Customer relationship management abbreviated as CRM is fast becoming the best tool to manage a company’s clients, suppliers and sales leads. Although rooted in but not limited to sales and procurement customer relationship management also helps coordinate, integrate and harmonize business procedures related to support, marketing and client services. In a town where efficiency is key to staying on top above companies in Johannesburg and Cape Town, Durban needs this edge to stay on top.
The goal of customer relationship management is to maintain and strengthen a company’s relationships with its clients, prospective clients and suppliers by recording all the information regarding these individual entities and making it instantly and widely accessible when required to deal with the relevant entity. This can be widely beneficial to Durban companies where the main businesses are based on manufacturing, and exports due to Durban harbour.
Ensuring clients call or email is returned or they are notified of a change regarding their order or query can be vital in retaining a client or gaining a new one. Through increased efficiency, customer relationship management can help improve and ensure that clients, not necessarily Durban based, experience is a good one and a happy client is invaluable to a company. Having a detailed record of a client’s sales history, customer relationship management can help identify loyal clients that perhaps might be rewarded and also clients that have not returned so that the sales and marketing teams can correct the situation to retain that client.
With the current move from client/server customer relationship management to a more web based (accessed via a secure Internet or local connection and displayed in a web browser) customer relationship management has meant that the ability for different departments e.g. Sales and technical support to effectively collaborate in the resolution of a client queries, and in a town like Durban, where often the departments are located separately, work can continue to run smoothly. A web-based CRM also means reduced hardware overheads and of flexible accessibility. This aids small Durban companies where the budget for such things might be fairly small.
The Customer relationship management platform records all internal and external interactions of which we have already mentioned email and telephonically but also includes faxing, orders, documents, sales and invoicing. This wealth of data generated by Customer relationship management can help the marketing team to formulate more effective marketing campaigns; a more targeted marketing campaign means a greater pull to your product at less expense. This can help reach and keep in contact with clients based outside the main Durban CBD.
Effective communication with all the parties involved with a company is key to its longevity and success and this can most certainly be achieved with a well implemented customer relationship management into Durban based companies.
To set up an appointment with one of our Durban sales staff for a detailed analysis of your Intranet needs, contact Garth Van Der Woude on 031 767 4059 or 072 460 9831.
Keywords: Customer Relationship Management Durban , CRM Durban, Durban Customer Relationship Management , Durban CRM