Although this cycle is fragmented into several stages, it is essential to have a unique or comprehensive view of each customer. Otherwise, customer service loses quality and cross-selling opportunities are wasted. It can also happen that sales people, due to lack of visibility, discover in the middle of a sales conversation that they are not clear about their purpose. They cannot be blamed if the company’s customer information is disorganized, duplicated, or fragmented.
CRM and Customer Lifecycle
Throughout the customer lifecycle, companies collect, update, and use a plethora of data to provide guidance on how to act in future interactions with current and potential customers.
If salespeople do not have complete and reliable data, it is impossible for them to know key aspects of their relationships with customers such as what they bought last time, why they bought it, when the deal was closed and to what extent they were satisfied with the product or service.
One of the best ways to leverage customer knowledge is to implement a customer relationship management (CRM) solution. CRM systems provide visibility into the customer lifecycle and can maximize productivity, ensure information traceability and management, and improve operational efficiency.
How to Gain Operational Efficiency
There are at least five ways to gain operational efficiency throughout the customer lifecycle:
- Automation: Marketing automation and customer relationship management tools can help companies send personalized communications based on customer behavior and preferences. This improves the relevance and efficiency of interactions.
- Segmentation: By segmenting customers according to their behaviors, needs and preferences, companies can target each group more effectively, reducing efforts and resources
- Data and analytics: This tandem allows understanding customers’ behavior and predicting their needs. With this information, a company can optimize its operations and offer proactive solutions.
- Channel optimization: It is necessary to understand which channels (e. g. email, social media, live chat) are most effective for communicating with different customer segments and adjust the strategy accordingly.
- Staff training: Companies must ensure that staff are well trained and have access to the tools and data they need to serve customers effectively.
This all sounds easier said than done….. So, when is a company considered to have operational efficiency? When it minimizes waste, whether in terms of time, resources, costs, production or delivery of goods and services; when it maximizes value for customers and for the company at each stage of the lifecycle we will see below; when it can adapt quickly to changes in the market or in customer demand without incurring prohibitive costs; and when it maintains or improves service or product quality while optimizing and improving processes.
Customer lifecycle stages
Although customer lifecycle may vary from industry to industry, there are some stages common to all sectors. Broadly speaking, customer lifecycle can be divided into five stages. And in all of them, it is important to have the right data management strategy in place to provide a single, reliable customer view within the CRM system:
- First contact with potential customers
The way available information is used can make the difference between winning and losing a customer. To be successful at this stage, it is necessary to gain a good understanding of how and when customers engage with the company. The data collected in these early interactions can become one of the best assets for turning leads into actual customers.
In this first stage, key information must be provided to the right people at the right time to personalize prospecting activities and differentiate the company from other competitors approaching the same customers at the same time.
On the other hand, synchronizing data enables salespeople and customer service agents to get the information they need when they need it. Knowing which customers are satisfied with a company’s products can facilitate cross-selling or up-selling and increase customer loyalty and overall customer value.
- First purchase
Turning a lead into an actual customer often requires synchronized work from different business areas, including Sales, Marketing, Finance or Distribution. Each of these functions may have different ways of documenting the conversion process and different systems for capturing information.
When these systems are not integrated or shared, or information needs to be modified (e. g. contact or payment data), errors and delays can occur. This could be avoided by better tracking customer activities throughout their lifecycle, which would also help create an ideal buyer profile, understand how and why a particular product is purchased, and facilitate future customer interactions.
The immediate result of all the above is that customer acquisition is accelerated. This is a feasible goalas long as best practices in data management such as data de-duplication at the point of entry and address validation, standardization, enrichment and consolidation within the CRM system are applied.
- Monitoring
At this stage of the lifecycle, sufficient data has already been collected and validated about customers and their products. Now it is time to closely track delivery details to ensure that each customer receives what they have purchased and can pick it up at the location of their choice.
Having complete information in a common, easily accessible repository allows Sales, Customer Service and Logistics to collaborate to meet customerexpectations.
- After-sales service
At this stage of the lifecycle, customers are already using a product or service. Depending on what happens at this point, consumers can become brand advocates or detractors.
To expand the network of advocates or at least not lose current and potential customers, it is necessary to ensure that business users working in the Support and Customer Care areas can quickly and easily access the data they need to serve customers and deliver on the brandpromise.
- Renewal/cross-selling or up-selling
At this late stage in the lifecycle, it is vitally important to know whether existing customers will buy more products or renew a service. It is possible that, at the time of renewal, their circumstances will have changed, and they will need something different or more sophisticated.
Therefore, to retain customers and enhance their value to the company, it is essential to know them very well and to access the data collected in the four previous stages of the lifecycle.
Do you want to know more?
About DocPath
DocPath is a leading enterprise document software company that offers its international customers the technology that allows them to complement their ERP and implement advanced Document Output Management, Customer Communications Management and document software spooling processes.
Founded in 1993, DocPath is based in Europe, USA and Latin America and is present with its Solutions in companies around the world. Among its customers there are prestigious banks and top-tier corporations, facilitating the difficult and complex task of designing, generating and distributing their business-critical documents. DocPath keeps a strong commitment to R+D+i, an area to which it allocates a large part of its revenues, and in which lies one of the keys to its success.
For more information, visit: www.docpath.com.
Legal Notice: DocPath is a registered trademark of DocPath Document Solutions. All rights reserved. Other trademarks mentioned herein might be the property of their respective owners.