When you hear the mention of Customer Relationship Management (CRM), you probably think of dashboards with sales tracking and automated emails. After all, the goal of CRM is to guide customers every step of the way through their buying journey.
These elements are necessary, yes, and they do form part of your overall strategy. However, the most profound impact of CRM actually happens outside of the software. It really comes down to customer service, every time someone from the business interacts with a customer, whether it’s answering a question or solving a problem.
When the customer walks away feeling genuinely cared for, that’s the real CRM experience.
The Human Element Of CRM
It can be said that CRM has two parts to it. The technical, automated side which gathers data about individual customers. On the other hand, it also builds loyalty and customer retention through trust-based relationships.
If you don’t have a high standard of customer service, your CRM system becomes nothing but a very costly address book with all of your customers’ details.
Yet if you nail the customer service side, that very same CRM can help you drive growth and repeat business.
Some of the best CRM providers include:
What Role Does Customer Service Play?
In a nutshell, customer service brings real, authentic human connection into every point of the customer journey. Whether it’s insights on customer behaviour or feedback on how to improve, it’s an invaluable part that directly impacts the performance of your business.
It’s The Data Engine For CRM To Run
For CRM to be efficient, it needs sufficient data about customers. And most of the meaningful information will come straight from direct interactions. In fact, every encounter with a customer will reveal something useful.
You can pinpoint what frustrates them, what they love, why they keep coming back or why they are hesitant to make another purchase. Your CRM can relay this to you in the form of data, but it can’t explain why the customer feels that way. That’s up to them to tell you directly.
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It Creates An Impression In Critical Moments
In most cases, customers don’t remember the entire process of purchasing something. What they will remember though, is if they needed help and they were attended to quickly and how they were treated at that point in the buying process. It’s those exact moments where loyalty is formed or it ends in lost business.
After the encounter, you can then use CRM to follow up if the issue was resolved or check in to see if the customer is happy with their purchase. Customers really notice these small touchpoints and it makes them feel valued.
Allows For Personalised Relationships To Be Built
One of the biggest advantages of using CRM is that it can used to create tailored communication. But it only works if your customer service team knows how to take that data and personalise it.
It could be something small like sending a follow-up email mentioning the specific bought product and asking how it works. Or if they’ve bought one item, they might like another similar one too.
It’s this level of personalisation that makes customers feel really seen.
Offers Feedback To Be Loaded In The CRM System
Customer service and CRM is a two-way relationship where both can feed information to each other. From customer service insights, your CRM can be updated with new complaints, customer preferences, recurring pain points and overall satisfaction levels.
Once this information has been analysed, it can be used to improve the marketing and sales side. Any CRM that has outdated data becomes a liability so this is one aspect that teams can’t afford to overlook.
Customer Service Tests Your CRM Strategy
On the dashboard side, you can have your CRM set up perfectly. Beautifully segmented databases with automated flows, marketing sequences and detailed pipelines.
But all of that means absolutely nothing if a customer needs assistance and has a bad experience. All that effort becomes meaningless. It’s your customer service that will determine whether your CRM work actually pays off.
If the interaction runs smoothly and the issue is resolved, then you know your CRM strategy is headed in the right direction. If not, it’s a clear sign that something has to change.
