More importantly, businesses should also invest in both Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Customer Experience Management (CEM) as they are vital aspects of the process of customer management. They are related concepts in many ways but are distinct when we analyze them in the field of customer service. They have different objectives and functionalities aligned with customers and their journey with a brand. 

CEM is a holistic approach that focuses on providing a great experience to customers. On the other hand, CRM is understanding customers’ relationship with a brand to fix issues and drive sales and fixing issues. The key area of CEM is to understand the overall impression of a customer based on their interactions with a company. 

The purpose of CEM is to boost customer loyalty and satisfaction by creating a positive experience across all touch points. In contrast, CRM is a set of practices and technologies that center on tracking and managing customer interactions through the lifecycle. 

In this blog, we will explore customer experience management vs customer relationship management and look at various things driving customer management. 

What is Customer Experience Management (CEM)? 

Customer experience management (CEM) is the process and practice of designing and managing all the interactions that customers have with a company. The main purpose of CEM is to understand the customer journey, identify pain points and then devise/implement strategies that can enhance the overall customer experience. 

Customer experience management comprises certain key elements, including:

• Understanding the customer and their needs is the key element of CEM where the focus is to gather and analyze data for gaining insights into customers’ motivations and behavior.
• Mapping the customer journey and identifying the pain points are other vital aspects of CEM as both are done to improve the customer experience.    
• Training and empowering the customer-facing employee is also a major aspect of customer experience management as it ensures the delivery of great service and support. 
• Working to deliver an omnichannel experience to customers is also a key element of the CEM process.    
• The use of customer data and analytics to personalize the customer experience and tailor the targeted messaging is also a necessary element of customer experience management practice.   

What is Customer Relationship Management (CRM)?

Customer relationship management refers to the best practices and strategies employed for managing customer interactions and forging customer relationships throughout the customer lifestyle. The aim of CRM is to offer a 360-degree view of the customers and improve relationships by using personalized communication. 

CRM comprises several key elements that include:

• Customer data management is the most essential aspect of CRM that involves the use of customer data to gain insights into their needs and behavior. 
• Sales and marketing automation are also integral parts of customer relationship management with a focus on providing relevant messages to customers and then boosting sales productivity.   
• Providing customer support at each stage of the journey is a critical element of CRM so that their issues can be addressed proactively. 
• The use of analytics and reporting tools is the pillar of the customer relationship management process as it helps businesses track and analyze customer interactions and optimize strategies for growth. 

Customer Experience Management Vs Customer Relationship Management: The Differences 

CEM and CRM are two entirely different approaches to managing customer interactions although both have some common goals and practices. While customer experience management is focused on managing the overall customer experience with a brand, CRM is more geared towards improving customer relationships by optimizing customer interactions. 

Some key differences between CEM and CRM are as follows:

• Focus – The main focus of CEM is to create a positive experience across all touchpoints and build customer loyalty. In contrast, optimizing customer interactions is the primary goal of CRM to boost customer relationships. Here, you’ll find some customer relationship examples. 
• Scope – While CEM includes all aspects of the customer experience, CRM is mostly only concerned with managing customer data and the sales process. This makes the former broader in scope while the latter narrow in focus. 
• Tools and platforms – While the tools and platforms used in CEM are intended for understanding and enhancing the overall customer experience, they help optimize customer interactions and sales processes in CRM.  
• Metrics – Whereas the key metrics used in CEM are related to customer satisfaction and loyalty, the ones used in CRM focus more on sales, acquisition, and retention.   
• Timeframe – CEM is a concept that has a long-term focus on building enduring relationships with customers while the focus of CRM is short-term with the target of driving immediate sales and revenue growth.  

The Similarities Between Customer Experience Management and Customer Relationship Management

Both CEM and CRM are two distinct approaches to customer management. While they have different goals and objectives, they also share “customers” as a common focus. In both of them, the use of data and managing customer interaction are key. 

There are many similarities between CEM and CRM, including –   

• Both are focused on the customer and they are similar in their approach to providing customers with a positive experience and building enduring relationships with them.   
• Both use technology to collect and analyze customer data with the view to enhance customer interactions throughout the journey.   
• Both follow a data-driven approach where customer data is key to making decisions related to customers. 
• Tracking customer behavior and ensuring personalized interactions are the pillars of both CEM and CRM processes. 
•  Both need cross-departmental collaboration to serve the purpose and ensure value to customers at each stage of the journey.  
• Both are ongoing practices and processes involving certain adjustments to boost the customer experience along the way.  

Customer Experience Management: Best Practices

Implementing a customer experience management system for a business is easy though it takes some effort to get it right. Proper planning and execution are key to getting the most out of a CEM system. 

Here are some of the best practices of the CEM system that will help your business deliver amazing experiences –  

Develop a customer-centric culture 

It’s important for a business to first develop a culture that prioritizes customer satisfaction. In such a culture, delivering great experiences should be a top priority. To achieve that, it’s vital to train the employee on the virtues of meeting customer needs and delivering the kind of experiences desired. Your service team must also learn to go above the standard to serve and delight customers. 

Collect and analyze customer feedback  

No business can be customer-centric if it does not gather and collect feedback. Together with collecting the feedback, it’s equally essential to work on them and implement the due changes to the products and services. The focus should be on identifying areas for improvement as only this can bring meaningful changes to the way your business deals with customers. 

Use customer data for personalization  

Customers expect personalized interactions when they reach out to a business. In fact, 72% of customers prefer to only engage with personalized messaging. A touch of personalization to service can ensure great value to customers at each stage of the journey. Thanks to data, a company can offer personalized recommendations that align with the specific behavior and preferences of customers. The use of customer data can also help in offering customized content and promotional materials to users. 

Simplify the customer journey 

Customers want their interactions to be easy and hassle-free. They want minimum hiccups along the customer journey touchpoints. To achieve this goal, it’s key to work on streamlining and simplifying the journey by reducing needless friction along the way.

In addition, brands should remove all the unnecessary steps that make the buying process a hassled experience for customers. Once the buying process is smooth, customers can get an improved experience. 

Use technology to increase customer experience 

Customer expectations are growing by the day as there are plenty of options and choices for them to explore. Plus, the use of the latest technology is also proving a key determinant in offering quality service to customers. Plus, 86% of buyers show a willingness to pay more for a great customer experience. For businesses, it’s vital to leverage the power of AI-based technology and tools such as chatbots and live chat, to make service efficient. These tools can also support automation which can add more effectiveness to the delivery of customer service.   

Measure your CEM efforts 

Tracking progress is an essential aspect of improving the customer experience. With data and analytics for help, it’s quite easy to continuously improve the experience and make adjustments. Once the efforts of CEM are measured, a company can understand the changes to its strategy in regard to customer experience.  

Customer Relationship Management: Best Practices 

Businesses that strive to achieve customer satisfaction are more likely to enjoy loyalty and long-term relationship. Both goals can never be achieved unless a business manages all interactions with customers. This is where customer relationship management (CRM) can help.

Some of the best practices of CRM include – 

Understand your customers 

Knowing the customers well means a business needs to understand their needs and behaviors. It’s also important to analyze their behavior using data and customer analytics. In addition, gaining insights into the buying patterns of customers is also vital to forging long-term relationships with them.

Once a business is able to understand the customers better, it will handle all the challenges and expectations with ease. A business that does not care for understanding their customers will always find it hard to win their trust. 

Focus on delivering excellent customer service 

Understanding what your customers expect and what their needs are is often the first step toward achieving customer satisfaction. The next step is to prioritize those needs and keep those needs at the center of your business strategy. The key is to offer timely responses and personalize the interactions as only this can pave the way for amazing customer service. 

Streamline your CRM processes 

Managing customer relationships more efficiently becomes possible only when a business has streamlined the CRM processes. For that to happen, the use of technology is important as it can automate various key tasks related to customer service. Apart from automation, a CRM system can help track customer interactions and offer real-time insights into customers. 

Implement customer loyalty programs  

Rewarding customers and incentivizing them on a regular basis is essential for retaining their trust and goodwill for the business. When a business has a loyalty program in place, it’s more likely to see customers sticking for longer and making repeat purchases. Your business can think of offering exclusive discounts, rewards, and promotions for maintaining the trust of customers. 

Be responsive to customers 

Customers often have lots of inquiries, queries, and complaints. Being responsive to them is the best way a business can ensure great experiences. More importantly, keeping customers happy with prompt and timely responses is always a strong pillar of long-lasting relationships. It’s also necessary to go the extra mile and meet their expectations.  

Track and measure CRM performance 

A business should continuously track and measure the effectiveness of its CRM strategy. This can help in making timely improvements. Some of the key metrics that should be used include CAST, retention rate, and revenue growth.  

Boost Your CEM and CRM Processes with the REVE Chat Platform 

Customers matter more than anything else and ensuring great experiences for them and building long-term relationships with them should always be a top priority for businesses. We at REVE Chat understand the challenges faced by companies in their attempt to offer a quality experience and forge relationships.

We offer a range of customer engagement tools that can prove very helpful in adding value at every stage of the customer journey. Using our AI-powered chatbots, it’s possible to automate processes and tasks across marketing, sales, and support. 

The video chat software and co-browsing tools we offer can be very helpful in providing top-notch visual engagement and redefining the meaning of support. 

Businesses can pair our live chat software with the bot and offer hybrid support. This arrangement means some of the support tasks could be automated and where needed, human personnel can also be used. 

Conclusion 

Delivering excellent experiences is often the building block of great customer relationships. It however needs quality tools and technology to meet and exceed customer expectations in today’s time. 

With REVE, your business can find a whole range of support tools to not only increase customer experience but also ensure value through the journey. These tools can help your customer management efforts in a big way.  

You can sign up and check our tools and see how they can contribute to your CEM and CRM processes. 

However, many support agents confuse “customer service” with, “customer experience” and most of them think both terms are the same. But there are some marked differences you should know. 

While “customer service vs customer experience” is a hot topic in the industry, we should understand how both terms are part of the same fabric. After all, servicing customers well leads to an improved experience.  

In this blog, we will explore customer service and experience in detail and also try to understand the differences and similarities.  

What is Customer Service?

Customer service is any assistance, help, and support provided by a business to its customers. It refers to any assistance offered before, during, and after a purchase. The ambit of customer service is vast and can encompass a wide range of activities, starting from providing guidance, answering queries, offering advice, fixing issues related to orders, and more. 

 While activities may vary from industry to industry, the ultimate purpose of customer service everywhere is the same: make sure customers have a good experience with the brand.  And when the service is good, it delights customers, turns them into brand loyalists, and helps establish a positive brand reputation. 

Some key elements that make the foundation of successful customer service include – 

• Timely responses – Being available to customers as and when needed and offering them timely responses is one of the cornerstones of customer service.  
• Empathy – Good customer service is all about understanding customers’ problems inside out, hearing each concern in detail, and responding with an air of compassion.  
• Accuracy of information – Customers often approach service agents with the hope to get accurate information about the product or service so that they can find the desired response.  
• A sense of professionalism – When customers reach out to the service team, they expect agents to treat them with respect and help them with due professionalism. 
• Follow-up measures –  Every customer wants to be followed up right after getting the service as it makes them feel important and special.  

What is Customer Experience? 

Customer experience (CX) is the total of all the interactions a customer has with a company over a course of time. It includes virtually every aspect of a customer’s experience, including the kind of customer service received, the interactions with the products or services, or any other touchpoint in the journey. And the customer’s experience with a business will impact their decision to continue or not continue with the company.  

Several key elements shape the customer experience, including –   

• Quality of products or services –  Whether or not a customer will have a positive experience with a company depends a lot on the quality of products or services offered.  
• Customer service –  The quality of customer service provided is also a key factor in affecting a customer’s experience with a brand. 
• Personalization – Customers expect a touch of personalization in their interactions with a company and its presence leads to positive experiences.   
• Brand reputation – A company that enjoys a solid reputation for every aspect of customer dealings is more likely to provide positive experiences for customers.  

Why Customer Service Matters? 

Customer service is vital for businesses because it has a direct correlation with customer happiness and loyalty. When the level of service is good, a business can have more happy customers than ever before. 96% of customers accept that customer service is key to their choice of loyalty to a brand. 

Customer service matters for more reasons than a business can anticipate, including –     

• Customer service contributes to retention –  Customers often spend more with brands that offer great service. They not only spend more but also become loyal and refer the brand to others. 
• Customer service can boost brand image – Any company that provides a bad customer service experience can witness unhappy customers, resulting in a damaged brand reputation in the market.  
• Customer service can help increase revenue – Companies that maintain excellence in customer service not only have the edge over the competition but also witness a boost in revenue. 
• Customer service can lead to better experiences – Customers feel valued when they get quality service. They also share feedback when the quality of service provided to them meets their expectations. All this could lead to better experiences for customers. 
• Customer service can win loyalty – Good customer service not only motivates customers to purchase more but also to stick with the brand for longer, resulting in lifelong loyalty.  

Why Customer Experience Matters? 

Customer experience is key to the success of any business and investing in it can bring significant benefits to any organization. It has a direct impact on so many aspects such as satisfaction, loyalty, brand image, etc. that no business can ignore its virtues. 72% of customers will share a positive experience with six or more people.   

Many reasons show why customer experience matters – 

• Customer experience can determine customer satisfaction – Whether customers are satisfied or not with a brand depends entirely on their experience. When the experience is negative, the satisfaction level will be up, and vice versa.   
• Customer experience has a direct impact on brand reputation – There is no denying that a customer’s experience with a company has a huge role to play in the kind of brand reputation the company enjoys in the market. 
• Customer experience helps gain loyalty – Companies that offer positive experiences to customers more often are likely to have more loyal customers compared to others. Such organizations are also likely to get more repeat business as well.  
• Customer experience can win brand advocacy – Customers don’t mind sharing their experiences on social channels and other platforms when they are happy. Such customers can work like brand advocates and recommend the company to clothes.  

Difference Between Customer Service and Customer Experience

Customer service and customer experience are related in many ways yet distinct concepts. While service is a key part of offering a positive experience to customers, it’s just one part of the entire customer journey with a brand.  

There are four key differences between customer service and customer experience, including – 

• Customer service is just one aspect of a CX strategy of a brand and its focus is limited to a single instance. On the other hand, customer experience comprises a whole journey through separate instances where some may not involve any support channel at all.  
• Customer service has one or sometimes very few touchpoints while customer experience is made up of various interactions and touchpoints. 
• Customer service is typically reactive and mostly comes into play as and when a customer needs assistance. On the other hand, customer experience is proactive and will encompass every interaction that a business and customer involve at every touchpoint.
• Customer service is mostly focused on resolving a specific issue so it’s immediate and short-term. Customer experience however is unlike service and is more of a long-term approach encompassing a customer’s entire journey with the brand. 
• Some of the key metrics that are used to measure customer service include CSAT, response time, and issue resolution rate. On the other hand, some of the key metrics to measure customer experience include Net Promoter Score, customer lifetime value, and customer retention rate. 
• Every organization needs to have a dedicated customer service team to service customers while customer experience is something that needs the entire organization. Every employee within the organization has to play a role in offering a positive experience to customers.   
• While customer service is focused on resolving specific issues, customer experience is more oriented toward creating an emotional connection between the brand and the customer. 

Customer Service vs Customer Experience – Which Matters More?

Both customer service and customer experience are key to the growth and success of a business. While customer service is focused more on meeting customer needs, customer experience is a more holistic concept that includes the entire customer journey. Now when the business world is becoming competitive by the day, offering great customer experiences has become a major differentiator for businesses across industries. More importantly, customers now expect brands to make them feel valued and appreciated. 

Both customer service and customer experience may be distinct but each has a unique role to play for customers. Situations may arise where customer service may hold more value than customer experience, and vice versa. 

Take for example, If a customer faces any problem with a product or service, a business must focus on resolving that issue immediately through good customer service to win the confidence of the customer. However, offering a positive overall experience will become the need when a customer has no immediate issue yet want to feel good about the brand in some way.    

The following examples will help you better understand the concept – 

Example 1 – A customer orders a product online but is not happy with the quality of the product. Since the customer is not happy, he would ideally like the customer service team to resolve the issue and add to the experience. Here, only customer service can save the day for the business. 

Example 2 – A customer is searching for a product and he finds many options in the category. Here, since the customer has different options and choices, his satisfaction level will depend less on the product or service and more on the overall experience that he receives with the brand. 

Integrating Customer Service and Customer Experience 

Every business wants to create and deliver a seamless, positive experience for its customers. Doing this can help them win the trust of customers and boost brand loyalty. All this can become possible only when a business decides to integrate customer service and customer experience.

Here are some of the ways a business can integrate customer experience and customer service:  

• Adopt a customer-centric approach – Your business needs to consider the needs and preferences of customers at each step of the way by making them the focal point of all operations. Only this can lead to an improved customer experience. 
• Keep the messaging consistent across touchpoints –  A business can provide a unified and seamless experience for customers only when it decides to adopt consistent messaging across all touchpoints. 
• Provide a positive experience – Customers expect personalized services and they also want the agents to show a sense of empathy with the delivery of the service. A business that takes care of customer issues and provides a positive experience can make customers loyal for life. 
• Use technology to improve customer support – Businesses can use advanced engagement tools such as live chat and AI chatbots to offer quick support and give self-service options as well.   
• Collect and analyze customer feedback – A business needs to collect customer feedback and analyze it so that it can find out areas for improvement. This is the only way you can enhance both service and experience for customers.  

Use REVE Chat Tools And Boost Customer Experience With Your Brand

Meeting customer expectations and needs should always be a top priority for businesses as only this can open the window of opportunities for them. 

At REVE Chat, we understand how customer service needs to keep pace with the changing times around and that’s why we bring the right tools and technology for the same. 

We have a range of engagement tools that your business can leverage and redefine the way great experience is offered to customers. 

With our AI-powered chatbots, your business can automate support, offer quick responses, and add value to the customer journey with your brand. 

In addition, your business can benefit from our visual engagement tools such as and video chat, co-browsing software to personalize the help for customers. 

In addition, live chat software can be combined with a chatbot to provide hybrid support and ensure value to customers at each step of the way. 

Final Thoughts       

Great customer service is often the foundation of ensuring amazing experiences for customers.

With customer engagement technology improving, there was never a better time than today to elevate the service experience for customers. 

With REVE Chat, sign up and test some of the best customer engagement tools for your business. 

But what if your website funnel is leaky or not able to convert the visitors into prospects?  It means that your marketing activities are not resulting in enough sales. 

This is the moment when customers should be notified that you are there for them – by giving them the chance to contact you with real-time sales assistance. Else, they will be frustrated and leave.

56% of customers globally have stopped doing business with a company because of poor customer experience (CX). As one of the most important attributes of a good CX, as per the customers themselves, is a real time response.

Hence, real time sales assistance is as important as your marketing activities to increase your website conversion optimization.

What exactly is real time sales?

Real time sales refer to conversations that are initiated proactively to help customers when they are looking for sales assistance. It is a strategy created that focuses on delivering immediate responses from customers. 

The methodology of real time selling is a way for brands to interact with their customers using stuff that’s actually happening at that time. The real time sales are based on insights into a customer’s online actions. 

The main goal with real time selling is to take advantage of events important to your business at their peak moment. Above all, it’s a customer-centric selling approach that aims to add value rather than push the products. 

Here are key benefits businesses can witness on offering real time sales.

Higher conversion rates

Leveraging the sense of urgency into your marketing offers and sales promotions like with a limited number of coupons, a deadline for a promo code, or a one-day sale can incentivize customers to engage with your business, which means higher sales conversion.

Lower sales cycle

When a prospect receives real time help the number of touchpoints is reduced and customers can make faster decisions. Thus, when customers are engaged with the right context in the first go, the sales cycle is reduced. 

Faster response times

With 59% of customers expecting immediate assistance and are more likely to buy when brands answer their queries in under a minute, offering real time sales becomes crucial for businesses. By deploying live chat and chatbots, you can engage customers 24×7 and offer faster responses even when your support team is not available.

So how can you implement real time selling as part of your sales process?

How real time sales drives revenue

With 76% of brands claiming that using real time sales increased their customer engagement. Looks like real time selling really can bring customers and companies closer together. Following such a strategy, doesn’t just drive engagement, it can increase sales conversions and positive brand sentiment.

When it comes to real time sales, it is important to understand how to apply the methodology to reap maximum benefits.

Live chat boosts real time conversions

Do you know that 78% of consumers will buy from a company that answers their questions quickly and accurately? 

Live chat is a great messaging channel to maximize leads and optimize business return on investment (RoI). 

As compared to reactive channels like phone or email customers need to wait to get a response, live chat provides instant answers by using canned replies or intelligent routing. Businesses that invested in reactive chat witnessed a 15% ROI, but companies that invested further in proactive chat capabilities saw an incremental 105 % ROI.

Businesses using live chat for sales and lead generation can proactively engage their customers based on their journey. 

It also increases the chances of sales and improves the response time metric that shows that the conversations are being looked into at priority.

Addressing the queries with fast responses reduces the sales process and encourages customers to make quick decisions.

How live chat can help in real time selling and boost conversions

• Place live chat strategically – Integrating live chat at the important pages (products, services, and pricing) helps you to provide proactive help to customers who need real time sales assistance. 
• Set up the right triggers – Personalized messaging can improve customer conversion rates on websites by up to 40%. With proactive live chat triggers, you can deliver real time sales data that helps to make quick sales decisions and generate more revenue. 
• Route chats to the right sales team – You must escalate the conversations to the right sales rep, who can provide effective solutions in the first go. Intelligence routing helps to deliver real time sales help and save time.

Automate your Bookings with Bots 

Though live chat is a great channel for real time sales assistance, the agents are not available all the time.

That’s where chatbots come into the picture.

A chatbot template for appointment booking can help businesses to manage and schedule bookings. It helps you to schedule appointments without getting overwhelmed with calls.

Businesses do not have to worry about booking hassles or extra costs to hire resources to handle the incoming appointment traffic. 

Deploying chatbots can help you in the following ways.

• Schedule appointments or meetings when your sales team is not available.
• Automatically capture leads 24×7 by fill up forms.
• Send email notification once the appointment is done along with customer contact details. 
• Engage your customers offline over a call and confirm the same.
• Route the conversation to the right sales agent who can provide the right solution.

Lead qualification with chatbots 

More than 28% of top-performing companies use AI for capturing leads.

Hence using chatbots for lead generation and sales are one of the key areas where companies can witness the direct impact.

Generating leads with automated conversational forms will be easier to acquire more customers for the future. A conversational form turns the most utilized user interface online – the web form – into a conversation. 

Contrary to traditional contact or survey forms that present all questions at once, conversational forms can create a connection with the user, take one question at a time, and personalize the questions in real-time.

You can automate your B2B sales funnel with chatbots to prequalify leads by asking specific questions and based on their response direct them to the right team for further nurturing. Being able to engage customers instantly increases the number of leads and conversion rates.

How do chatbots deliver real time sales assistance?

• Chatbots are always on to engage customers with immediate answers to all the sales queries. 
• By leveraging a sales bot, you can qualify leads by asking preset questionnaires as per your business needs. 
• Chatbots help to learn the intent of the visitors and what to say next, which is the secret sauce of lead nurturing.

Help customers instantly with 1:1 messaging 

Real-time marketing through social media channels is a great way of reaching people interested in your business, whenever and wherever they are.

40% of consumers expect brands to respond within the first hour of reaching out on social media.

As customers are preferring shifting their conversations to social channels with an expectation to get a faster response, it becomes more crucial for brands to engage customers by responding to them in real time.

Customers and businesses exchange 8 billion Facebook messages. Customers rely on you to respond quickly.

In addition, it also allows you to open up a dialogue with social customers at the moment that they are most engaged with your business, and therefore most likely to become a customer.

Key benefits of real time sales across social channels

• Real-time assistance to pre-sale queries can positively influence sales as a direct result
• Demonstrates a solid customer engagement strategy that drives trust in your brand
• Customers are always connected and expect your business to be always connected too
• Ability to deal with any potential problems quickly and effectively as they arise
• Perceived as helpful, aiding positive brand perception

Syncing with your CRM

Without a CRM system, 79% of all marketing leads are never converted to sales.

You’ve spent time and resources attracting and generating new leads, but now what? 

Are they getting passed on to your sales team, and if so, do your reps know which opportunities are the best? 

Time is of the essence hence, make the most of your marketing tools — email, social, marketing automation — by connecting them to a CRM platform. 

Both sales and marketing will have a complete view of leads and prospects so they can create and target engaging communications to turn prospects into customers and reach key decision-makers faster.

A CRM system can help you improve business performance by:

• Improving sales efficiency – Prioritize leads and opportunities that are highly likely to convert and close based on customer interactions with your company.
• Boosting sales effectiveness – Know which customers are engaged and the right time to reach out for an optimal response.
• Increasing upsell & cross-sell opportunities – See all the opportunities that are a good fit for add-on deals already in progress.
• Uncovering referral business – Identify untapped opportunities in existing relationships instead of paying for dead-end leads. 
• Reducing time to close – Instantly align your team on the next steps to close a deal when you have a 360-degree view of your customer.

Real time selling is the future of sales

There is no doubt that real time sales and marketing helps businesses to learn about the customers in an authentic way. 

Marketing your business isn’t always about reaching more people or new people. It’s also important to nurture existing customers and connections. Real-time sales benefit your business by getting more customers in your existing network.

Real-time sales and marketing also enable you to increase quantities of engagement with your target audiences, such as the number of people you reach or the number of times you interact. However, this is not at the expense of quality.

More importantly, customer relationships can be a key differentiator in today’s competitive marketplace and it can provide an edge over competitors. When a business focuses on relationships, it sets the foundation for a stable revenue stream over time and stays resilient in tough times. 

However, strong customer relationships are not built quickly as they take considerable effort. You also need to invest your time to build and nurture trust in them over time. After all, 79% of customers say that they want brands to show that they understand and care about them before they buy anything. 

Businesses that understand the importance of building customer relationships develop an emotional connection with and retain them for a long time. Relationships are the reason why few businesses grow over time, while others have huge swings and eventually descend.  

In this blog, we will explore everything about how to build customer relationships and understand the definition of such relations, its importance, and strategies. 

Before going further, let’s first get started with understanding what exactly is customer relationships. 

What Is Customer Relationship?

A company’s or organization’s relationships with its clients or customers are referred to as its customer relationships. It is an essential component of any business strategy since it emphasizes creating and sustaining a strong, enduring relationship with customers. Enhancing customer satisfaction, loyalty, and retention is the ultimate goal of customer relationship management because these factors can result in higher profitability and long-term corporate success. 

Principles Of Good Customer Relationships

A good customer relationship is when the customers have a consistent experience every time they interact with the business. Such interactions leave a good impression on them. It also leads to mutual regard and understanding between the customers and the business, which extends over a long period. 

Building strong customer relationships is a strategic decision based on the foundation of providing real-time support and proactively offering solutions that are geared toward customer success. Customer relations aim to create a mutually beneficial relationship with the customer that goes well beyond the initial purchase. 

To build good customer relationships you need to:

• Customize your approach with warm greetings depending on the scenario.
• Make your customers feel that you understand what they want.
• Know that some customers are more interested in the ways you build customer relationships than your products or services.
• Keep your customers informed about the things about which they are interested in doing business with you. 

Your business will need quality support tools at its disposal to deliver great experiences, which in turn can help form good customer relationships. You can sign up with REVE Chat to take the first step towards building good customer relationships.

Importance of Building Customer Relationships 

Building strong customer relationships is a strategic approach with a focus on improving customer experience and developing loyalty. A business that prioritizes relationships stays immune to the challenges of the market and stays on top of the industry.  The key is to know how to build a relationship with the customer and focus energy on it.  

The importance of customer relations has a positive impact on many aspects of the business – 

• Increased Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) – The longer the customer stays with your business, the greater the value provided during their lifetime relationship. High CLV means each customer will bring in more revenue for your company. When it comes to customer success, you should spare no effort in building strong customer relationships 
• Reduced Customer Churn – 61% of customers stop buying from a company if they have a poor customer experience. When you adopt the right techniques or even tools and software to build customer relationships, you deliver great experiences, that bring your customers back to you and reduce the chances of customer churn. By delivering the expected service, you stop them from switching to other brands.
• Improved Customer Loyalty – Maintaining strong customer relationships is crucial, as acquiring a new customer can cost way more than retaining an existing one. The level of customer service you provide directly influences customer loyalty. You can effectively enhance customer satisfaction by meeting their demands for exceptional service. Happy customers are more likely to spread positive word-of-mouth recommendations about your brand.  
• Word-of-Mouth Marketing – When customers are happy, they turn into brand advocates for the business. Such customers are more likely to share their satisfaction with others and influence their perception of your brand. This can lead to valuable word-of-mouth referrals and organic growth.

Understanding the Benefits of Customer Relationship with Stats 

A business that focuses on building relations with customers is more likely to achieve its sales and marketing targets compared to others. In fact, adopting a customer-centric approach can bring benefits to other aspects of the business as well. 

Let’s look at some stats to understand customer relationship benefits – 

• More than eight out of 10 customers agree that they feel more loyal to brands that respond to them and resolve their complaints. (Khoros)
• 78% of customers can leave a purchase mid-way, or back out of a purchase, due to a poor customer experience. (Glance)
• 89% of consumers will make another purchase if they have a positive customer service experience the first time around. (Salesforce Research)
• Just a 5% increase in customer retention rates can boost profits by between 25% and 95%. (Bain and Company)

10 Ways To Build Long-Standing Customer Relationship  

Building trustworthy customer relationships requires considering all the interactions across the customer journey and other factors that can influence a customer relationship. Businesses should focus on a comprehensive approach to customer success while planning techniques to build customer relationships. 

To do the same, here are 10 key factors that any business should consider for their customer relationship strategies. 

1. Exceed Customer Service Expectations

Building long-lasting customer relationships is a smart move from a marketing standpoint. It also helps you anticipate your customer’s needs, perform ongoing adjustment actions to improve your business, and exceed their expectations.

InContact study found that consumers were generally positive with proactive service. Real-time support is one key attribute of providing a great customer experience. It is a win-win formula for businesses to exceed customer service expectations and create a good impression. 

Here are some of the best  practices to exceed your customer’s expectations:

• Deliver real-time support – You can deliver real-time sales and support assistance to your customers with live chat. You can gain insights and understanding of the customer journey and deliver proactive support to enhance the customer experience.
• Connect with your customers – Allow your support team to connect with your customers and understand their needs and feedback. Empower them to fulfill their needs and deliver a great experience.
• Make your customers feel special – Go the extra mile to deliver, meet, and exceed your customer expectations. Send a thank
• you note to your customers. It will have a positive impact on your brand reputation and increase customer loyalty

Ritz Carlton Florida sets a great example of creating a memorable customer service experience. One of the family members left their son’s beloved toy Giraffe at the hotel during their vacation, and all his father  (Chris Hurn) could do was email Ritz explaining the situation.

The hotel staff responded by not only sending the beloved toy home but also by creating a photo booklet showing everything Joshie had done during his extra stay. If a hotel had done that for your child, would you stay anywhere else?

2. Personalize Customer Relationships 

Keeping your customers happy and satisfied is important for all businesses. Connecting with your customers on a personal level is the key to establishing a long and trustworthy relationship with your business. After all, personalization increases loyalty, drives higher conversions, and ultimately increases revenue. 

Understandably, the path to personalization for some companies is challenging and as a result, marketers have created segmentation strategies that can help in building a truly personalized experience. With such experiences, you can meet and exceed customer needs and deliver them value at each stage of their journey with your brand. 

Consider the below steps to build a good customer relationship and achieve brand success:

• Match your tone with your customer’s personality – Some customers prefer short conversations, and some like lengthy ones. You can learn about your customers’ personalities. It will help you to know how to speak and personalize relationships with them.
• Use advanced customer engagement tools – With live assistance tools like co-browsing and video chat, you can collaborate with your customers in real time and identify issues faster. You can deliver effective, personalized solutions from the first contact. With direct communication, you can build friendlier customer relationships.
• Know your customer preferences – Listen to your customers to identify their needs. Try to learn their preferred contact channels, and how they would like to be addressed. Give your customers the option to choose while enabling them to opt out when they wish. Knowing your customers’ preferences personalizes the experience and builds their confidence in your brand.

3. Understand Customer Psychology 

The essence of customer service psychology relates to customer satisfaction. When you understand your customers’ needs thoroughly, you can boost customer satisfaction rates. Customers expect to be valued, listened to, cared about their problems, and want assurance that the same won’t be repeated in the future. 

Customer psychology can be analyzed and understood based on their behavior and emotions, which will help you serve them better. The main benefits your brand can gain by understanding the psychology of customers are:

• Customer loyalty – when customers are satisfied with your service, they become loyal customers and are associated with your brand. 
• Brand advocacy – when you know your customer’s preferences and interests, you can personalize your conversations and build a strong customer relationship. Later, share their success stories and advocate for your brand. 

When a customer reaches out to you with a complaint or problem, their expectation is to be heard and get the problem fixed as soon as possible. They expect an attentive ear who acknowledges their problem and delivers the right solution. 

4. Prioritize Customer Experience

Customer experience is an integral part of strategies for maintaining and building relationships with customers. Brands with superior customer experiences bring in 5.7 times more revenue than competitors that lag in customer experience.

The three invaluable benefits of building customer relationships that any business can witness are customer loyalty, retention, and referrals. They have a direct impact on the revenue of your business. When customers become loyal, their lifetime value increases, and there are more chances of them recommending you to potential new customers. 

Happy and satisfied customers remain loyal. Understand the customer journey and try to deliver a consistent customer experience across the whole lifecycle. The happier your customers are, the more they will retain your business.

This is why delivering superior customer service becomes crucial for businesses. Qantas Airlines, to streamline its operations, invested in the customer experience, and set a great example for other brands. 

• Qantas started offering free Wi-Fi on flights that are a rare service.
• Unveiled a faster, streamlined baggage check-in process. 

From flight booking to checking a bag, every aspect of a customer’s journey with Qantas was improved. 

5. Create Value For Customers

How do you hook a customer for a lifetime?

As a brand, you need to focus on creating value for your customers. And you can do so by

• Understanding your customer’s needs – Listen to what your customers say, their actions, and reactions to understand what is important to them and look for opportunities to help them.
• Build communities – Communities can have a tangible impact on key business performance indicators. Businesses gain a significant increase in operational efficiency, revenue generation, and customer satisfaction. Hence, customer communities can be identified as one of the primary techniques for building customer relationships.
• Understand your value proposition –  You have to understand what value your products or services create for your customers. What will be their cost in terms of usage? This will contribute to customer relations. 
• Invest in your valuable customers – Allocate your business growth towards new products and solutions that serve your best customers. Customers are the lifeblood of your business. They are the source of current profits and the foundation of future growth. 
• Educate customers – Businesses adopt various marketing ploys to lure prospects. Customers are more likely to trust brands that make an effort to enhance their knowledge about their products or services. Research states that educating customers strengthens their trust in an organization, and it can act as an important service differentiator for brands. 

6. Instill Customer Service Etiquette 

62% of consumers worldwide mentioned they had stopped doing business with a brand after a poor customer service experience. This makes the integration of customer service etiquette crucial in every facet of your business, as delivering superior service is the best way to strengthen customer relationships.

Some key customer service etiquette that you can follow are:

Use positive words and phrases – Customers generally switch brands, when they feel the agents are untrained or rude. 70% of the customer’s journey is dictated by how the customer feels they are being treated.  Using the right phrases and words to interact with customers is one of the most important aspects of customer service. Your words create a first impression that goes a long way. 

Positive phrases like – My apologies, I am sorry should be used, and negative phrases like – I don’t know, No problem should be avoided.

Practice active listening – Always listen to what your customers say. Make the best use of every opportunity to make your customers feel comfortable, valued, and appreciated. Listening completely, without interrupting what your customers have to say helps identify the exact problem. Listening actively helps you figure out what exactly your customers want, their opinions, and their feedback so that you can meet and exceed their expectations

Offer gratitude– The two mere words ‘thank you’ can do miracles when it comes to customer service. When you use words like “Thank you” and “Please” graciously, it develops a feeling of being appreciated, and the bond between the business and customers becomes stronger. 

Show empathy – Dealing with customers, especially when they are having a complaint or facing any issue, can be resolved much faster and easier by using empathetic statements, being patient, and showing consideration. 

Using statements like “I realize how complicated it is to…” or “I’m so sorry to hear that…” can help to build rapport by expressing genuine empathy. 

7. Provide Multi-Channel Communication Approach

Do your customers know they can reach you with what they need? Do they know how? Strong customer relationships require active communication. It means your customers need to feel comfortable reaching out. You also need to focus on using software for customer relations management so that the chances of poor experiences go away completely. 

Let your customers know if you are best reached by email, live chat, social channels, text message, or other forms of communication. You should also know how they prefer to be contacted and be actively available to deliver a consistent experience across all channels. Such experiences are essential as they emphasize the value of how to build strong relationships with customers. 

Here are some tips on identifying the channels 

• Understand your target audience – You need to start working out what platforms your customers are using and how they prefer to interact with brands.
• Choose the right communication channels – Whichever channel you opt for, the overall goal should be to drive conversion while also working in tandem with the other channels to provide a consistent and unified experience to customers.
• Focus on brand engagement – To sell your brand and create real longevity, you will need people to interact with you. You should focus on conversational engagement across all channels through which customers reach out to you.
• Tailor your approach to channels – A truly successful multichannel strategy needs content specifically tailored to suit each channel. Ensure that the content is different, but the message is consistent.

Your business will need the right customer support tools to adopt a multi-channel approach. Start a free trial of customer service software and take a step towards providing omnichannel support. 

8. Use Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Management Tools 

CRM is a customer-focused business strategy designed to optimize revenue, profit, and customer satisfaction. The more you understand your customers, the easier it is to target new prospects and boost sales.

Customer relationship management can act as a powerful tool that helps in recording your customer’s product likes and dislikes, their spending patterns, and their location, age, and gender. The CRM software enables you to build up a detailed profile of their tastes, needs, and buying habits. It will help you understand how to maintain good relationships with customers. 

A CRM system can benefit your business by helping you centralize, optimize, and streamline your communications with customers and enhance the following areas:

• Gain insights about your customers
• Segment customer base in a better way
• Anticipate their needs & interests through consumer modeling 
• Increase customer retention rates
• Faster communication with customers

By using CRM tools like Hubspot, Salesforce, and Infusionsoft, you can identify your most profitable customers, for example, or promising prospects, and target them with marketing messages and offers devised just for them. 

9. Appreciate Loyal Customers

How do you maintain good customer relationships? Or do you know how to improve customer relationships? 

One good way is by appreciating your loyal customers.

Loyal customers are like assets for your business. They improve your brand’s image by becoming brand advocates through good word of mouth. According to Motista, customers with an emotional connection to a brand have a 306% higher lifetime value, stay with the brand for a longer time, and will recommend it at a much higher rate.

Businesses should go the extra mile by building consumer delight ideas and showing appreciation to loyal customers in the following ways:

• Incentivize Offering discounts, free products, special buying opportunities, and price reductions to loyal customers shows that you value them.
• Premium service – You can offer premium services to your loyal customers like – co-browsing, video chat, and chatbot support. 
• Early access – The Early Access program is a reward to loyal customers by giving them something exclusive.

Sephora’s Beauty Insider rewards program is globally popular. 

• The program records more than 17 million loyal members, and members make up as much as 80% of Sephora’s annual sales. 
• Customers earn rewards for each purchase based on a traditional point system. 
• The best part is that members can choose how to use their reward points. 

10. Acquire Customer Feedback And Act On It

Obtaining customer feedback is one of the techniques used to build relationships with customers. 

To serve your customers well, you need their feedback and opinions on what you are doing and what needs improvement. Your customer is the best source of information who can provide you with a genuine picture of your product or performance.

The tips you can follow for collecting customer feedback and acting on it:

• Establish a regular feedback loop in which you ask customers to let you know what is working. This shows them that you are there to understand & serve their needs, not just to build your client base.
• You can ask for feedback at the right time such as after the service conversation ends, after a support ticket is resolved, or a product demo to gain the most genuine feedback.
• You need to obtain customer feedback effectively. Further, categorize and discuss the feedback with respective departments and implement their suggestions. They feel valued, so show them that you are listening to them. 

Customer feedback not only increases the scope of improvement in the business but also strengthens customer relationships over time.

Final Thoughts 

Building customer relationships is a critical business objective across the globe. If you want to improve brand engagement, give your customers reasons to emotionally connect with you. 

Practically, you have to go beyond CRM and adopt techniques to build and maintain good customer relationships. You can sign up with REVE Chat and have the best tools for building customer relationships.  

When you have the right tools and customer relationship strategies, it will help you solidify your relationships with customers and create a strong foundation that will help you grow your business to new levels.

92% of businesses say CRM software plays an important role in achieving their revenue goals.

Are you looking to establish your presence or a seasoned enterprise aiming to optimize your CRM processes? In this blog, let’s explore the customer relationship management examples, types, and top tools to elevate your customer relationship management efforts.

What is Customer Relationship Management?

Customer relationship management refers to the art of managing good customer relationships and prospective customers. It is all about understanding who your customers and potential customers are, and nurturing the relationships you have with them. It is about identifying client expectations and how you meet or go beyond their expectations.

A customer relationship model seeks to improve the relationship between a business and the customer. For this, they drive new trends and provide profits for current and future operations and investments.

The below model is one approach to implementing CRM.

The customer relationship management model can be further categorized into below stages

• Awareness – It is the first touchpoint where prospects try to know more about your brand as a whole.
• Discovery – Then you learn and identify the needs of the prospects and share information to fulfill their requirements.
• Evaluation – Moving ahead the prospects compare and evaluate your products/services with your competitors.
• Intent – Finally your prospect is convinced and made a decision to buy from you.
• Purchase – After making the payment the deal is done and the prospect converts into your customer.
• Loyalty –  Make a follow-up after purchase to determine customer success with your product and ask for referrals. 

Types of CRM Systems

CRM systems can be broadly categorized into several types based on their functionality and deployment model. Here are some common types of CRM systems:

1. Operational CRM: It mainly focuses on automating and improving customer-facing processes such as sales, marketing, and customer service. The operational CRM typically includes features like contact management, sales force automation, lead management, campaign management, and customer service/support. 
2. Analytical CRM: This type involves analyzing customer data to gain insights into customer behavior, preferences, and trends. It utilizes data mining, predictive analytics, and business intelligence tools to identify patterns and make data-driven decisions. Analytical CRM helps businesses understand their customers better, segment their customer base, and personalize marketing campaigns and offerings to improve customer satisfaction and retention.
3. Collaborative CRM: It focuses on facilitating communication and collaboration between different departments within an organization to better serve customers. It integrates various communication channels such as email, phone, chat, and social media to ensure consistent and coordinated interactions with customers across departments. This type of CRM system helps break down silos and improve cross-functional collaboration.
4. Strategic CRM: It involves long-term planning and relationship-building strategies aimed at maximizing customer lifetime value and profitability. It focuses on developing and nurturing profitable customer relationships through personalized engagement, loyalty programs, and customer retention initiatives. Strategic CRM aligns organizational goals with customer needs and objectives to create sustainable competitive advantages.
5. Cloud-Based CRM: They are hosted on remote servers and accessed via the internet, offering scalability, flexibility, and accessibility from any device with an internet connection. They eliminate the need for on-premises hardware and software installation and maintenance, making them cost-effective and easy to deploy. 
6. On-Premises CRM: These are installed and maintained on the company’s own servers and infrastructure. They provide complete control over data security and customization. They require upfront investment in hardware, software licenses, and IT infrastructure but offer greater customization and integration capabilities.
7. Industry-Specific CRM: Some CRM systems are designed to meet the unique needs and requirements of specific industries such as healthcare, finance, real estate, or retail. These industry-specific CRM solutions offer tailored features, workflows, and integrations to address industry-specific challenges and compliance regulations effectively. They help businesses in specialized sectors streamline operations, improve customer relationships, and achieve industry-specific objectives.

Impact of Customer Relationship Management on Your Business

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has a profound impact on businesses across various industries. Here are some key ways in which CRM can influence your business:

1. Improved Customer Satisfaction: CRM systems enable businesses to understand their customers better, track interactions, and personalize communication. Businesses can enhance customer satisfaction by providing better service and addressing customer needs more effectively.
2. Increased Customer Retention: Businesses can tailor their offerings and communication to individual customers by maintaining a comprehensive database of customer information and preferences. This personalized approach fosters loyalty and increases the likelihood of repeat purchases. Thereby, improving customer retention rates.
3. Enhanced Sales Performance: It streamlines the sales process by providing insights into customer behavior, identifying potential leads, and tracking sales opportunities. Sales teams can prioritize their efforts more effectively and focus on high-value prospects.
4. Efficient Marketing Campaigns: CRM software enables businesses to segment their customer base and target specific demographics with personalized marketing campaigns. Businesses can refine their marketing strategies and improve the ROI of their marketing efforts by analyzing customer data and tracking campaign performance.
5. Scalability and Growth: As businesses grow, managing customer relationships becomes increasingly complex. CRM systems provide scalable solutions that can accommodate growing customer bases and evolving business needs. It facilitates business growth and expansion by standardizing processes and automating routine tasks.
6. Competitive Advantage: These days, providing exceptional customer service and building strong relationships with customers is essential for maintaining a competitive edge. CRM enables businesses to differentiate themselves by delivering personalized experiences and exceeding customer expectations.

How Does Creating Good Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Foundation Matter?

Customers are the heartbeat of all businesses. Therefore, creating good customer engagement examples by strengthening relationships with clients is crucial for business success. Through good and bad times, maintaining a healthy customer relationship with all your customers will help in sustaining the performance of your business. 

Whether it is online event companies or trade events, this reason is making/forcing businesses to develop excellent customer relationships for maintaining good performance. Developing good CRM and marketing helps your business to set better customer relationship management examples. 

Let’s talk about the key areas of  developing good customer relationship management 

• Results in good customer experience – CRM is about creating relationships with your customers so that, they enjoy positive experiences when interacting with your brand.
• Growth in customer retention rates – Positive experiences fuel customer retention. Your customers are loyal to your brand and turn into brand advocates.
• High level of customer satisfaction – When you meet your customer expectations with your exceptional service it boosts satisfaction level and they are likely to return to your business again.

So, now let us find out how businesses have used innovative customer relationship management and marketing models/strategies.

8 Examples of Innovative Marketing & Customer Relationship Management

To improve customer relationships, you need to focus on each and every interaction made by customers with your brand. Here are some of the best customer relationship management examples that delve into important customer interactions.

1. Deliver Live Assistance to Boost Customer Engagement

Aberdeen Group’s study found that businesses using visual engagement tools marked an 83% year-on-year increase in annual revenue and achieved 2.7x greater annual improvement (decrease) in customer effort score.

Live assistance is gaining ground as a prominent communication channel for banks as it makes interaction easier. It helps to wrap up a large part of the customer journey context and boost customer satisfaction.

Instead of waiting for bank visits to carry out key transactions like applying for a loan, via using visual tools like video chat and co-browsing, customers gain faster as well as in-person engagement. Live engagement platforms offer face-to-face video chat assistance that assures security to customers for handling their finances via direct conversation remotely.

The co-browsing solution greatly impacts online customer support by empowering your agents to converse over the customer’s browser and assist to the right page or fill up forms.

Benefits of virtual banking with live assistance tools 

• Combining video chat and co-browsing allows the agents to deliver a personalized banking experience.
• Agents can serve customers for the first time reducing the number of contacts required for assistance.
• Using live collaboration tools for banking support boosts customer trust and satisfaction.

Commercial Bank of Kuwait (CBK), the leading bank has implemented REVE Chat’s video and co-browsing solution to deliver live assistance to its customers. With live tools, the bank has witnessed a significant increase in customer engagement. 

Sign Up with REVE Chat and offer personalized customer service by directly interacting with them and learning the root of the issue.

Takeaways

• If your customer touchpoints require live support, engage them with one video chat or co-browsing solution.

• You should identify your customer journey and provide live assistance for better resolution and customer service experience.

2. Have an Omnichannel Presence

As technology has evolved, the number of communication channels has also grown exponentially. Businesses now have multiple marketing and customer service channels to communicate with their customers, including both offline and online methods.

Having more communication channels is a good thing for a business as it gives the ability to interact with customers, and serve them. With omnichannel support, you can integrate text, instant messaging, and social to deliver a unified brand experience so that customers can switch between multiple channels and still experience consistent service. 

Oasis, one of the leading women’s clothing brands, focuses on delivering the best omni-channel experience to its customers. It presents one of the finest customer obsession examples by ensuring value at each stage of the journey. 

It focused on three main areas to give a better experience to its customers

• Identified the most preferred channels for customer touchpoints 
• Developed a strategy to engage and support them across all those touchpoints
• Delivered a consistent experience throughout the customer journey

As it identified that maximum touchpoints were made via social platforms, it thought of doing something different to impress its Instagram followers.

It created a special gallery of user-generated Instagram content, substantially encouraging customers to model the clothes they have bought from the Oasis store.

Takeaways:

• Know your customer’s preferred channels to reach your business and be available for real-time support.
• Improve your customer relationships by delivering a consistent multi-channel support experience. 

3. Automate Customer Support

Delayed response is one of the top reasons why customers decline and leave you at risk of your competitors. Nothing makes a customer happy and satisfied than a faster response. 

Ubisend study says, 21% of consumers believe chatbots are the easiest way to contact a business.

Automating customer support with the best chatbots can redefine your customer satisfaction rates by improving your response times, engagement, and your customers’ interests. Real-time service is invaluable in retaining your current relationships and prospects as well.

Chatbots also help businesses to 

• Direct customers to genuine answers that reduce the number of support tickets raised by customers.
• Feed your bot with general FAQs and train it with relevant answers so that it follows the same pattern to serve customers in the future. 

Hipmunk is a famous travel platform used to search for travel deals. It attempted to use AI technology to engage customers at a closer level and created Hello chatbot 

How does the Hello chatbot help customers?

• To search and reserve the travel activity of their choice.
• The chatbot determines the location of the customer, and then aggregates and promotes discounts/deals on travel packages.
• It can be integrated with various chat applications like Facebook, and Skype.

Some takeaways for you:

• You can place chatbots for initiating chat and collect basic information from website visitors & customers and engage them.
• You can engage your customers 24×7 when the support team is not available. It reduces the number of support requests and boosts customer satisfaction.

4. Continuous Marketing Engagement 

Lack of engagement is one of the big red flags for customer churn in your business. The trick to avoiding this problem is to keep them happy and engaged in post-sales. Because loyal customers are far more profitable than new customers.

How do you do that?

It can be a daunting task to maintain continuous engagement with your customers to offer support to foster this crucial business relationship.

But the thumb rule is: the better the engagement, the happier your customers are. When customers are engaged correctly they are more likely to retain, recommend, and buy more. If your customer engagement strategies are effective, they will positively impact your KPIs.

Here are some strategies to improve continuous marketing engagement:

• Send a thank you email as a token of appreciation and connect you with them with a positive impression. And the basis of creating customer relationships is connecting with people.

• Ask for reviews to measure your customer success with your products and services. You can encourage customers to provide reviews, and you can entice them with a discount or special deal, like free shipping on their next order. 

• Cross-sell or upsell your products through post-purchase emails. Notify your customers of your new products and also offer product recommendations based on their previous purchases.

• Reward systems can be one of the most effective customer loyalty program ideas to engage customers after they have made their purchase.

• Request for referrals is an effective form of marketing. People tend to make a purchase for sure when it is recommended by a friend or family. The best time to request a referral is after the sale is closed.

Sephora’s Beauty Insider rewards program is globally popular. 

• The program records more than 17 million loyal members, and members make up as much as 80% of Sephora’s annual sales. 
• Customers earn rewards for each purchase based on a traditional point system. 
• The best part is that members can choose how to use their reward points.

Takeaways:

• You are supposed to keep your customers engaged after the sales. It should not be only part of the customer journey. 
• When you engage your customers post-sales they feel valued and this improves customer retention

5. Use Social Media for Customer Service

Social media has emerged as a crucial touchpoint in structuring customer relationships. Customers share their positive as well as negative reviews and experiences over social and expect an immediate response.

According to Gartner, churn increases by up to 15% for businesses that fail to respond to messages on social media.

Popular social channels like Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter are not just for business promotion. They can be used to connect with your customers. Almost 78% of customers want brands to help people connect through social media.

Framing good customer relationships on social media helps businesses to improve relationships with customers by making them feel connected to your brand.

Make your customers feel happy after interacting with you. It helps in creating strong connections with customers over social media. For instance, Nike engages its customers and makes them feel they are available to fix their issues even though customers can find the solution themselves. 

Takeaways:

• You should respond faster to social reviews and posts and develop customer trust.
• It is recommended to personalize your conversations while talking directly with customers.
• Offer rewards to your customers with campaigns and contests to set good customer relationship management examples.

6. Improve Your Conversion Rates

Your customers are your greatest assets as they are the ones who will vouch for the quality of your products and services. If you play your cards right when it comes to customer experience, your customers can turn into your marketing representatives.

And how having customers as marketing professionals is effective?

If customers are satisfied with your service they turn to their friends and family for recommendations. They share their success stories with your brand with positive word of mouth.

Referrals convert at 3-5 times a higher rate than other marketing methods. The referred customers are more loyal and have higher lifetime values. 

Casper Mattress company came with an irresistible offer.  It offered to take a mattress home and sleep on it for 100 days before deciding whether to return it. Such an amazing offer along with quick online ordering and home delivery – nobody wanted to miss it.

• Giving a long trial period eliminated the greatest fears about buying a high-end mattress. Customers had plenty of time to test the mattress for comfort and durability. 
• Customers had mattresses in their homes that they could use and show to others. Casper at the same time circulated detailed ads and reviews on social media.

Takeaway:

• You should focus on your customer service strategies. When your customers are satisfied they retain your business and advocate your brand with positive word of mouth.

7. Increase Customer Satisfaction

Forrester’s research indicates that expectations toward customer service are related to three main factors: the success of the solving process, ease of the solving process, and emotions during the solving process.

The journey of providing your customers with a positive experience starts from the moment they visit on your website and extends beyond the moment they become your customers.

Keeping your customer’s expectations a top priority and going the extra mile to meet those expectations will boost their satisfaction and set great customer delight examples. 

A customer’s experience and feedback should be the factors that validate important decisions within your business. Seeking customers’ feedback and implementing it makes the customers feel better.

Airbnb surveys take customer’s opinions after their stay, giving them the space to decide whether they want to share their feedback or not. Airbnb has increased the number of bookings by 25%, just with their referral program.

Takeaway:

• You should learn about your customer experiences and try to fulfill them to deliver a positive experience. Positive experiences boost customer satisfaction.

8. Develop a Strong Brand Image

Every business puts its best efforts into developing a strong brand image as it sets the foundation for building relationships with customers.  A strong brand image impacts increasing the trust level in customers and helps in customer retention. 

Successful branding leads to increased customer loyalty, an improved image, and a relatable identity. TSL Marketing

The brand image can be strengthened by making use of brand communication through word of mouth.

Colgate, for example, is a popular brand name. It has built an image in customers that it is the best product for maintaining their dental health. Usually, customers go for Colgate as a brand as they are strongly connected with it.

Takeaway:

• Brand image is of great importance. Put your best efforts to develop your brand image and maintain the trust of your customers.

Top 5 Tools for Better Customer Relationship Management

There are numerous tools available for customer relationship management (CRM), each offering various features to help businesses effectively manage their interactions with customers. Here are some of the top tools commonly used for better CRM:

1. Salesforce: Salesforce is one of the leading CRM platforms, offering a comprehensive suite of tools for sales, marketing, and customer service. It provides features such as contact management, opportunity tracking, lead scoring, email automation, and customizable dashboards. It also offers extensive integration capabilities with third-party apps and a vibrant ecosystem of add-ons and extensions.
2. HubSpot CRM: It is a popular choice for small to mid-sized businesses. It offers a user-friendly interface and a range of features for sales, marketing, and customer service. HubSpot includes contact management, email tracking, deal tracking, lead scoring, and reporting tools.
3. Zoho CRM: It is a robust CRM solution suitable for businesses of all sizes, offering features like lead management, pipeline management, email marketing, workflow automation, and reporting/analytics. It provides integration with other Zoho products as well as third-party applications.
4. Microsoft Dynamics 365: It is a cloud-based CRM and ERP platform that integrates seamlessly with other Microsoft products such as Office 365 and Outlook. It offers features for sales, marketing, customer service, and field service, along with AI-driven insights and predictive analytics. It helps businesses make informed decisions and personalize customer interactions.
5. Pipedrive: This CRM platform is designed to help sales teams manage leads, track deals, and improve sales performance. It offers customizable pipelines, activity tracking, email integration, and reporting tools.

Conclusion

Customer relationship management is an integral part of every section of the business. It is not limited to customer support only rather it applies to the whole customer life cycle across their journey.

Developing long-lasting customer relationships is crucial for businesses as it helps your brand stand out and gives customers reasons to emotionally connect with you. However, having a strong foundation of customer relationships is the base of every business.

Businesses are different but the core essence of success will always remain the same. REVE Chat’s live chat platform allows you to understand and address customer concerns in real time which strengthens customer relationships. Sign up today to set an excellent customer relationship management example.