Building customer relationships through CRM systems and trusted advisor strategies

Customer & Client Relationship Management

Discuss your management of customer relationships.

The managing of customer relationships begins with working to understand their unmet needs. Creating products and services that align to those unmet needs, then advertising them is critical. Yet the most important step is in the actual fulfillment of the expectations made to customers, ensuring they receive exactly what they were expecting from the product or service, which in this case is computer software doing what they expect it to.

Explain your use of technology in customer relationship building.

Technology plays a key role in building customer relationships, starting with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems that provide a single view of the customer, including their previous orders, specific details of who they are, and what their interests are. Using collaborative information sharing technologies including websites, portals, social networking applications including Facebook and Twitter to connect with and serve customers are all vital for continually serving them and gaining their trust and loyalty.

Discuss how you are transforming to a customer-strategy enterprise.

Starting with our product development staff which is required to visit three customers every six months to stay on top of their needs, to the requirement of marketing and service managers to also spend time in the field with customers, we are attempting to permeate our culture with knowledge of the customer. Second, our focus on measuring everyone's performance on customer's satisfaction with our software installations has done much to transform our culture to be more customer-centric. Finally, all customer service systems, procedures and processes are regularly reviewed to make sure they have not become inward centered but still concentrate on the customer.

How will you develop a learning relationship with customers?

The best sales processionals teach and provide valuable insights for their customers to use, regardless if they actually buy anything or not. This is critical for any salesperson to become a trusted advisor. To create a learning relationship with customers, our organization regularly hosts webinars and conferences where industry experts provide insights into how customers can accomplish their objectives. Second, white papers about how to accomplish strategies by automating them and making them more efficient is also provided. Third, we also provide sales persons with training on how to deliver solutions over and above just selling software.

How will you create and build customer trust and commitment?

Our organization creates and builds customer trust and commitment by concentrating on unmet needs our customers have, regardless if it leads to selling software immediately or not. Our sales force is trained on how to analyze business processes and then recommend process- and strategy-based solutions. Often this does not lead to large software sales, yet it does earn our company a reputation for being a trusted advisor to those customers we have.

How do you differentiate among customers?

As our company sells primarily to other businesses we differentiate based on the size of the company, its core business and the percentage of revenue generated from outside the U.S. We also differentiate based on how critical indirect sales channels are to our customers, as our software company offers Internet-based software for automating their retailer, distributor and dealer selling. Lastly differentiating on the extent of experience our customers have had with Internet-based software is useful in defining how much extra time is necessary for software application training.

Discuss your efforts to create customer intimacy.

As our company relies intensively on long-term relationships with customers, taking a very active approach to creating customer intimacy is critical to our business. Our approach is to first concentrate on total accountability for our software by having our CEO visit each and every customer just after an installation to show a high degree of support and accountability. Next, we offer each customer the opportunity to join a customer advisory council specific to their industry and special interests. At present there are three customer advisory councils which give customers an opportunity to discuss their concerns, interested in new product ideas and see what is presently in development.

How will you customize your offering for particular customers?

Our software is highly customizable to the needs of our customers, and we use a variety of software applications to make them highly usable by them. First, we can define what type of interface the customer wants on the software, from very simple and easy to use, to very complex and full of options. Second, our software is designed in modules, and customers and mix and match these modular components to design the specific system they want. All of these aspects of our software are integrated together by our professional services teams.

How do you identify key customers?

Our company looks at the potential share-of-customer for software solutions in specific channel management and customer relationship management areas of their companies, and then works with customers to see how we can provide them with more software in these areas. We look for the unmet needs customers have in their own customer-facing process areas and their channel management challenges as well. In short, we look at those companies with the largest distribution networks and customer relationship management programs and then attempt to show how our software can meet many more of their needs than is happening today.

Discuss your place in the customer data revolution.

Our company relies extensively on data mining to gain insights into how our customers make decisions using our software, so we can create more effective and relevant applications for them. Second, we use data extensively to plan our Google AdWords and online campaigns including our broader Internet strategies. Third, data is used for better defining the unmet needs of customers and educational strategies aimed at increasing our value to them over the long-term.

How do you use event-oriented prospecting?

Trade shows are the most effective form of event-oriented prospecting our company uses as it gives our sales force an opportunity to directly interact with prospects and see what their unmet needs and requirements are. Event-based prospecting through tradeshows also gives our sales force an opportunity to demonstrate our software to show prospects the extent of our functionality as well. Thirdly, the use of event-oriented prospecting is excellent for gaining insights into what customers need, and we often send engineers to these events to interact with prospects and determine what unmet needs we need to include in future application development.

Discuss your customer collaboration strategy.

As our company is based on delivering customized software for channel management and CRM strategies to manufacturers, there is an intensive level of collaboration required with customers to get to our systems installed and integrated to their existing systems. Our approach to collaboration also concentrates on creating electronic means of sharing status updates on project milestones, including the use of Microsoft SharePoint portals that are password-protected yet accessible by our own project managers and customers' project managers as well. Lastly our collaborations strategy also concentrates on creating open lines of communication with customers through frequent use of e-mail, conference calls and frequent on-site visits.

Explain your use of customer service representatives (CSR's).

As the skill set of CSRs is very valuable, our strategy is to focus on aligning hem with the most critical needs-based areas of service and support, and give them the opportunity to gain a very high level of mastery for the specific areas. Second, CSRs are assigned to larger accounts as the primary second-tier support specialists