The basis of any successful business lies in the way in which it interacts with its customers or clients. By having a solid idea of what they want from you, how much they are willing to pay and how many times they will use your services or buy your products, you can build up an ongoing relationship that is mutually beneficial and forms the bedrock for successful trading.
Using data gathering software and financial packages can be a good way to build up a picture of how your interactions with your customers work in real life – but where should you start?
How to Understand Your Customers
Really Simple Systems are a multi-award winning provider of cloud CRM for small to medium businesses. The service provides an easy-to-use system with simple sales, marketing and support in one package; allowing a business to achieve a fully rounded overview of customer base interaction.
The company was founded by John Paterson and now has more than 5,000 users with offices in the UK and Australia. By applying the software in tandem with Sage products you can access a unique way to chart your customer interactions and really begin to understand how the relationships work.
Data integration
The CRM has full Sage One integration and basically revolves around the ability to fully sync contacts between the services. With automatically generated invoices being only the start of the process, a detailed knowledge of customer interactions and behaviours allows for a true management process to be built up in an accurate way.
Payment History
A salesperson using Really Simple Systems can view if the customer has a history of late or non-payments in Sage One, giving an insight that is not usually available in a stand-alone CRM system. This kind of knowledge can be an important part of accurately keeping to projections of income and expenditure, minimising risk and maximising efficiency.
The system is available in three editions. This includes a free version which is a fully-functioning CRM system in its own right.
Customer Relations
Knowing how the customers who use your services interact with your business is essential for the smooth running of any commercial concern. There are plenty of authoritative resources online that can point you in the right direction to fully utilise a modern CRM approach.
Feedback channels
Of course, there are other ways that you can build a picture of exactly what is going on. Making sure there are clear lines of communication between your company and its customers is essential, as the feedback gained can be invaluable.
Today this means much more than simply having a manned phone line or swiftly responding to letters, either physical or by email. Social media tools allow for real time, immediate connections with customers and can create feedback systems which help you move forward at lightning speed.