The 8 pillars of a complete Customer Relationship Management System

By: Omar Abdul-Hafiz

Over the years, customer-centricity has proven to be a highly effective approach to running your business, in fact even much more so than product-centricity. And this exactly how things should be since after all, no matter how great your products or services are, you will unlikely be able to market them to an unhappy customer. For this reason, you must obtain a deep and accurate understanding of your customer’s persona, their needs, wants, and even pet peeves. Afterwards, you should also plan your entire CRM strategy so as to accommodate all these details. And this fact is no less true in the telecom sector. 

In an article earlier this year, we explored in some detail what it means to have a customer-centric business strategy. One of the points mentioned briefly is the use of high-end CRM software to help facilitate your Customer Relationship Management process. And in this article, we will take a look at the main features that you should look for when choosing a CRM system that suits your telecom business, or any company in general.

There are 8 essential elements

For a CRM Software system to be truly competent and reliable, it should possess 8 major features, and they are as follows.

Managing your customers’ information

From the moment a customer buys one of your products or services for the first time, you should be able to capture basic information about him/her. Such information may include name, address, phone number, occupation, and so on. They will be very useful moving forward for all sorts of purposes. But since they are largely personal information, this makes them very delicate and therefore storing them requires a high level of security. Moreover, the system should be able to store them so they would be easily retrievable once needed in the future. This feature is also known as customer profile management.

With that in mind, a cutting-edge CRM software system must have the ability to handle all your customers’ information for you. It should allow you to easily capture customers’ details and store them securely and conveniently for future use.

Handling your customers’ orders

In telecom, products and services can be highly compound and complex, since they can be comprised of various parts that each come from separate providers. This is what is famously known as the value fabric concept as opposed to the traditional value chain. For this reason, your CRM system should enable you to effortlessly manage your customers’ orders from the moment they are captured and all the way towards their completion or cancellation with thorough tracking and status checking in between. This is typically accomplished through seamless integration with your own order management system.

Troubleshooting and case management

No matter how perfect your level of service and product/service quality may be, there’s always at least a faint possibility for errors, glitches, or customer issues to come up now and then. That being said, you should always be ready to capture your customers’ inquiries and complaints. Next, you also need to be able to quickly communicate the details of a complaint with the related department(s) and keep track of it until the issue has been fully resolved and the ticket is closed and archived.

Customer self-service

The ability for customers to serve themselves in performing simple day-to-day tasks through the comfort of their phones or laptops has gained a great deal of acclaim in the past several years. Not only does it help reduce the load on your physical offices, but it also gives your customers a feeling of independence and convenience. For example, they can re-charge their accounts, submit a purchase, or send feedback while comfortably going about their daily lives.

For that reason, a high-end CRM software system comes with the ability to offer your customers an easy-to-use self-service interface that enables them to perform these tasks from the comfort of their homes or offices.

Listening and interacting with your customers

The cornerstone aspect of a customer-centric business strategy is listening closely to your customers’ comments and feedback, and then being ready to respond effectively. This can be achieved in three main ways.

First, your CRM system should allow your customers to interact with you through multiple integrated channels. For example, they can contact you through your official website, e-Commerce platform, mobile application, or even social media. This is popularly known as Omnichannel support.

Secondly, speaking of social media, you should never ignore or underestimate the power of these platforms or the impact they may have on your business. Thus, a good CRM system enables you to monitor and moderate all social media interactions with your customers, and immediately turn their inquiries into support tickets that go through the typical case management procedures.

Finally, your CRM system must have the ability to store all these interactions and archive them for future purposes such as quality assurance.

Knowing your customers in-depth

Another highly important feature in a state-of-the-art CRM system is that it gives you 360-degree insight into your customers’ information. It does so by processing all the information collected from various sources such as customer transactions, activities, purchase history, and usage habits, and displaying them in a variety of statistical figures and charts.

This enables you to have a deep understanding of your customers’ needs, desires, and sentiments. This is very important as it enables you to adapt your services accordingly to ensure their utmost satisfaction.

Managing your sales

After taking good care of your customers, it’s time to look after your sales and optimize your revenues. At the end of the day, selling your products and optimizing your revenue is your primary goal as a business. It is what keeps your business alive and thriving, right?

For this reason, your CRM system should be capable of handling all your sales operations including direct sales through your own channels or indirect sales through dealers and business partners, for example. One major feature worth mentioning here is the ability to easily manage related deposits which is a critical part of any CSP’s sales operations.

Taking care of your receivables

There’s a saying that goes “bad debt is another form of hidden fraud”. For that reason, effective debt management is very essential for maintaining the sustainability of your business. In most cases, the problem could be as simple as your customers not being able to pay due to some technical issue, for instance. And to resolve this, your CRM system should be able to integrate with your billing system to process all the necessary information about your customers so as to help them complete their payments. Your CRM software should also connect with your collections management system to share information between your collections department and customer care staff for a more conducive workflow of receivables. 

For more information, check out ESKA Digital CRM, ESKADENIA’s high-end Customer Relationship Management System.