Many times businesses face hard times as a result of changing market trends or probably due to low strategies, but a good CRM sees them through. But what does CRM stand for? CRM means customer relationship management. In this article, we look at a few ways CRM can help your business to thrive at hard times while also giving you some crisis management tips.
Aiming at being successful under all possible circumstances, companies should understand what CRM is, integrate good CRM software, train their sales team on CRM, and utilize it to manage situations. Research shows that a business that can personalize guest interactions using CRM solutions can improve their overall conversion by over 50%.
According to creatio.com, there's an increased email click rate and change among companies that use low-code to develop more interactive features such as marketing automation and high data sharing, particularly for crisis management.
And when the business is facing a crisis like the new COVID-19 pandemic, the capacity of a good CRM software to help you perceptively take up guests makes it an essential requirement.
Do you notice that currently, every company you ever engaged with before this pandemic is bombarding you with the crisis-related messages? Whether these memorandums are essential to you or not, none of them are interested. However, you need to analyze the kind of communication that goes to your customers so that you do not look regressive in the face of the situation. Develop some well thought, compassionate, personalized communications concerning your business, how the crisis has affected business and the conforming actions you are taking to moderate the situation.
How CRM Can Help Businesses Under Crisis?
Here are four specific ways your CRM can help you navigate a crisis by personalizing communications and carefully integrating targeted campaigns and offers that provide value to your target groups.
Update Customers on Security and Safety
Relevant communication with customers or leads who visit your property more frequently (not someone who visited some years ago and did not return) can be more rewarding as well as it can generate more satisfaction, particularly during hard times. Customers are more interested in knowing how much the crisis has affected their travel plans, shopping trends, availability of goods, etc.
They also want to know what measures the company is taking to mitigate any safety concerns and the current news that may affect their engagement with your business. Control your CRM integration with social media to tackle these concerns adequately by communicating key information promptly.
Prioritize Demands
If your business has global travel as well as hotel businesses, you may need to diversify and start looking at other markets that are hardly hit by the crisis, for instance, looking at the current pandemic. Your company CRM can help you focus on any existing demand as well as support bookings of customers.
Looking at a challenging time similar to that of Covid-19, with travel restrictions, your business should consider focusing more on local demands. Use CRM to run specific local promotions targeting narrows geographics.
Use the available CRM data to analyze your market and be able to segregate your audience in terms of gender, young or old, scholars, or none scholars. Being able to send customized information will have a positive impact on your business than sending general communications, which will only make sense to a narrow set of audiences.
Using CRM, you can also set up abandonment remarks or reminders to update your guest about bookings they initiated but abandoned at the onset of a crisis. This will ensure they can continue with these bookings when the problem subsides without looking elsewhere.
Plan for the Recovery
When markets begin to recover from the crisis, the brands that will be best positioned to take up and meet the emerging demands will be in a position to reclaim revenue at the earliest time. Travel agencies, for instance, who will be able to continue high-value work, will be better positioned to net business as the crisis diminishes. You may also need to step back and
Being in a position to determine your most valuable guests is very crucial for a company when hard times knock. CRM software can help you with deciding the RFM (Recently, Frequency, and Monetary) score for all your customers. This score will help you put up a strategy to recognize and communicate with them during the crisis period. This could be achieved by sending more personalized email promotions or even thank you notes!
While planning for recovery, your company can: Study previous campaigns that have a history of giving you proper results and put them on the table to draw a strategy to help boost your business when things get normal and demand return.
Send personalized emails to guests, leads, or customers with their private details such as dates of birth or anniversaries to reward them with customized offers.
Invite your long time guests to return and try your brand when the situation gets better. These could be customers who visited, made one time purchases, and never returned. Inform them of your company improvements and your dedication to serve them better.
consider investing your time to learn more about your market niche or technology solutions around it. This opportunity will help you know much more about tech capabilities and options your business may not be currently taking real advantage of.
Make Data-driven Decisions
our sales team may have more time to look at your company CRM data if the crisis causes low demand and fewer customer-related engagements. Take this time to review, modify, and analyze the data to be able to engage your guests based on real-time information. You will also be in a better position to set goals as well as forecast with efficiency using the available data.
When you use these CRM data and develop an excellent strategy to face the situation, you will be in a position to stand firm and recover adequately when the situation gets better.
Conclusion
Understanding CRM meaning is not the only important thing for a company that is facing a crisis. The ability to segment, personalize, and deliver exceptional customer service is much more critical. Companies should, therefore, not lean on properties, but strive to manage their relationship with customers.