Your brand is a world of emotions and experiences that comes along your offering. Optimally, it has personality, a voice, tells a story, and becomes dear to your customers over time. It’s especially that last part that will give you the competitive edge, and that is where CRM is extremely strong and valuable.
CRM is a tool and strategy that is used to interact with customers. They are many and sophisticated – let me give you an idea what they can do for you(r brand).
An instant kill
You might have defined your profile with adjectives like „friendly, approachable“ on a whiteboard once in a workshop, but the proof of concept comes for your customer once they do something as mundane as contact customer support. An experience that forms the perception of your company much stronger than any brand color or marketing campaign. If this one experience is unpleasant, it can kill your carefully elaborated brand on the spot, effectively and long lasting. Not only for this one customer, but their network as well.
Data to the rescue
CRM helps to collect, analyze and manage data about every touchpoint between you and your customer, in addition to finding and subsequently avoiding pain points.This data also makes you understand who you’re interacting with. It can potentially lead to iterating on the target group you once defined on the same whiteboard. This is powerful knowledge, and once you know who you’re speaking to it’s much easier to find a message that actually hits home and resonates.
Making sure that this now relevant message also stays consistent on all channels and in all means of communication, is again, crucial to building a strong relationship. You might get my drift already, CRM can be of great assistance managing this.
Level up with personalisation
Finally, to reach the holy grail (aka brand loyalty), you may step up the game even more from not disappointing and staying consistent to actually connecting and possibly inspiring. You want to become special to your customer by making them feel special. Segmentation and personalization, based on the collected data, makes CRM offer unique ways to communicate with people. Such as by providing relevant, helpful content at the right time and place. Instead of adding to the overall marketing noise that is directed at everyone and perceived by none, you can listen first and act on the insights after, with measurements that are tailor-cut to individuals.
To create a brand is a long and challenging creative process that demands a lot from everybody involved, but optimally leads to a beautiful, suitable and innovative solution. Leveraging customer experience and CRM heightens the chances that your baby will survive in the real world and establish its place in the market. In the end, a strong brand along with happy customers is a strong formula for good business – something I guess you don’t want to miss out on.
