In a previous article, we looked at how customer experience can drive sales up (or down).
This post is going to look at how effective Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems can also be leveraged to boost your sales and build a loyal customer base.
CRM systems are an easy-to-search database that helps you store and track customer information. It doesn’t need to be complex or tech-heavy.
Boosting sales
Arun owns a delivery business in Colombo. He started out delivering dinner to customers, and now intends to expand to lunch orders as well.
While business has been fine, he’s facing competition from another food delivery business.
Arun has to overcome 2 obstacles. He must convince potential customers to use his delivery service over his competitor’s. And, he must create awareness about food deliveries to increase his target audience.
Arun’s competitor tells people that their prices are less than half of what Arun charges. They also have created an app to show customers the location of their drivers and answer customers’ questions during live chat.
The competitor gets more deliveries than Arun.
Arun decides to hire a consultant to help him boost sales.
The consultant observes that Arun hasn’t understood the target audience nor engages the customers beyond a sales pitch.
Arun doesn’t have a plan for how he’d like to promote his delivery services, either.
The consultant tells Arun that he needs to understand his target audience and understand the experience they have when looking for services like his.
Together, they create a spreadsheet to organize and catalogue buying behaviors of Arun’s customers.
This makes it easier to segment them by where they live, who placed an order with a particular restaurant, who ordered on a certain day and so on.
This helped Arun to find customer insights faster, and allowed him to personalize his marketing and sales strategy. It should lead to better relationships with customers and boost sales.
The consultant got Arun to run a survey to gather relevant customer data. Things like name, age, gender, email, phone number, purchase history, where they worked, job title, and so on.
Arun also recorded what channel customers found them through, and what stage they’re in: just looking, thinking about ordering, or ready to place an order from a delivery service.
Since Arun was planning to cater lunch orders, they decided to approach companies to gather data about the clients at those companies – in a non-creepy way, of course.
For example, they found out that one client had a new baby and doesn’t want calls during nap times, or that another client is really into a certain cuisine.
They got this information, so they can forge sustainable relationships with Arun’s customers that both parties will want and feel comfortable with.
The consultant then got Arun to invest in creating an app that allowed customers to place and track orders. The app was also built so that clients could receive personalized messages and promotions based on the data gathered.
After deliveries were complete, a receipt was emailed to customers thanking them and asking for feedback on how to improve the service. A discount was offered for that on future orders.
Arun also collaborated with certain restaurants in Colombo so that he could offer valuable combo deals to his client base.
Arun and his team were able to access, and update the customer data spreadsheet regularly with new data.
This, constantly updating, data allowed Arun to suggest future orders based on previous purchases, and his marketing team could create more targeted and relevant ads.
The consultant also showed Arun how to use the database to generate reports on which part of Colombo most orders came from, which restaurants were popular among his customers, what quantity and value of orders, total sales revenue, and so forth.
Within several months, Arun’s delivery service began to build more traction and outdid his competitors. His customers reported having a better relationship with his delivery service. His lunch deliveries were a big hit among the office crowd in Colombo.
We hope this story helped you understand how CRM is invaluable in driving sales up and building loyal customers.
If you’re running a business, and want to know how we can help you leverage CRM systems to improve your bottom line, check out how we can help you. Or contact us if you want what we have to offer.