Customer Relationship Management (CRM) can be used very successfully to improve Customer Service within a business. It involves gathering a lot of data about the customer. The data is then used to facilitate customer service transactions by making the information needed to resolve the issue or concern readily available to those dealing with the customers. This results in more satisfied customers, a more profitable business and more resources available to the support staff. This data can also be used to assist management in deciding on the future course of the company.

There is much data needed for the CRM system to work. Types of information needed are customer name, address, date of transactions, outstanding transactions, issues and complaints, status of order, shipping and fulfillment dates, account information, demographic data and many more. This information is important in providing the customer the answer that he or she needs to resolve the issue without having to wait for a long time and without going to several departments. With just a few mouse clicks, a customer support representative for example can track the location of the customer’s package or order. Furthermore, the customer service representative will also be able to see the previous correspondance and notes on the customer. This is a great help especially if the customer is calling about the same issue since he or she will not have to repeat the story all over again. This results in less time in resolving the issue, thus, higher productivity of the support staff.

Reports on customer service activity generated by CRM systems are invaluable to your marketing department as this information provides the opportunity to target specific groups – be they industries, regions, or customers with a particular recurring problem. This means that marketing efforts are now addressing the issues people have, providing both a solution to the problem and an opportunity to increase revenue.

Expanding upon the customer service theme, complaint and fault logging means that we can now track problems, suggested actions and resolutions to individual contacts within a customer’s organisation. These complaints, problems or issues can be documented as standard FAQ’s (Frequently Asked Questions) which give a standard response to a common question, resulting in much improved turnaround times in the for customer service enquiries. Most importantly, a customer who has not responded on a particular issue can be followed up with, or the issue escalated to a manager or other senior member of staff.