When we talk about digital transformation, it is of vital importance to have a broad and clear understanding of our users that allows us to clarify concerns about their needs and delimit what they need; since it is usual that the user has some goals and objectives; however, often these do not fit what they really need. Therefore, we must know what they need, what skills they have, what their practices are, and also know their limitations.
It is also important to monitor the user and the user experience in order to understand it. For this, we must then resort to certain tools that are currently offered to facilitate this tracking. Such as CRM (Customer Relationship Management), which allows us to store customer and prospect contact information, manage marketing campaigns, track customer interactions, identify sales opportunities, manage customer relationships and record service issues.
All these qualities will help us not only to follow up or track the user, but also to directly grow our business, since it allows us to identify what he requires, what kind of interactions his is looking for and to have long lasting relationships with them.
However, before acquiring a CRM for an organization, we must take into account that there are different types, understand their differences in order to determine which option best suits your company.
CRM systems can be of four types: operational, strategic, analytical and collaborative. Therefore we will show you the basic characteristics of these so you can have an idea of which type best suits the needs of your organization.
- Operational CRM system: It is based on customer-oriented processes, such as sales, marketing and customer service. Therefore, it includes automations for these processes. Therefore, this CRM is optimal for streamlining and retaining the relationship or interaction with customers or identifying potential customers, as well as converting them into contacts. However, when hiring a CRM we must understand that there are some that are more suitable for large companies that are already established, as well as others that are more convenient for companies that are growing.
- Strategic CRM system: In this system the company gives priority to customers and for this purpose assumes the customer’s requirements and evaluates their needs, through the information collected from them, and combines them with market trends to generate the best value proposition for the customer. This CRM is for those who consider that the customer is the one who allows stability in the organization and adapts to them.
- Analytical CRM system: Its purpose is to collect and analyze large amounts of data to later convert them into actionable insights or strategies that can help the organization improve the user experience. These select data such as customer preferences, trends, purchase histories or credit scores, among others. This enables the generation of more detailed and personalized reports or analysis.
- Collaborative CRM system: This has two components: interaction management and channel management. Interaction management tracks the touch points between a company and its customers through various communication channels. Channel management uses the information gathered by interaction management to help identify the best communication channel for a particular customer.’
This CRM also allows you to create an alignment of resources and strategies between different companies to identify, acquire, develop, retain and maintain valuable customers. It is used in the B2B scenario, where multiple companies can conduct product development, market research and marketing together.
These systems allow then, according to the needs of the organization, to have a record of user interactions and define user needs, either through surveys, metrics that are made by interpreting trends, analysis of the customer journey, checking the rate of customer abandonment or measurement of customer satisfaction scores, among other various resources. These softwares collect various valuable information that allows you to know the user’s opinion and improve their experience, which ultimately leads to a direct improvement of your organization, since it allows you to take action on situations that do not meet the needs of your customer and thus be able to respond in a relevant way to this, which leads to increased customer loyalty and subsequent recommendations.
Therefore, it is vital to generate a memorable experience, it is an impression that you will leave on your customer, which will allow you to have a closer contact with him, and this translates into the opinion that the user will later have of your company and its possible loyalty to your brand. But this can only be achieved through an extensive knowledge of the user, which you can achieve with the tools mentioned above.
However, we must understand that these tools are only one of the first steps in the digital transformation process, since even with the information collected by these systems, it is necessary to be able to filter this information and make the most of the analytics or metrics that they yield, to adjust them to the most convenient strategies for the customer. Since all organizations now have access to different customer experience tools, what will make your organization unique is the benefit you get from them and how you develop innovative, creative and unbeatable strategies for each of your customers.
Remember that the tools are available to everyone, but only those organizations that know how to recognize the importance of the user and really question themselves in the continuous improvement of the user experience will be a step ahead of the rest.
