AcumatiCaresA business succeeds or fails based on whether it keeps or loses customers. The best way to ensure customer retention? An ERP solution with CRM software.
How much easier is it to lose a customer than to find one? A lot. Vincent Lombardi, famous NFL football coach (not to mention a Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee and the person the NFL Super Bowl trophy is named after), said it best: “It takes months to find a customer…seconds to lose one.”
He’s right, and it boils down to customer retention. Any business in any industry that has customers should understand the value of their customers and the relationship they build with each one. If they don’t, the competition, which sells virtually the same product or service, is ready to pounce.
This puts customers in the power position. It’s up to businesses to persuade their customers to remain loyal to them, but how?
With a cloud ERP solution and an integrated CRM system, that’s how.
CX: The importance of the customer experience
Before diving into how an integrated ERP CRM system helps with customer retention, let’s look at an example of how a business interacts (or better yet, should interact) with their customers. We’ll use a company that produces and sells fencing.
Depending on the type or types of fencing, the fence contractor may need materials like PVC, wood, or chain link. These materials are readily available, and the contractor can pick and choose which supplier it would like to do business with. The contractor checks out their options, Suppliers A and B. They ultimately decide to go with Supplier A and embark on their CX journey.
CX is short for customer experience. The customer experience encompasses every touchpoint the customer makes with a company, from the marketing that attracted them in the first place, to the sales manager who facilitated the sell, to the customer service they receive after making a purchase. It also encompasses every team member they encounter along the way.
If Supplier A understands the value of the fence contractor, they will understand how critical it is to develop a relationship with that customer. They will personalize their service to fit the customer’s specific needs. But what happens if someone on Supplier A’s team drops the ball? Perhaps the fence contractor was having a product quality and warranty issue, and no one on Supplier A’s team was responding. Or perhaps the contractor needed to be updated on the ETA of a special-order item, and Supplier A didn’t try to accommodate the request.
As Vincent Lombardi said, it doesn’t take long to lose a customer—even a loyal one. The Fence Contractor’s CX with Supplier A has now hit a major roadblock, and they know that Supplier B has the same products. They’re willing to sever their ties with Supplier A and give Supplier B a chance.
What should Supplier A have done to retain this customer? They should have recognized that there were unresolved issues with this customer, and that every issue accumulates and helps form a negative overall opinion by the customer. Supplier A needed to review their customer data to be alerted that there were issues so they could react timely and accordingly to keep the customer happy.
That’s where the right customer relationship management tool comes into play.
Acumatica Cloud ERP and Acumatica CRM
CRM software withing a cloud ERP solution helps organizations manage leads, contacts, opportunities, and customer issues or support cases in a single, centralized solution. This means customer information is available, updated, and synchronized in one database. Users have a 360-degree-view into all customer records, written quotes, invoices, and more.
Having information at one’s fingertips is a critical component for customer satisfaction and customer retention. If a customer has a problem, the case is recorded within the solution, and someone is assigned to help solve it. Being immediately alerted when problems arise with customer clears the road before it can become a block.
Essentially, “better data, better support” is what boosts customer satisfaction, something Acumatica Cloud ERP understands very well. Aliya Rakimgulova, Sr. Director, Global Technical Support at Acumatica says, “The right CRM software allows you not only to track necessary support metrics like customer satisfaction and service levels, but also to customize the metrics for your business needs. These metrics, based on what customers are reporting, provide powerful feedback and data on how you can enhance your product or service and create a customer roadmap to excellence.”
Acumatica Cloud ERP provides CRM, Case Management, Order Management, and configurable business event functionality to help companies recognize customer issues early and from anywhere on any device. Combine these capabilities with flexible licensing and deployment options, pricing based on resources used (not the number of users), and seamless integrations with third-party applications and Acumatica is a wise choice for any business looking to retain customers and grow.
For over 20 years, i-Tech has been helping businesses use technology to get where they want to be. We are business consultants that happen to sell software, but we don’t just sell software, we challenge every client with best business practices that will utilize the software to improve every aspect of their organization.
As an Acumatica Cloud ERP Gold Certified Partner, i-Tech is confident Acumatica, and their customer management software, can help your business achieve more. Acumatica’s Doug Johnson, VP, Product Management, notes in The 4 ‘Must Haves’ of the Right CRM, “Customers are the life blood of any business. It doesn’t matter how good your product or service is, if you don’t have customers, you don’t have a business. Thus, attracting and keeping customers should be the top priority, and customer relationship management or CRM software is specifically designed with these objectives in mind.”
These objectives are i-Tech’s objectives as well. Let’s talk about how to stop losing customers today.
