Technology can help you attract new business and keep existing customers happy
Customers are a necessity to all companies. Even when times are good, you can lose customers and you need to replace this natural churn to ensure you're not reliant on a handful of customers. So making sure you’re attracting new customers while keeping your existing ones happy is an essential part of running any successful business.
Make an impression and build loyalty
Knowing you’ve got the best tools to make a great first impression means finding new customers is so much easier. You can make light work of brochures, email newsletters and websites to make sure your business stands out, even in a crowded marketplace. You can also make a success of all your marketing materials without having to outsource the work, using desktop publishing software like Office Publisher 2010, saving both money and time.
Happy customers will return
Once you’ve grabbed a customer’s attention, there are simple things you can do to help keep them happy – and returning to do more business with you. With easy-to-use tools, like Outlook with Business Contact Manager, it’s simple to focus on your customers and make sure you give them the best possible service.
With Business Contact Manager you can schedule customer-care calls to make sure clients are satisfied or send them a follow-up letter offering services related to their previous purchases. When you get really busy, monitor essential aspects of your business such as the sales pipeline and automatically prioritise all your leads so you can concentrate on the most important.
With all your business information organised and easily accessible, you can provide the best possible service to your customers. Offering a great customer experience often means that you don't get forced into competing on price and can be a great market differentiator. And then your customers will tell others how much they enjoyed doing business with you.
Satisfying your customers’ needs whilst your business grows
A basic contact management system is perfect when you have a small and simple customer database but as your business grows, both in number of customers and in complexity, you may want to consider a more comprehensive customer relationship management (CRM) system.
With a fully featured CRM system in place, you can get a complete view of your sales pipeline by tracking and integrating forecasting, opportunity and financial data (such as pricing, quotes and orders). With an online application, such as Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, you can also access your customers’ information wherever you are, via your computer or mobile.
CRM Online integrates with Outlook and looks the same as other Microsoft Office programs so it’s familiar to you and your staff. Everyone has access to the business information, thanks to integrated reporting and powerful dashboards, so the insights required to make a success of your customer relationships are at your fingertips.
Microsoft. Business tools for a job well done.
Need some advice?
If you're unsure about what technology solution would best meet your business requirements you can get expert advice from Microsoft Small Business Specialist Partners. These IT experts are often small businesses themselves and they are familiar with many of the challenges small businesses face today. To find a small business specialist near you, or to search for products and services, visit our Microsoft Partner Network page and enter your postcode into our Pinpoint tool.
