Building a Community Around Customers

John Jantsch from Duct Tape Marketing, one of the sites we listed on the blog roll last week, wrote an interesting piece on customer focus during a recession.  Similar to the post I wrote recently, John points out the importance of strengthening customer relationships to push through a recession.

One of the key points John addresses is how to “build community around your current customers,” and this is an aspect we’ve focused on through the evolution of ConcourseSuite.  Being able to not only target prospects and existing customers but also bring them closer to the company helps build stronger relationships. These relationships, in turn, lead to improved sales and opportunities to learn from your best contacts. Concursive enables businesses to reach out to customers with capabilities such as targeted messaging and surveys, but also incorporates tools to help foster tighter relationships with customers and other key groups businesses interact with every day.

Lastly, I think it's worthwhile to point out that we both came to similar conclusions: the silver lining of a recession is that it makes you reevaluate your marketing and sales processes and forces you to improve your overall business practices and better connect with your customers.  From Concursive’s perspective, these are core principles that should drive the use of CRM in any economic climate.

Jeff

Updated Blog Roll for Some Weekend CRM Reading

In the office this week we were discussing some of our favorite websites and we decided to update our blog roll to include some of them to share them with you.  I do my best to keep up with them as much as possible, but the ones we're adding now are especially relevant and very informative to the readers of this site.  We think you'll find the focus of these blogs very relevant to your top priority - your customers as well as the technology aspects you utilize for business. 

• First and foremost is the OSA blog covering stories from members of the Open Solutions Alliance.  Occasionally,   you may see a few of our posts pop up there as well
• CRM expert Paul Greenberg writes the PCGreenBlog which is just as funny as it is informative on customer management topics
• Customer Think is a blog written by Graham Hill, a Customer Value Management specialist who covers some of the best customer related topics
• In the TMC Net blog First Coffee David Sims discusses all the current news surrounding CRM
• The Duct Tape Marketing blog is a great place to read up on all sorts of marketing, customer, or small business related topics
• Matt Asay's Open Road on CNet is one of the best open source software related blogs on the web
• The Social Customer Manifesto by Christopher Carfi is a smart blog that covers topics that include both technology and CRM
• And finally the InsideCRM Blog- one of the main sources for CRM news and opinions online

If you enjoy and benefit from our posts and you have a little extra time, try reading a few of these other blogs too.  Chances are your time is limited, but trust me:  if you have a few moments to spare reading through some of these blogs regularly will definitely give you ideas on how to improve relationships with your company’s greatest assets - its customers.

Michael

Managing Customer Relationships in a Recession

I recently came across an article titled “Using CRM to Win in a Recession” from CustomerThink.com.  The article has a list of tips relating the importance of focusing on CRM during a down economy. The list makes some strong points but I have a few thoughts of my own to add.

Regardless of economic conditions, the fact remains that improving the customer experience is an important competitive differentiator between your company and its rivals.  In this day and age, improving the customer experience means both understanding your customers' needs and giving them the tools to interact with you on their terms. During a recession, it is more important than ever to effectively improve these aspects of the customer experience. A good CRM system is essential for such an effort. In this case, CRM should be defined broadly to include tools that allow customers to engage with you and for you to engage with customers, not just tools that allow you to track customer behavior.

In addition, a recession demands that your activities become even more efficient and targeted. By using a CRM system to identify low impact efforts and eliminate them, you will free up more time and resources for higher impact activities focused on higher value customers.  Further, by optimizing your front-office processes and workflow, you will be able to get more productivity from your current staff during a time when your competitors are forced to reduce their workforces.

Another key component of good CRM practices during a recession is leveraging improved customer insight.  When the economy starts to fall and customer spending decreases, it is more important than ever to maintain the best relationships possible with each of them - whether you have 50 customers or 50,000.  A good CRM system can help you track and use information to identify customers who are likely to defect before they do so or to segment out the highest value customers that you absolutely must keep under any circumstances.

Finally, I think it’s important to note that whether the US economy is about to enter an official recession or not, CRM should always be utilized to increase profitability.  Most wouldn't recommend waiting for a downturn in the economy to start improving relationships with your customers. However, if you have been putting off a CRM initiative, the possibility of a recession should serve as a reminder of the importance of being able to identify and cultivate those customers who will keep your business profitable.

Jeff Hershey

Concursive in The Wall Street Journal

If you picked up a copy of The Wall Street Journal today, or checked online, you might have come across an article featuring Concursive employee, Chris Pearsall.

You can read the full article here, which discusses Chris’s move from manufacturing at Ford Motors to product management at Concursive. This is probably not your typical career move, nor is Chris your typical person.  Indeed, the move from the automotive plant to a software company might be near impossible for some people, but Chris brought vast amounts of drive and dedication to his role as a summer intern which propelled him into this full time position as a product manager. His determination helped him successfully manage a “career do-over”.

We believe in the Concursive corporate culture and are all very happy to have Chris on board as part of our team.

Michael