grey, small business manager at Microsoft New Zealand, replies:

Your customers are your most valuable asset - your success and continued growth depends on them.

It's well known that finding new customers is considerably more costly than retaining existing ones. Also, if you don't deliver a high level of service and demonstrate to your existing customers that you understand them, you'll risk losing them to the competition.

Rather than storing customer information all over the place, you can now turn to customer relationship management technology, or CRM. It can not only help you build and maintain stronger customer relationships, but also improve your bottom line.

CRM technology provides you with a way to integrate all your customer information and automate many sales processes. This means you will have more time to convert prospects to new customers and have the ability to up-sell and cross-sell your product to your existing clients.

With CRM, your customers and their history are placed at the centre of your business.

Consistent information about every last call, last brochure sent or last product ordered is centralised and available to everyone.

Now you may have heard stories from the past that CRM is bulky, difficult to use, expensive and only for large companies, but thanks to advances in technology, that's no longer the case.

Even a small businesses can now find an affordable CRM solution that is simple to implement and maintain and, more important, easy to use. It can even be integrated with your existing email.

So what type of benefits can you expect from implementing a CRM system?

You will get to know your existing customers even better and be able to segment them. This means you can predict buying patterns, identify your most profitable customers, and be more proactive in your communications with them.

At the same time, your staff will be more easily able to provide personalised service.

Let's take an example of a small hairdressing business that finds it has several appointments free one week.

Rather than wait for customers to come knocking, they could access their CRM database, choose a selected field, and automatically bring up information on every single customer who last visited the parlour six weeks ago.

They could call that customer and recommend an appointment, demonstrating to that customer an understanding of their needs.

There are several CRM options available - it's just a matter of finding the right one to help you build a loyalty that guarantees your business a place in the customers' memory.

For more information, contact Warwick Grey on wgrey@microsoft.com or visit Microsoft at the Business Expo now running at the Auckland Showgrounds.

Microsoft Customer Relationship Management

Business Expo

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Answers are courtesy of Spring - A State of Mind for Business.