Increased customer loyalty has always been a core benefit of CRM, albeit one that can get lost in the sales pitch. As vendors, we often focus our prospects on the real prospect of new customer growth through increased sales effectiveness and marketing optimization. Alas in the current economy, new customers in many industries are proving harder to find. As a result, good ol’ fashioned service is gaining renewed currency (yes, pun intended) as a revenue booster.
Is Service the new Sales?
RunE2E CEO John Brasch and others make the case for service in an article this month on the InsideCRM website. According to JB, the core functionality of a robust CRM (like RunCRM, for example) can turn service agents into sales agents, netting valuable cross-sell, upsell and renewal revenue.
Beyond selling, of course, service agents play the vital role of simply making customers happy. It’s a role made easier by CRM, but is it a sound investment? In fact, the evidence suggests it may be a business-critical investment. Bain and Company, the consultancy that trumpets the NetPromoter customer satisfaction survey, believes a 5 percent increase in customer retention can increase a company’s profitability by 75 percent.
Just take a look at the companies that are weathering the current economic storm. Many are traditional service leaders that understand that loyal customers will sustain them in good times and in bad.
Tags: customer service, InsideCRM, NetPromoter, service, Upsell
