Businesses must use technology to engage with customers through the building of an effective customer relations management (CRM) system, according to Korak Kuhnert and Daniel Marcus, founder and director of Magnetic Software.
Kuhnert and Marcus of Magnetic Software told the Customer Experience Management (CEM) conference in Cape Town how technology can improve customer engagement.
They said an effective CRM system with an accurate, automated database will help to retain customers, increase sales team productivity, allow visibility across sales and communication, reduce business risk on a single employee, manage how a customer feels and improve customer satisfaction and loyalty.
“When you’re engaging, you want to get something across, you want to transfer information and knowledge… and you want to educate them about your product and service,” said Kuhnert.
“These are some of the channels that you engage with or communicate: email, phone, social media, web-forms and face to face. This is where technology comes in, you can’t really do this without technology.”
Further engaging with customers includes mail and SMS blasts (bulk email/SMS sending), blogs and social media.
“You want to get news out there, so if you’ve got problems with the system, something is currently not working, don’t keep it in the background and wait for people to complain. Let them know, identify the problem use the mail blast, use the SMS blast,” said Marcus.
Marcus spoke about online platforms such as Everlytic that allow companies to send bulk mails and use their systems to monitor the progress to determine the best times to send mails and also run A/B Split testing to determine which designs and subjects work best for their audience
In addition to mail and SMS blasts, social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter are also effective ways of utilising technology to connect with the customer, however, Kuhnert and Marcus warned to be careful when using social media, because it can go “horribly wrong.”
