Happy customers talk, but so do unhappy ones. In fact, unhappy customer service stories reach more than twice as many ears as happy customer service stories. We live in an era where companies and careers rise and fall from beginning to end LinkedIn, Yelp, and Instagram. Competitors are always just a click away, and the obstacles to market entry are minimal. Given this intensity of competition, it becomes essential that businesses find tools and implement strategies to rise to this challenge.
Customer Relationship Management software tracks and analyzes all of the communications one has with potential and existing clients. It centralizes, simplifies, and secures information for easy access. CRM in the telecom industry can serve as a powerful tool to increase sales and improve customer date. Here’s how.
It goes without saying that most salespeople would rather not add to their already-substantial burden. While their focus should be on generating and executing sales, CRM in telecom is often perceived as a distraction or a means for management to babysit. In reality, this view discounts the value CRM can provide.
Seeking new leads isn’t just a salesperson’s task; it entails a variety of manual and automated actions across multiple channels. Telecom CRM is integral to this process. It helps human resources cultivate leads from seminars, conferences, trade shows, and webinars; it helps generate leads from email lists and website visitors; it allows managers to forward those leads to salespeople so that follow-up can be done immediately, while the business is on a potential customer’s mind.
CRM can also direct telecom employees to cross-sell or upselling opportunities. It can, furthermore, be used to improve efficiency so that top-of-the-funnel opportunities are maximized.
The telecom industry is both highly concentrated and competitive. There are a lot of companies with the financial muscle to lure away customers. Competitive analysis is a necessity for any telecom business that wants to succeed. CRM in telecom helps manage this by providing a detailed overview of brand equity, division channels, post-purchase service, and support, and customer exclusivity. By engaging in competitive analysis, companies can yardstick their own practices and processes.
CRM for telecom can be looked at as a forward view of a company. Rather than offer an overview of historical data, a CRM provides a forecast of future trends and events that will impact revenue and profit margins. Business leaders can use the information gleaned from CRM to observe leading indicators. They can study the data for shifts in lead generation, pipeline value, and missed opportunities to identify potential problems that will impact the bottom line.
Meanwhile, direct sales managers can utilize the information to track the activities of individual salespeople or teams. This can be used to determine where problems may be occurring that impact the company’s profit, such as lead alteration rates, customer call activity, and closed-win opportunities.
The right CRM solution allows for information to flow smoother and quicker within a company. The result of such expediency is far more than happy sales representatives; it also means increased sales numbers, happier clients, and a bottom-line that seems to balloon.
Estimates suggest that corporations with successful CRM implementations see an increase in revenue that ranges from 25 percent to 95 percent, often attributable to fewer wasted hours and double work, and better-organized schedules, as well as the fact that data moves from staff in every division of the company. When employees are more satisfied and efficient, they are better able to retain customers. By doing so, revenue blossoms.
When you find a strategy that works, it’s best to replicate it. Chances are, a company’s leaders have a pretty solid idea of how they want customer service reps to interact with customers. By repeating it, a business ushers consistent, high-quality customer service experiences.
CRM programs can be used to embed best practices and processes that guide sales representatives through every step of interaction. Templates can be crafted so the staff knows exactly what is expected at any given moment. Workflow automation can be created so that sales reps follow best practices with minimal administrative oversight.