It’s anyone’s guess when the economy will finally pick up, so in the commercial world and the public sector, cost cutting is still the order of the day. Meantime, we still need to retain the loyalty of our existing customers and attract new business. To achieve this with reduced resources, midsize operators should make use of today’s affordable customer relationship management (CRM) technology. Paul Curran finds out how, with Hayley Bass, CRM Product Marketing Manager at Microsoft UK.

Why is CRM technology so important at times like these?

For some organisations, a downturn means being risk averse and conservative, when really it’s a time to be bold - especially in sales and marketing. Indeed a recent study by the McGraw-Hill Laboratory concluded that those who continue strategic spending in a recession outperform non-spenders and can boost sales by as much as 275% during the first year of recovery. Analysts Gartner and IDC similarly report that companies with excellent customer service achieve higher sales.

And whilst there’s no silver bullet for beating the recession, midsize businesses must ‘up the ante’ - firstly, by delivering excellent customer service to encourage loyalty; and secondly, by streamlining the internal processes required to do so.

Of course, it's one thing to identify a loyal customer; quite another to cultivate that loyalty. So if you don’t know enough about your customers, it’s going to be difficult to deliver a personalised service - which is where CRM technology comes into its own. By providing a single platform that enables your customer-facing staff to manage each relationship - from first contact right through to post-sales - a system like Microsoft Dynamics CRM can help you build more fruitful relationships with existing customers and forge relationships with new ones.

Q: What’s special about Microsoft Dynamics CRM?

Dynamics CRM offers an affordable technology that encapsulates CRM best practices and uses the familiar Microsoft Outlook and Office interfaces to streamline your business processes, improve your efficiency and help you stay competitive.

From centralising customer information and communications across your organisation to identifying new avenues for business growth and automating workflows, it offers everything you need to make your staff more responsive to customer needs. Moreover, Dynamics CRM is easy to configure without being a technical expert. Staff can begin using it with minimal training in under an hour in most cases.

Q: What can it do for midsize organisations?

  • CRM for Customer Service: In today’s troubled economy, you must give customers as many reasons as possible to want to deal with you rather than anyone else. By giving your customer service team instant access to up-to-date account information, Dynamics CRM helps them outshine competitors by being more responsive to customers. By enforcing “one version of the truth” in all operations, errors which annoy clients and embarrass your company are minimised.

  • CRM for Sales: By providing instant access to decision-driving information, Dynamics CRM automates everyday customer service tasks like ‘thank-you’ messages and confirmations. It ensures customers don’t ‘slip under the radar’. By keeping track of each customer’s history, your staff will also sound more professional during sales calls as they’ll have all the relevant information readily to hand. And whether they’re in the office or the road, it will give them 24/7 access to data (via the web or Smartphone, online or offline), enabling them to respond quickly to customers and capitalise on opportunities as they occur.

  • CRM for Workflow: Powerful workflow capabilities let you put data to work faster and more consistently across all your systems and lines of business. As well as enabling staff to create their own workflows and fine-tune business processes, it makes workflow libraries instantly accessible to everyone.

  • CRM for Marketing: These days, you don’t have long to grab the attention of customers and prospects. Come at them quickly with the right message at the right time, though, and they’ll be more compelled to buy. Since Dynamics CRM turns your business analytics into actionable knowledge, you’ll get a deeper understanding of your customers’ behaviour so you can better target your marketing efforts. You’ll be able to respond faster to opportunities, track campaign results, fine-tune messaging, and use your marketing budget more effectively. It will transform your data into marketing campaigns that get higher response rates – and that translates into more revenue for your business.

  • CRM for Engagement: As well as helping you better understand your customers’ behaviour patterns, Dynamics CRM allows them to interact with you 24/7; which means you can forge deeper and more durable relationships. Dynamics CRM even integrates with bespoke web portals along with social networking opportunities like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

  • CRM for Analytics: In today’s economy, you must be able to turn the data in your organisation into knowledge you can use and act upon. Dynamics CRM helps you extract meaning from raw data to pinpoint opportunities and risks in strategic plans, look into your sales pipeline and establish targets or key performance indicators.

Q: What evidence is there that CRM works?

Microsoft Dynamics CRM has already helped many organisations save money and improve their relationship with customers. For instance, it has allowed the Royal Borough of Kingston to cut IT costs while gaining better real-time insight. By providing a single access point for its services and making it easy for staff to use, the system has enabled the council to double its call volume capacity without adding staff - and resolve 80% of queries during the first call.

Meanwhile, leading law firm Dundas and Wilson is using Dynamics CRM to better understand its clients and share information across practice specialties. The company’s lawyers can now access client data held in different business units, so as well as providing a better service, they can identify upsell opportunities and deliver a coordinated and responsive approach for clients.

Gartner expects the European CRM software market to grow this year by 4% to €2.4 billion. In a recent survey, the main reasons for CRM investment this year were: to enhance cross-selling and up-selling of products, then increasing customer satisfaction, and thirdly increasing sales. If these are your objectives too, Microsoft Dynamics CRM could be the ideal solution to help you weather the recession.