CUSTOMER CENTER

Syed Ali asked:


Managing your customer relationships is vital to the success of your business; you neglect your customers at your peril. With a small customer base and a simple sales process in a relatively static market a business may operate an effective Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution based on index cards or a simple Microsoft Excel spreadsheet to keep client data. In such an instance, a small business owner may be able to keep client information such as address and telephone numbers in their heads and know intuitively the value of a particular client to their business.

Once we move away from such a simple scenario, matters become far more complicated and require a more effective tool to control and utilize customer information and Microsoft Dynamics CRM recognizes this. The reality of today’s business environment is that we operate in fast moving dynamic markets where customer needs and demands change frequently. Businesses tend to serve a broader clientele while the potential market for products and services has grown geographically as the internet allows businesses to reach out to potential customers and prospects seek a supplier for their needs from greater distances than before.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM software is designed to allow any business to manage customer relationships in today’s modern world which requires business managers to be far more organized than before if they are to obtain the most effective results from sales and marketing activities. Arranging contact information into contacts, identifying viable prospects from that database and managing marketing and sales campaigns tailored to those prospects while retaining control over the process is not possible using simple paper based or spreadsheet methods without a great deal of expensive employee time.

Generating new business has always been the most difficult part of the sales cycle, so organizing contact information in a formalized manner allows businesses to target their business generation activities to where they are most likely to maximize sales revenue. Turning a contact into a prospect and from there to a customer is also the most expensive part of the sales cycle. Once a sale has been generated, that customer is far more likely to buy from you in future. Customer relationship management software empowers a business to effectively manage and control the sales cycle as a client base is established and repeat sales are made. Microsoft Dynamics Suite recognizes that customers become a very valuable asset for any business and managing the after sales relationship becomes a major factor in business success.

Microsoft Dynamics Suite provides an effective CRM solution that allows any business to capture and maintain customer data beyond the basic address and telephone information; examples of the information a Microsoft Dynamics CRM system will manage include a client’s sales history, particular customer requirements, and when it is to be expected that a customer will order in the future.

The benefits of implementing an effective Microsoft Dynamics Suite CRM system can be readily seen when a business starts planning and forecasting for future sales and business growth as capturing and maintaining customer information is not a static process.

With a Microsoft Dynamics CRM solution your business will be able to manipulate customer information so your business can see what is actually happening in the sales cycle. Taking a step back from the sales process and looking at the “Big Picture” may allow you to assess the overall health of your business, but it does not necessarily explain how you are getting the results. While diving into the detail may mean you can see what is happening with a particular customer, it may also mean you are not going to see the wood for the trees.

Microsoft CRM solutions provide you with the ability to assess at a glance the overall business picture and how that is being produced which becomes an invaluable management tool and is a key benefit of a Microsoft Dynamics CRM solution.

Jac Howard asked:


Are you trying your best to retain your customers? Customer loyalty is such a tough job especially for a small business. Why? Because you don’t have a famous big name to create brand loyalty! So, let’s see what you can do.

Initially, it’s wise to try to understand your customer behaviour before offering them anything. Otherwise, the effort of keeping them loyal can be a waste. You will need to analyse your customers’ buying behaviours and understand why they buy from you. Of course, they might be made up of different market segments. If you don’t know what your market segments are, you can create a questionnaire/survey. From the answers, try to identify and analyse the different segments.

Customer satisfaction

Be loyal to your own employees and they will be loyal to your customers.

Make your employees realise that customers are the reason they get paid every week. Perhaps, your business can pay the employees basic salary and extra commission for every single thing that they sell to customers?

Provide your employees with training, development and other customer service resources and they’ll be qualified to provide exceptional professional customer service.

Trust

As a small business, it’s very difficult to create loyalty program if your business itself is not ethical. Customers need to trust you and your business before any loyalty programs really work!

Customer complain

Many view customers complaint’s as negative signs for a business. If you can make good use of your customers complains, it can be an actual advantage to your business. Find out why your customer is not satisfied with your product or service, compensate them and make improvement changes to your products/services immediately.

Focus on your current customer

Let your customers know what kind of services/products you can offer them. Often, many existing customers may use only one product/service of yours, without realising you have other products/services which also can be useful to them.

Also, you can try offers your existing customer with post out/ email catalogue.

After Sales service

Contact your customers after they have purchased your product or used your service. This can be done in a post-out survey form, follow-up call or simply an email survey form.

Build up relationships with your existing customers

A Greetings card is another way of entice your existing customer coming back to you. Perhaps, you can send your customer a greetings card on their birthday, Christmas or New Year? This is to remind them of the existence of your company and that you still remember them. In return, they will value you and your company. It’s also a way to keep in touch and strengthen the relationship with your clients.

Use “You” as the customer perspective rather than “we”

If there are newsletters or articles provided by your company, make sure you mention “you” as the customer perspective. Your customers want to know what they can do or get from your business when they come to you. They’re not interested in what your companies or employees can do in general.

Extra Customer Loyalty Programs:

Your business needs to target the right market segments in providing customer loyalty programs. For example, it’s useless to reward your customers with baby products if they are not recent parents.

Membership program

- Special deals such as discounts, free deliveries or buy 1 get 1 free.

Rewards program

- Provide free / discounted gifts according to the amount of points your customer collects.

Create Community

- As a sponsorship : let the local people know that your business is part of their community

- Sponsor local activities or campaigns.

If you own an online business, it doesn’t mean that you can’t build customer loyalty programs.

Mark Ryan asked:


Ever wondered what made that software company you work for give you a trendy and rather expensive Nike t-shirt or why the pharmaceutical company from where you buy your medicines and cosmetics wants to gift you a beautiful multi-purpose pen stand? Look carefully, all these gifts clearly display the company brand and logo imprinted within a clear view. The t-shirt probably has the logo neatly embroidered on the sleeve while the pen stand has it imprinted on side.

Companies today realize the widespread appeal of promotional products which are available in the widest range of ideas possible – right from t-shirts to travel mugs to mouse pads and the ever popular hat.  

In fact, it has become a regular part of any brand building campaign to set aside a budget for offering promotional products to clients, employees, customers, dealers and partners. Giving away branded promo items is a simple but effective way of showing appreciation, giving rewards or celebrating some successful achievement.

However, there are many companies and business organizations that don’t like to invest in promotional products due to the costs associated with this type of investment. They probably are unaware of the wide range of benefits that come from brand building through promotional gifts. And there are endless promotional ideas which are affordable and that can do wonders for your business promotion.

When it comes to promotional products, companies and business organization nowadays prefer to buy them online as it allows them to compare quotes and rates of various websites. Discounts and accessibility to easily customized products is another reason for buying promotional items online.

There are a number of benefits associated with promotional gift products. Some of the important ones are:

Positive impression: The first and foremost benefit of gifting promotional items to clients, employees or buyers is retention of interest. If you give away good quality, useful and durable items that can be used by the recipients for a longer period of time, your brand will remain in the vision and memory of the users longer.

Motivate employees: Promotional products also help in motivating the staff or employees of your company to work better. Every employee loves to be gifted a usable and attractive promotional product as it allows them know that the company actually values its employees. Plus, it is the best way of saying “thank you” to your employees for all the support they have given to you.

Traffic generation: Another key benefit of promotional products can be noticed during public events such as trade show. Giving away promotional gifts helps attract more visitors towards your booth.  Usually companies attach a brochure or a pamphlet to the promotional gift to encourage visitors to become their customers in future.

Marketing new products: There are some companies who use their new products as promotional items. These products are used as free samples to make the product popular before making it available in the market. This is in fact a very effective and affordable marketing strategy as there is always curiosity associated with new products amongst users. When given away as promotional items, the new samples help give a boost to the brand visibility too.

Increases sale: Apart from helping in increasing awareness, promotional products are also useful in increasing sales of your products or services. By getting better promotional products customers or employees and business clients remember your business for long time and it is very much advantageous for your business.

Promotional products have typically been well received by the target audience and nicely justify the investment made in them.

Karen Johnson asked:


Having a good customer care system in place will put you head and shoulders above your competitors.

Your current customers are among the most important assets you have, they have already chosen you against your competitors.   As it’s more expensive to get new customers it is vital that you should be looking after the customers that you already have.  Many people make the mistake in a downturn that they should be getting more customers, whilst neglecting the customers that they have that can and will bring in your sales and profitability by keeping them happy. 

You need to put a system in place in order to maximise your customers’ satisfaction with your business.  A range of things can contribute to customer satisfaction but you need to consider:- 

How good your product or services matches your customer needs The after sales services your give How good you are at keeping your customers informed How reliable you are at fulfilling your orders Your employees professionalism, friendliness and expertise The value for money that you offer 

Every contact you have with your customers is an opportunity for improvement and increases the likely of further sales. 

There are a number of things you can do for example:- 

Provide a free customer helpline Follow up sales with a courtesy call Send reminders when services are due Give them discounts Customer feedback programmes Customer loyalty schemes 

Examples could be that you could give a free car wash with every tenth visit or a free product if a customers opts for the gold service. 

The big supermarkets already know the importance of keeping their customers and often reward them for their loyalty and their customer service is 2nd to none. 

How do you deal with customer complaints? 

Every business should have a complaints system.  If your customers are not complaining about anything, then there is something wrong. This could indicate you do not have a system in place.   If you have a complaint and handle it with courtesy, sympathy, your customer is likely to prove more loyal than if you do nothing about it. 

Things to consider when setting up a complaints procedure:- 

Listen sympathetically to establish the details of the complaint Record the details, together with any relevant material. Ie sales receipt or damaged goods. Offer rectification either by repair, replacement or refund. Follow up action, ie a letter of apology, a phone call to make sure that the problem has been rectified. 

Thinking about your customers by stepping into their shoes and giving them a good customer service, you are likely to get many referrals, so I hope you have a good referral system in place! 

Rosanne Dausilio, Ph.D. asked:


Historically, customer service was delivered over the phone or in person. Customers didn’t have many choices, and switching to competitors was cumbersome. Today, these methods are but two of the many possible touch points of entry for any given interaction. With all the options the Internet brings, competition is literally a click away. If, as has been reported, 65% of your business comes from current customers, then in order to stay in business, you best focus on winning the satisfaction and loyalty of those customers.

With continued attention on customer service, customer retention, and lifetime value of the customer, it is no surprise that contact center operations continue to increase in importance as the primary hub of a customer’s experience. The contact center is still the most common way that customers get in touch with businesses. In fact, Gartner reports 92% of all contact is through the center.

While much attention has been focused on the technology and benefits of providing multiple channels for customer contact, little consideration has been directed to handling the human part of the equation—training Customer and Technical Service Representatives to field more than just telephone communications. With the explosion of e-commerce, the need to reinforce keeping the human element in the equation is paramount. Certainly now more than ever before in history, customer-centric service is a necessity.

Twenty five years from now customers will still be human beings, still be driven by desires and needs. Virtual environments do not create virtual customers. Except for the simplest transactions, some customers still need to be connected with and nurtured by a live person. Amazon.com has learned this. They employ hundreds of traditional customer service representatives using phone lines to help customers with questions that cannot be dealt with online.

With the ability to handle simple transactions available by using sophisticated, self-service technology, customer calls, faxes, and/or e-mails are more complex, more complicated, sometime even escalated, heightening stress levels.

At the same time, research has identified the Customer Service and Technical Representative as one of the ten most stressful jobs in America today, with job stress costing employers an estimated $300+ billion yearly in absenteeism, lowered productivity, rising health insurance costs and other medical expenses (up from $200 + billion just ten years ago.) A recent NIOSH study reported that 50% of employees view job stress as a major problem in their lives–double from a decade ago.

Lines of demarcation have blurred and change is rampant in today’s center. Why? Because of our cell phones, voice mail, faxback, PDA’s, and e-mail. We are now more available and accessible than ever before. The lines are no longer clear as to where our jobs or projects begin and end—they can follow us home again and again.

In today’s competitive marketplace there is little difference between products and services. What makes the difference–what distinguishes one company from another–is its relationship with the customer. Who has the awesome responsibility for representing themselves, their companies, perhaps their industry in general? Front line representatives.

The ability of a company to provide human-to-human connections–back and forth live communication–continues to be critically important. The fact is voice is the most natural and powerful human interface, real time or otherwise. That isn’t going to change any time soon. To the customer, people are inseparable from the services they provide. Actually, the person on the other end of the phone is the company. It is no wonder, then, that companies with superior people management, invest heavily in training and retraining, reinforcing the human element.

Yet customers still leave. The latest statistics on why are:



45% because of poor service

20% because of lack of attention.



This means that 65% of your customers leave because of something your front line is, or is not, doing.



15% for a better product

15% for a cheaper product and

5% other



This is the good and the bad news. It’s bad news because that’s a high percentage. On the other hand, it’s good news because there is something you can do about it—it resides on the human side.

It is agreed that people, process, and ‘state of the art’ technology are what make companies work. For me, the people process is most important. After all, it’s the people who truly make the difference.

Never lose sight of the fact that we are human beings, not merely ‘human doings.’ The fact is 70% to 90% of what happens with customers is driven by human nature, having nothing to do with technology. Technology is meant to enable human endeavors, not to disable them.

Extraordinary service or lack thereof, separates the good from the great companies. As more and more organizations are turning to the contact center as a strategic player in the competitive landscape, it is in the throes of re-inventing itself to step up to the plate and become the heart of a company’s customer facing operations.

Empathetic Responsiveness

The ability to put yourself in another person’s shoes and see their point of view—not agree with them, not make them right and your company wrong—but hear what they are saying. After all, basic needs of all of us are to be heard and treated with dignity and respect.

I think of a call as an ABC process. ‘A’ represents the customer presenting their question, request, complaint or problem. ‘C’ is the ultimate resolution. Most times ‘B’ is either skipped or left out—because of metrics, calls in queue, or simply because you know the answer before the customer is even finished speaking. ‘B’ is where the agent acknowledges what they hear—be it upset, anger, frustration, or fear. Or, a simple ‘thank you for taking the time to call and bring this to our attention.’ After all, if a customer calls in to complain, you have the opportunity/challenge to turn them around. If they don’t call, and only complain to other people, you have no opportunity. Does going through ‘B’ take longer? Not at all. It allows you to move the customer to a more productive interaction and close the call. I’ve heard many customers repeat their opening paragraph (A) over and over, while at the same time the agent is trying to get them to resolution (C). Red alert! Red alert! Acknowledge what is behind the words and you will move them quickly to ‘C.’ I believe you can’t go from A to C without going through B.

If all customers wanted just the facts (and some do), they could ascertain the information online. Most customers (people) want the human interaction, someone to hear them, someone to care. A simple, “I’m so sorry that was your experience. My name is Rosanne and I’m going to do my best to help you right here and now.”

Self Service

When asked the question in a recent study, “What is the biggest barrier your company encounters to self-service effectiveness?” only 14% of the customers replied they don’t know about it.’ This means that the 86% who do know about it and attempt to use it (1) find it too hard to navigate, (2) can’t find the answers, and/or (3) don’t trust the system or the answers they do find.

Research shows that customers prefer to deal with companies who are the most consistently accessible. When customers experience a level of service from email and chat support, for instance, that equals or exceeds voice support, then and only then will they gladly migrate to those channels to resolve their problems and inquiries.

To increase customers’ satisfaction, be sure to:

1) Phone: Have a ‘zero out’ option on your system

2) Website: Have your phone number or a button to speak with a human

3) E-mail: Rephrase the issue in the opening paragraph.

 

Purchasing Process

In an interview with Delia Passi Smalter, the former publisher of Working Woman and Working Mother magazines, we found very interesting statistics regarding female demographics (Incentive Magazine, 2003). It seems that women are making over 85% of consumer purchases and influencing more than 95% of total goods and services. Smalter distinguishes the purchasing process women and men go through. The biggest one, she says, is that women need to feel more of a connection to the TSR; they need to trust the corporation and the brand. Price becomes secondary. Women take in a lot of information, including recommendations from friends and family, company and brand reputation, feelings about her contact person, and how the brand will impact her life. Not so for men. Men take a systematic approach, allowing outside influence to some degree, but mostly they are focused on price.

One of the most influential documents in the world, the U.S. Constitution, begins with “We, the people…” Yes, ‘we the people’ are what makes the difference.

Assassin Marketing asked:


An old school marketing tenet says that you have to spend money to make money. Sure, when putting up a new business or expanding an established one, you have to spend on additional capital as well as advertising. But in the current state of economy, you have to think a lot before spending. So, when it comes to advertising in this technology- driven but sagging economy, it is best to put your bet on online marketing than traditional advertising types- and here are ten reasons why:

1. “Branding” is out, and measurable return of investment is in. Traditional marketing is great for building brand exposure, that is, if you have a large budget for marketing. But for the small- to mid-sized businesses, online marketing is the smart way to go. When you put an ad on TV, radio and newspaper, you have to wait for certain period of time before you can tell whether your product or service is doing well. With online marketing, you can have a daily reading of how much of the traffic you get is actually converting to sales or not. With that, you can make immediate business decisions for your company.

2. Information in a flash. One major benefit of online advertising over traditional advertising is that you don’t have to wait for months before you launch your product or service. In fact, you can publish any information and content immediately and not limited by neither geography nor time.

3. Quality exposure. When a person passes by a billboard or sees an ad on TV, you cannot tell whether he or she is interested in what you are selling at that time or whether they will be interested in the future or whether they even noticed the campaign. However, a person clicks on an ad in the web when he or she is interested. With online marketing, you actually get your target market.

4. Cost-effective exposure. How much does a TV spot cost these days? Running a small ad in a paper for a day can already cost you a couple hundreds dollars – more if the paper has a wider circulation. However, not all of those who read the papers even read your ad. Some people just click to some other channel on TV when the commercials come on. However, you still have to pay for their viewing your advertisement. Even with pay-per-click (PPC) and other forms of paid online marketing you only pay for the views of people who are interested in your service/products. SEO is even more cost-effective in the long run because it could give you quality exposure for a relatively small financial investment.

5. Prime position. With traditional advertising you pay more to have your ads displayed in a place where it can be seen by the most number of people (Prime time on TV, for example or a billboard on a busy highway, etc). With successful online marketing your position is always prime position. Good SEO will help you rise in the search engine results pages for relevant searches, making sure you’re right there when people want you.

6. Long-term exposure. You can only place a certain amount of advertisement on TV for a few weeks, on the papers, for a day – but with good SEO, you can maintain the same site for years. However, online marketing can complement traditional media by providing directories towards previously made advertisements or those of other brands.

7. Online marketing is best for brand engagement. Studies reveal that among customers, particularly non-techie female internet users with children under 16, the Internet has a greater effect on brand engagement than print media, TV and outdoor advertisement. Brand engagement is one of the factors that ensure brand loyalty among customers. And in this time of recession, it is important to maintain buyers.

8. Online marketing provides insight and other interactive mediums. Studies also show that the internet also has a crucial role in the propagation of indirect experiences of brands through customer reviews. Online video directories for brands are a good example of interactive advertising. Customers can also choose to visit the brand’s website, or interact with the advertiser through other channels such as email, chat or phone. Response to brand communication is instantaneous, and conversion to business is very high.

9. Website users buy more online than average newspaper users. In Germany, Internet users are enthusiastic online shoppers, as well. Before making a purchase, either online or in a store, many German consumers research the product on the Internet. By 2005, online buyers rose by 7%, taking the total number of online shoppers to 27.4 million.

10. Product information. Almost as important for consumers was the search for product information. Research online was particularly popular wherein it came to slow moving consumer goods such as cars, domestic appliances, consumer electronics, mobile phone contracts and furniture. During this time of recession, people think a lot before they spend their money. With free and rich information online, people don’t mind doing a little research and reading some reviews and recommendations before they go and buy certain products.

Naz Daud asked:


Customer service can often be seen by businesses as a necessary evil, a burden on the finances and something to try to provide at minimal cost. To see it this way is, however, a gross oversight. Ask yourself what is the most important asset a company has? In almost every case it will be the customer base.

Customers make or break a company. Too few customers and no business can survive. Effective, high quality customer support can create an image for a business which sets it apart from its competitors. If you treat your customers with care, consideration and patience, providing a service which genuinely tries to help resolve concerns or issues, then customers are far more likely to return to your company time and again.

Not only is customer loyalty an issue which your service representatives can actively develop, but very often your customers are one of your strongest means to promotion. Internet technology today allows for quick and easy access to many thousands of review sites. Enter almost any company name into Google, along with words such as ‘review’ and you’re bound to find rating and experiences.

These can have a tremendous effect on how well you drive customers to your business, or drive them away. Customer service is the means by which your customers will be interacting with your business; as far as customers are concerned, your customer service is the business itself. Many large, global corporations outsource their customer support centers, and this can lead to poor quality communications. This is where smaller businesses can excel, filling the quality gap which exists.

From a customer’s perspective, very little can be as frustrating as the experience of having a highly enthusiastic, deeply personal and seemingly committed business woo you and persuade you to buy into its product or service range, only to then cut and run, leaving you in the hands of an outsourced, underfunded and less experienced customer service team. It can often feel as though the outsourced customer service team is put there as a direct barrier between the customer and the business.

Certainly it can easily be the case that customers perceive not one, but two quite distinct businesses, with the possibility of a third lurking in the background. Initially there is the friendly and courteous business, almost bending over backwards to be helpful and understanding, though once the payment has been made and the contract signed, this part of the business becomes unreachable. The customers are then transferred to a less technical, less responsive, slower and less capable business which is labeled customer service, and which pays little attention to the customer and offers little in the way of proactive help.

The two businesses appear quite distinct in character. This discovery can give rise to a previously unconsidered business element, which are those lurking behind these two faces, driving the business forward by portraying these two quite opposite and contrasting faces by way of a sales tactic. This can completely undermine any faith, loyalty or appeal generated by the first face that the business chose to portray.

This is a shame, because those few businesses that are able to maintain this same attitude through from the sales team to the customer service team are highly likely to engage customer loyalty through customer satisfaction. This in turn is likely to see customers recommending the business, leaving positive reviews on the many review boards across the internet, and helping to drive more customers to you without you even having to advertise to reach them.

Good customer service leads to satisfied customers, which can be the best form of advertising there is, simply because you can’t buy it. Granted, the extra cost of having in-house, fully trained customer service staff who are as committed and motivated as the sales staff will cost a little extra, but it is important to see this not as an extra cost, but one in lieu of your advertising costs. Good customer service is not just an end in itself, which is the mistake made by too many companies.

Good levels of service for existing customers will be highly likely to act as a form of advertising, bringing in extra revenue you would not otherwise have seen. Add to this argument the fact that bad customer service is more likely to drive not only existing customers away, but put off potential customers you might have had as a direct result of poor reviews and a low reputation, and you can see that in the long run, investing in high levels of quality within your customer service department can be seen as a solid and profitable investment if approached in the right way.

Sales people often have incentives, such as targets, number of sales per hour, and other such tables which can lead to bonuses. Customer service representatives often have no such incentives; perhaps there’s a link between the different standards of enthusiasm?

Esalestrack asked:


Customer Data Integration or CDI is regarded as the process of combining customer information from various customer data resources, of an organization. The information resources may vary company to company like shipping process information, sales process information, service process information and bookkeeping process information. Customer data integration is a complex tasks made easy by advanced customer data integration systems.

Customer data integration involves a collection of technologies and processes to track, store and share customer data. The major application of customer data integration procedures are in customer relationship management (CRM). CDI provides timely, complete and accurate analytics and reports that help an enterprise to enhance its CRM practices. The basic step in the customer data integration, the business automation, makes a company more flexible, faster and reliable.

The specific software programs of the customer relationship management solutions are CRM based software programs. These software programs help a CDI solution to identify each customer individually. These software programs track particular customer’s preferences, activities, transactions, number of visits, contact details etc. CDI systems provide accurate reports about each customer, and help in finding good customers. This feature helps the companies to understand each customer individually and design customized plans for each of them.

The major technologies followed by today’s customer data integration systems are Enterprise Information Integration (EII), Extract-Transform-Load (ETL) and Data Quality (DQ) tools. ETL technology enables a system to transfer large volumes of data in batch-mode. EII help in the sharing of queries among various devices. And DQ tools are responsible for tracking information resources. A range of other advanced technologies are also used to increase the modularity of the CDI systems.

The advantages of using customer data integration solutions over manual solutions include:

1.Fully automated business procedure.

2.Better customer contact management and lead management.

3.Specific customer database management.

4.Enhancement in specific marketing programs like direct marketing and e-mail marketing.

5.Easy sales tracking.

6.Elimination of duplicate and false data entry.

7.Time savings by automated processes.

8.Easy access to all data resources.

CDI solutions also help in budget preparing, trouble shooting and activity management processes.

The popular options with customer data integration solutions are open source CDI software systems and hosted or on demand CDI services. Open source CDI solutions come in standard formats and permit you to customize them according to your business needs. Thus these systems allow you to stay flexible with your business strategy in the changing business environment. Today there are many CDI software vendors, often CRM software vendors, offering open source or pre-customized CDI software solutions. The thing to be remembered when purchasing is making sure that company has enough technical assistance to customize the software.

Hosted or on demand CDI solutions are web-based customer data integration service provided by a CDI provider. This is one example of Software as a Service or SaaS. There are many on-demand CRM service providers who offer all types of customer data integration services, who provide you CDI services for a low monthly fee. The benefits of on demand CDI services include global access, elimination of maintenance cost, relief from mental pressure and reduction in enterprise working capital. Recently one another alternative known as open source hosted CDI service, which combines the merits of both solutions, is becoming rapidly popular.

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Pj Germain asked:


Becoming and staying customer-intimate requires more than building client knowledge and having expertise in re-engineering our customers business processes. We must offer more than just service. We need to maintain a broad product line that can be configured to the specific needs of a customer. It is important to know that an average product tailored to a customers very specific need is often better than the more advanced, but inflexible, product. Many times organizations are not obsessed by the leading edge; rather they embrace solid, tested products that can be tailored to fit their needs like a glove. It is important for us to produce unmatched value for our customers who do not necessarily want the very latest product – just the best result and help in obtaining it.

1. It is necessary to understand the importance of empowerment and the critical role of individual initiative. It can be summed up in a one-word motto = THINK. It is important for us to be disciplined in order to live out this motto everyday in our interactions with customers.

2. Client by client, we need to set targets for penetration, development, and growth. We need to use specific, detailed, and integrated customer data.

3. A challenge is to assemble, integrate, and retain talented people who can stay at the forefront of new paradigms and techniques that affect our customers business. Good ideas today are a dime a dozen. Brilliant concepts and practices are disseminated with stunning speed. Competitive benchmarking and best-practice studies have become standard elements in most organizations. But what is still in short supply, is the ability to effect change, to get things implemented, to make things happen. That is the value provided by being a customer- intimate company. Proof of our value is found only in results. The most cherished reward is a prize from a customer recognizing that our company has played an instrumental part in their success.

Stories abound in various companies about employees who have gone above and beyond the call of duty for their customers. An example is a story about the Four Seasons Hotel doorman who found the briefcase of a guest who had already checked out. Assuming that it contained important papers, the doorman rushed to the airport, caught the next air shuttle, and delivered the briefcase to the forgetful fellow. Heroic? Well, yes. More important, though, the story adds to the mythology that typifies the way the hotel runs. The doorman is now an icon, not just an isolated character in a crazy story. The message to employees: Four Seasons Hotel customers deserve nothing less than service that dazzles, that awes. The point is that this mythology supports a strong culture, one that tells employees: Do whatever it takes to please the customer!

Ways of Showing Customers Our Loyalty:

1. Be a Communicator

Establish an ongoing customer information system that acknowledges the need to obtain and distribute information. Explain services available to them in language they can understand.

2. Be Reliable

Take full responsibility for customer satisfaction and for the quality of the product or service provided. Be consistent and dependable.

3. Be Responsive

Show your willingness and ability to provide prompt service.

4. Be Credible

Be trustworthy. Fulfill on promises and meet every requirement. Keep confidential all critical information shared.

5. Be Accessible

Provide ease for contacting. Be available and flexible when changes are necessary.

6. Be Competent

Know and understand the customers requirements and expectations. Ask questions.

7. Be Courteous

Show respect and friendliness at all times. Be appreciative – thank them for their business, for thorough instructions about a project, for a properly prepared disk, etc. Use various means to communicate your appreciation – a verbal acknowledgment, a card or note, a small token of

thanks, etc.

8. Be Proactive

As an advocate for the customer, act as a partner and walk in their shoes. Identify potential problems and be innovative in creating options and solutions.

9. Be Professional

Appearance of physical facilities and personnel is critical as customer perceptions are easily influenced.

10. Be Committed

Our customers are our business! Be committed to their success. Treat customers like assets. Do everything possible to retain them and increase their lifetime value.