Year: 2017

5 Ideas That Will Redefine Customer Experience Management In 2018

Customer Experience Management or CEM is a compilation of processes that a business establishment uses to track, manage, and organize the interactions between the organization and a customer, throughout the customer lifecycle. The objective of Customer Experience Management is to optimize interactions based on the customer’s perspective and to increase customer loyalty. As we live in the age of the customer, to explain this buzz-worthy concept, it is the time that we must know what CEM really means. Precisely stating, CEM is not just collecting or responding to customer feedbacks, or tacking your NPS (Net Promoter Score), but it is a methodology and the complete ideology that makes your business enjoyable to work for customers. So how do you triumph the CX (Customer Experience) race in 2018?

What is Customer Experience Management?

Customer Experience Management or CEM is a compilation of processes that a business establishment uses to track, manage, and organize the interactions between the organization and a customer, throughout the customer lifecycle. The objective of Customer Experience Management is to optimize interactions based on the customer’s perspective and to increase customer loyalty.

As we live in the age of the customer, to explain this buzz-worthy concept, it is the time that we must know what CEM really means. Precisely stating, CEM is not just collecting or responding to customer feedbacks, or tacking your NPS (Net Promoter Score), but it is a methodology and the complete ideology that makes your business enjoyable to work for customers.

How do you triumph the CX (Customer Experience) race in 2018?

  1. Mapping and Studying the Complete Customer Journey
  2. Becoming Truly Omni-Channel
  3. Create Intelligent Loop Closure by Seamless Integrations
  4. Deploy Real-Time CX Systems and Personalized Insights
  5. Use Advanced Analytics to Help Prioritize Investments
Gartner predicts that by 2018, more than 50% of organizations will redirect their investments to customer experience innovations. Click To Tweet

In the race for delighting the customer, here we elaborate on the above-mentioned 5 things that we expect will shape Customer Experience in the coming year:

Mapping and Studying the Complete Customer Journey

The main objective of Customer Experience Management is to convey delight, but for that, you must first get your customer engaged. Engaging the customer can be either ad-hoc or part of a larger plan, but at the end, business establishments should understand the entire customer journey.
It is not just enough to take an individual point on the customer journey to understand or survey your customer, for doing this you will most likely be ineffective, as you will not have enough contexts to understand the needs of your customer.

The customer journey is the only means that is capable of providing context around the buyer’s experience with a brand. It helps you to ask the right questions at the most opportune moment, and so build brand engagement and trust that help guide the customer journey to the point of purchase.

Hence, for a total understanding of the customer journey spending money in advanced analytics to spot the drivers in Customer Experience is going to be vital for customer success in 2018.

Becoming Truly Omni-Channel

In the present times, customer interactions include a wide range of touch points, such as web, mobile, IVR (Interactive Voice Response), social media, in-store, chat-bots and more.  This brings us to the modern-day concept of Omni-Channel. Customers nowadays switch between different channels frequently, that too in the middle of a purchase or even during discovery. Hence, our prediction is that Omni-Channel customer experience management will get bigger with the propagation of channels, and naturally, customer journey mapping has to encompass every touch-points and channels where you can find your customer’s presence.

So having these channels up and running, and to make the work seamlessly as a part of the overall customer journey is another thing that we predict will be critical for CEM in 2018.

Intelligent Loop Closure by Seamless Integrations

Brands are obliged to resolve customer queries. However, according to Esteban Kolsky (CEO of ThinkJar), only 1 out of 26 unhappy customers do actually complain. Hence, creating Omni-Channel strategies and mapping customer journeys, drives customer engagement and aids organizations to proactively engage the customer across multiple touch-points, thereby ensuring that they are listening.

When it comes to business, different brands have different systems for support. CEM ensures that poor feedbacks from the customers become a support ticket automatically, in order to proactively resolve the issue. Hence, regardless of your industry, support ticket management is a priority for all businesses.

The only way to access these insights and precisely prioritize these customer support tickets is to completely integrate your business with systems of records that are capable of providing customer contexts.

These systems of records include CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software, Loyalty platforms, Point of Sale systems, and others.

Therefore, seamless flow of information and ease of integration between these various kinds of systems will necessarily be a prior requirement for a Customer Experience Management program to allow smart loop closure in 2018.

Customer Experience Management

Real-Time CX Systems and Personalized Insights

In the year ahead, customer experience strategy will require alignment and coordination between various teams. Customers want holistic, all comprising brand experience, which suggests that your workforce need the right kind of equipment with the correct insights that are required for their roles. For example, while a Chief Executive Officer of a company should be able to view Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), organization-encompassing NPS and other holistic metrics, store managers should only view metrics of their store-NPS and ambiance of the store.

The customer needs are evolving at an unprecedented rate. Hence, by 2018 one of the primary pre-requisites of a great Customer Experience will be the ability to monitor feedbacks and then offer actionable insights in real-time. Therefore, Customer Experience Management platforms will need to be real-time, from driving integrations to making changes to configuring the whole CEM system, which can provide a clearer picture of what your customers are thinking of your business and how to manage their expectations from your brand.

Advanced Analytics to Help Prioritize Investments

Although most organizations are capable of collecting raw data about their customers, extracting the right insights from this cascading information is the real challenge.

As we move into 2018, remember that you make sure your analytic engine is a step ahead than your brand’s competitors.  Therefore, leveraging on AI and deep learning can help in precisely gauging your customer’s sentiments. Powering your CX analytic platforms with cutting-edge techs such as predictive analysis, churn predictor, and path analysis helps in diving deep into customer behavior and their purchasing patterns, that can help drive hands-on improvement strategies.

While path analysis metrics helps in identifying the underlying influences of CX, predictive analysis make use of this data to run ‘what-if’ scenarios.

Therefore, briefly, truly understanding the customers and addressing their pain-points proactively is what that will set your business and brand apart in 2018.

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Benefits of Cloud-Based CRM Vs Other Types of CRM

No matter whatever that you may sell, managing your customers is important for the success of your business. This is where exactly choosing a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) comes into play. There are mainly three types of CRM. All these CRM systems support your business from different angles, which helps you to accomplish different goals. Therefore, choosing the best CRM system for your organization requires identifying your objectives and determining the main customer management problems that you need to resolve by adopting a CRM for your businesses.

No matter whatever that you may sell, managing your customers is important for the success of your business. This is where exactly choosing a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) comes into play.

There are mainly three types of CRM. All these CRM systems support your business from different angles, which helps you to accomplish different goals.

Therefore, choosing the best CRM system for your organization requires identifying your objectives and determining the main customer management problems that you need to resolve by adopting a CRM for your businesses.

The CRM industry has seen staggering growth in recent years. Cloud-based CRM revenue will likely make up almost 50% of the 2017 projected $31 billion CRM sector.- Gartner Click To Tweet

Operational CRM

This kind of CRM system centers on using software apps, which help to incorporate a different set of information that is available on each lead, prospect, and customers into one useful file. For instance, this type of CRM system brings together customer’s contact details, purchase history, and any other communications that the customer have had with the users of the CRM on one window so that employees can provide the customer with fast response and service. Operational CRM provides support to marketing, sales, and support reps across different departments in an organization.

This type of CRM system can also be useful to help Sales Force Automation:

  • Sales Force Automation

SFA or Sales Force Automation help to keep a record of every stage in the sales process, aiding marketing and sales departments to automate activities like scheduling calls, making reports and creating email campaigns for relationship management and drip marketing campaigns.

Analytical CRM

Analytical CRM systems help in looking into the lead, prospect and, customer data from an analytical angle to come up with unique marketing strategies that can be implemented for harnessing future sales. This type of CRM views data points from different databases and then use techniques like data mining to come up with patterns and trends. Using Analytical CRM, companies can create better and long-term strategies for customer management and sales.

Collaborative CRM

Collaborative CRM systems focus on integrating contacts with external agencies, like distributors and vendors, and cater this data to its customers through an extranet. This type of CRM system helps customers to get proactive about the services they get from the company, by providing them with a support center, along with technical support and new tools (e.g. instant messenger).

Furthermore, a CRM platform is divided into 2 types:

On-Premise CRM

An On-Premise CRM system puts the onus of security, administration, control, and maintenance of the CRM’s database and information on the company itself. Users of this CRM systems purchases licenses upfront for implementation of the CRM system, instead of buying monthly, quarterly or annual subscriptions. The On-Premise CRM system’s software and database resides on the company’s server and it requires a prolonged installation process for integration of the software with other existing and traditional software (if any), used by the company. In general, a very large business organization with highly complex Customer Relationship Management needs benefits more from this type of CRM.

Cloud-Based CRM

Cloud-based CRM like ConvergeHub which is also an on-demand or SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) CRM system, is a platform, where data is stored on a remote, external network that users of the CRM can access anytime, with the help of an Internet connection.

In many cases, third-party services are deployed to oversee maintenance and installation of these CRM systems.

The Cloud-based CRM system needs relatively easy and quick installation and is so adopted by companies who have limited expertise, technology, or resources. Cloud-based CRM is also more cost-effective as vendors of these CRM systems charge users on a subscription basis with the option of yearly, monthly, or quarterly payments.

Why small businesses and salespeople prefer Cloud-based CRM?

One of the primary benefits of Cloud-based CRM software is its scalability. All SaaS or Cloud-based CRM systems are designed to be flexible, which means, it can expand its capacities, depending on the organization’s needs. Moreover, as the cost of this CRM platform is based on the number of users and storage requirements, which can scale up and down as your requirements change, hence this CRM solution is often the most preferred CRM platform for small and medium businesses in today’s world.

Apart from this Cloud-based CRM, also most often include integration with commonly used email systems and office applications along with integration with social media data and automatic backup tools.

Lastly with the growth of mobile technology, we presently also have Cloud-based CRM system applications that are built for tablets and smartphones. Mobile CRM apps use features that are unique to mobile devices, such as Voice-recognition capabilities, GPS, and others in order to better serve the customers and essentially provide access to the sales employees for using this technology on the go.

Read More: 9 Powerful Marketing Strategies To Grow Your Business Faster

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Increase Holiday Sales This Year by Understanding Your Customer’s Purchasing Behavior

Each year something exciting happens, as we want to spend endless hours looking through retail shelves in search for the perfect gifts for our loved ones. Based on the forecasts for this year, it has been predicted that this year’s holiday season sale will be a blast, as US consumers are planning to spend 3.5 – 4.5 percent more than they did in 2016. While in another research, it has been pointed out that more than 82 percent of shoppers in the US are planning to buy their gifts online.

Each year something exciting happens, as we want to spend endless hours looking through retail shelves during holiday sales in search for the perfect gifts for our loved ones. However, holiday season for business owners is a time, which is marked by ceaseless frustrations and anxieties. There are way too many things to deal with and things worsen when you find your customers jumping ships and fleeing to your competitors because you have neglected some valuable insights about customer preferences.

But fear not, since there are myriad of information and research online, which can reveal the wants and needs of your customers.

Based on the forecasts for this year, it has been predicted that this year’s holiday season sale will be a blast, as US consumers are planning to spend 3.5 – 4.5 percent more than they did in 2016.

How the US Consumers plan to shop this season

According to a forecast by Forrester Research, it has been suggested that online sale will increase by 12 percent this holiday season compared to 2016. While in another research, it has been pointed out that more than 82 percent of shoppers in the US are planning to buy their gifts online.

According to a forecast by Forrester Research, it has been suggested that online sale will increase by 12 percent this holiday season compared to 2016. Click To Tweet

While this may seem to be a positive trend for online stores, there is another insight that you should also be aware of. According to Forrester three-quarter of all holiday shoppers expect to buy their gifts from Amazon. This means although e-commerce sale is expected to grow, Amazon will take a large chunk of the sale.

Another interesting trend revealed by Forrester shows the consumer’s tendency to procrastinate. The said research has brought out that in 2017, shoppers are expected to wait even longer before buying their gifts, which means, that in-store pickups and expedited shipping, will be most valuable from the customer’s perspective.

As an e-commerce business owner, you probably already have a 2017 Holiday Plan in place, but still, it is worth reconsidering the plan to see if it aligns with these recent researches.

Here are a few more suggestions based on the research findings:

Tips on how you can increase sale during Holiday Season 2017:

#1. Get an online store

If you have not yet tapped into the power of online selling, get on the bandwagon now. Although it is true that people still love to touch and feel their products before purchasing them, however, holiday season purchases are more about giving others, which means that generic product mix will sale moreover personalized items.

#2. Review your product assortment

Consumer’s mindset changes radically once the trees change its hue. While consumers try to stay wary of their finances in the early fall, they start buying lavish gifts and start throwing money on unnecessary items as the holiday season approaches every year, and mostly their choices are not thoughtful ones. This is the time to review your stocks and dig out those most costly gifts and pricey toys. Remember, the more creative, pretty and decorative your product offerings, the more sales you can expect during the holiday sale.

#3. Incorporate recommendations

According to Forrester Research, 64 percent of online buyers try to view recommendations or suggested products while they shop. By adding recommendation functionality to your e-commerce website, you can make you of the collected data to find out your customer preferences. To enhance customer experience, you can even allow your shoppers to like and save their favorite items while surfing for their desired products in your online shop.

#4. Provide expedited shipping and pick-up in store

For early buyers consider offering free delivery, since ‘free delivery’ ranked high as a consideration factor in the stated surveys. Moreover, as mentioned even before there are an increasing number of customers those who are postponing their purchases this holiday season, therefore, such services that make sure of guaranteed delivery will be much appreciated.

#5. Update marketing communication across all channels

For this holiday season, remember to align all your marketing materials and website landing page imageries with the holiday theme. It has been observed on several occasions that holiday themes put customers into a buying mode. As most customers have a mental budget of how much they are going to spend during the holiday season sale, therefore, put out your holiday merchandise at the earliest, and create an atmosphere of a joyous celebration online.

#6. Improve customer support

Even when the craze and rush for holiday shopping get out of your control, it is important that you stand apart from your competitors by providing a high level of customer service. According to Forrester Research, 68 percent of online shoppers expect their desired brands to answer their queries within a day and 26 percent wants to receive a response within 2 hours.

As this kind of customer expectations often puts tremendous pressure on business owners during the holiday season, consider streamlining your customer service processes by adopting latest technological solutions such as Chat-bots and CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system to cater to your customer’s needs.

#7. Optimize mobile experiences

In a report published by Adobe Digital Insights, mobile visits have risen by 33 percent compared to what it was in 2016. Therefore make your e-commerce website mobile responsive and create a speedy mobile checkout process. As everyone is pressed for time during the holiday season, people are more willing to shop online using their mobile device. Offering different payment methods such as credit cards, and digital wallets help in generating more sale and process faster checkouts.

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Summary

Hence, in a gist, while data provides a complete picture of personal preferences and behaviors of your customers, but as holidays are centered on the idea of gift giving, holiday promotions are here to stay for this year and times to come.

Top 5 Tips To Boost Business Capacity With Relationship Marketing

Modern businesses promote customer loyalty instead of concentrating on short-term goals, which can be illustrated at a granular level as just individual sales or singular customer procurements. Relationship marketing strategy seeks to develop a secured relationship with the customers by providing them direct information that caters to their individual interests and needs. Hence, relationship marketing encourages open communication in an active form.

If you are not aware of what is relationship marketing, then according to Steve Olenski (Director of CMO Content and Strategy at Oracle) and a contributing writer for Forbes :

Relationship marketing is a strategy designed to foster customer loyalty, interaction and long-term engagement. It is designed to develop strong connections with customers by providing them with information directly suited to their needs and interests and by promoting open communication.

Therefore, we can describe relationship marketing as an important factor that leads to effective communication and customer relationship management (CRM), which educates us on long-term customer engagements.  Modern businesses promote customer loyalty instead of concentrating on short-term goals, which can be illustrated at a granular level as just individual sales or singular customer procurements. Relationship marketing strategy seeks to develop a secured relationship with the customers by providing them direct information that caters to their individual interests and needs. Hence, relationship marketing encourages open communication in an active form.

Cross-Channel Marketing Report 2013 shows the value of building customer relationships, as 70% of respondents agreed that “it is cheaper to retain than acquire a customer. Click To Tweet

In other words, for all those who seek to understand what is relationship marketing, it can be said that this type of marketing strategy refers to everything you do to develop a lifelong strong relationship with your brand admirers and customers.

The tools used for encouraging relationship marketing strategy starts from building influencer programs to referral campaigning and affiliate marketing, which helps you to position your brand as the best option for your customers to cling on.

According to RealResultMarketing survey, for some companies relationship marketing resulted in 1% increase in their customer retention over each of their next 10 years, cumulating to a 20% growth in their annual earnings.

Here is what relationship management strategy caters to retention in several ways:

Lessen acquisition costs– Your Company requires fewer promotions and so your business can run with a smaller sales force.

Long-term basic profits- Core customers over the years provide a continued income on basic purchases.

Growth in revenue- As core customers spend more time on your brand, their lifetime value increases proportionally.

Lessen operating costs- Long-term customer makes fewer service and administrative demands.

Customer referrals- Satisfied customers refer and introduce another good customer to your brand.

Premium pricing- Long-term satisfied customers are less finicky about prices, so you make better profits.

How should you do relationship marketing?

Relationship marketing can involve changing major aspects of the way your company conducts its business with the customers. In fact, in certain instances, relationship marketing strategy implementation can be time-consuming, expensive, and can have serious consequences for both the customers and your brand. So before adopting relationship marketing strategies for your business, you must plan in a thoughtful and effective way, and that means abiding by a comprehensive marketing plan.

For this, primarily look at your buyer’s demography and their historical data, to understand who your customers are, what they buy, and measure how and what your brand can cater to them in the long term. You must also understand the reasons as to why consumers return to you for repeat businesses.

Although many of us have a tendency to assume that customers return because you served them well, but it can also be that the customers who return to you, come back because your store is closest to their neighborhood, or you are the only one selling the products and services they want to buy. Either way, analyzing the nature of the customer loyalty is the best method to work upon while developing a working relationship marketing plan.

If you are using a CRM, you can easily find a wealth of customer data in place and can begin by segmenting this customer information and thereafter develop unique marketing strategies for each segment of your customers in the list.

Remember, a customer who purchased or repurchased your products or services by appreciating your product value has a different quest than the one who bought from you since he liked your customer service experience.

So as customers can be loyal for different reasons, hence, tailor your market relationship strategies for each segment of your customers in a different way.

Takeaway

Now that you know what is relationship marketing, once the marketing strategy is implemented, evaluate constantly to determine its success. Companies use several metrics to measure whether they are holding on to their customers.

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Here are some of the most popular metrics and indicators that are used for evaluating the success of any relationship marketing plan while using a CRM platform:

  • Statistics about repeat sales
  • Whether customers are spending more
  • Open rate of email and newsletters
  • Referrals
  • Increases in the number of followers on social networking websites

If you have liked this article and now have a clear vision of what is relationship marketing, do write to us in the comment box below.

Top 5 hacks to Automate Sales and Marketing with CRM

Discussing about Automate Sales and Marketing with CRM, alignment in sales and marketing departments in any organization can mean many things. It signifies developing shared goals, creating common definitions and metrics, lead management, combined lead nurturing, and lead evaluation efforts, which can be created by implementing CRM or customer relationship management for business with varied goals. “Alignment between Marketing and Sales is potentially the largest opportunity for improving business performance today. When marketing and sales teams unite around a single revenue cycle, they dramatically improve marketing ROI, sales productivity, and, most importantly, top-line growth.”

Discussing about Automating Sales and Marketing with CRM, alignment in sales and marketing departments in any organization can mean many things. It signifies developing shared goals, creating common definitions and metrics, lead management, combined lead nurturing, and lead evaluation efforts, which can be created by implementing CRM or customer relationship management for business with varied goals.

According to Marketo:

“Alignment between Marketing and Sales is potentially the largest opportunity for improving business performance today. When marketing and sales teams unite around a single revenue cycle, they dramatically improve marketing ROI, sales productivity, and, most importantly, top-line growth.”

Automate Sales and Marketing with CRM

A CRM helps companies analyze and manage customer communications all through the lifecycle of the customers to enhance the relationship, nurture sales, convert leads, and assist in customer retention over time.

79% of marketing leads never convert into sales. Lack of lead nurturing is the common cause of this poor performance. Click To Tweet

However, how does a Customer Relationship Management for business help align marketing and sales in an organization?

Here are just a few alignments opportunities for automating and synchronizing sales and marketing with CRM to increase your ROI:

Improve communication

According to Workfront’s State of Marketing Work Management 2015 report, excessive interdepartmental emails and wasteful meetings between your sales and marketing teams are two major distracters for marketers. Furthermore, for every two among five marketers, the dearth of communication or even at times miscommunication is one of the most common reasons for interdepartmental conflicts.

With Customer Relationship Management for business software, which is also shared-work-management software, both sales and marketing team members can enjoy superior efficiency. A CRM system aids managers generate focused tracking reports that help businesses to better track what sales and marketing tactics are most effective for your organization.

Shared Goals and Expectations

With your marketing and sales teams collaborating to define the sales generation, lead scoring, sales and lead nurturing strategies, successful organizations that depend on software for customer relationship management for business create bridges between both the teams. This way, instead of on working on dissimilar goals with blurred expectations of one another, CRM help teams to work together by generating common ideas, which reduces bottlenecks and help business managers understand the requirements of their customer base.

Avoid Duplicated Efforts

With the automation benefits of software that deals in customer relationship management for business, CRM software helps both marketing and sales see the same picture of where each prospect, visitors, sales, and marketing qualified leads stands in the buyer’s journey. This aids the marketing department to tailor contents and generate automated email campaigns while enabling sales to better focus outreach to all the interested customers.

Nurture Leads to Opportunities.

According to MarketingSherpa, “79% of marketing leads never convert into sales. Lack of lead nurturing is the common cause of this poor performance.”

Therefore, it is mandatory that once a lead is acquired, there should be additional steps which are needed to be taken before marketing handoff leads to the sales team. It is a common phenomenon, whereby most sales team members often get frustrated once they receive leads that have not been nurtured or vetted. However, by connecting marketing automation software to a platform which helps customer relationship management for a business like CRM systems, leads can be easily nurtured, assessed and segmented before passing them off to the sales teams.

Improve Lead Quality

Software that deals in Customer Relationship Management for business also help savvy digital marketers to focus on lead generation by using marketing automation tools, lead scoring and progressive profiling techniques to improve their information gathering and assessment efforts. Since, without doing so, sales team members of your organization may perceive leads to be of a lower quality whereby leads can fall through the crack. The data gathered by the marketing and sales enablement teams using updated web forms, chat tools, and other lead enrichment strategies help to get better insights on the leads.

lead capture

Takeaway

Here is a list of benefits that software for customer relationship management for business can help in aligning your marketing with sales in your organization for increasing your company’s bottom-line and ROI:

  • Improve lead quality
  • Identify the best leads worth additional attention
  • Improve upsell opportunities
  • Increase overall deal values
  • Set shared expectations and foster better communication
  • Improve lead generation results
  • Build a more streamlined and efficient process

If you liked this article, do let us know of your ideas and suggestions in the comment box below.

What Is The Impact That Big Data Technologies Will Have On CRM?

Every business by now has heard about Big Data and its growing importance as many businesses are drawing their attention to it. However, nowhere is the use of Big Data technologies more important than in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platforms. By continuously keeping track of data, any small or big business establishment can learn more information that they can subsequently use to improve its brand’s customer satisfaction and experience.

Every business by now has heard about Big Data and its growing importance as many businesses are drawing their attention to it. However, nowhere is the use of Big Data technologies more important than in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platforms. By continuously keeping track of data, any small or big business establishment can learn more information that they can subsequently use to improve its brand’s customer satisfaction and experience. Thanks to the Internet, in a world where customers know more about businesses than ever, keeping customer satisfaction high is most vital towards retaining businesses.

Big data is projected to grow into a $53.4 Bn market by 2017, up from $10.2 Bn last year and this is how it will help the CRM industry today. Click To Tweet

Nevertheless, despite the benefits of Big Data, there are several companies who avoid or do not use Big Data to develop a precise and clear CRM strategy.

How can you manage Big Data challenges?

Here are our advice and suggestions for managing “Big” data:

  • Archive all unused or sparely used data.
  • Use time-honored RDBMSs (Relational Database Management System) for your transactional data.
  • Use NoSQL (non Structured Query Language) for those extremely large and practically non-shrinkable data volumes.
  • Tier your data storage to make the most of cost efficiency.
  • Divide data sets into manageable-chunks as per their function or need.
  • Use Indexes.
  • Store your data in more efficient formats to speed up queries and save space.
  • Do not over-normalize data.
  • Query subsets or rather to say representational data sets.
  • Use ‘disk-to-disk’ backup for enhancing reliability and speed.
  • Use the state-of-art available technology for storage, networking, and retrieving data.

What are the most used Big Data tools?

  • Apache Hadoop
  • Apache Samoa
  • Lumify
  • Talend Open Studio for Big Data
  • Apache Storm
  • RapidMiner
  • Elasticsearch
  • R-Programming
  • HPCC Systems Big Data
  • MongoDB

In a recent survey done by Forrester of British businesses, it was found that more than 66% of establishments used their CRM either on an “ad-hoc” basis or “without any predefined plan”.

Data without any planning is just useless and similarly, a plan without any data is just a matter of wish fulfillment. Therefore, if business leaders are required to build loyal customers, they must build and rely on successful CRM strategy along with Big Data, just like, as it was when Social Media got integrated with CRM technology in the past.

Understanding Big Data and CRM

On a primary level, all business practice Customer Relationship Management to a certain degree. Even before modern day computers came into existence, businesses used to keep data of their important and steadfast customers on a ‘Rolodex’ or simply on cards. This data would encompass basic information like the customer’s contact information and also what business the person has done with the company.

There are several companies, which still do a similar thing today, only with Google Docs and Excel worksheets replacing a Rolodex. However, there is so much more information in this digital age about customers, which businesses can gather from social media apps, websites and so on, that today’s businesses need CRM platform to store all that multitude of data.

While all these information may not directly provide to a business, yet still this information is still in public and is extremely useful, as it shows what the customers really think or what they are trying to tell to the business.

For an example, of how Big Data can keep customers and their interests, let us look at Walmart. It has been rumored that Walmart is constructing a 40 (PB) Petabyte or 40 million Gigabyte of Cloud Data to keep track of the inexhaustible number of products they are shipping across the globe. While this retail giant in the older times could have to wait for several days or months to know the condition of their sales in a selected sector or area and then make adjustments accordingly, now they can do it instantaneously, that have made them a retail Titan.

You can always think that your small or medium business does not need a Cloud storage facility that large, and hence you might as well view Big Data as something, which is not required for it exceeded your business’s technological capabilities and needs. However, in reality, Big Data is for everyone, and that is the exact reason where CRM software platforms like SFDC (Salesforce) or Hubspot can be of your help.

Aided by Big Data Technologies a salesperson can store all information of any client in one place and then use CRM software solution to efficiently share the data with everyone. When this process is multiplied by every other sales representative in an organization, and keeping track and sharing data with everyone else becomes a routine activity, then higher-ups in the organization can note trends and fruitful approaches, which can keep the customers happy.

What is Big Data Technologies
Big Data

Integrating AI

This explosion of Big Data Technologies is going to be further facilitated in the future by the spread of IoT (Internet of Things) and AI (Artificial Intelligence). The challenge in this technological innovation is not just collecting the data, but as well as processing it. CRM software can help over here, as in the present times there are too much of information out on the Internet and kudos to machine-learning, CRM software when integrated with AI technology can continue to grow and come up with superior conclusions as they analyze this flow of ever-increasing data.

lead capture

The Future is now

While not every business can build a data cloud akin to Walmart, yet CRM software like ConvergeHub and others can provide an affordable means to keep track of your data, which everyone in your organization can access and help managers draw conclusions by analyzing and processing data, which is too vast for our human minds.

Free Lead Generation Tool for CRM Integration of Social Media

According to Google, Facebook is quickly closing in on its 2 billion users mark and it had 1.86 billion users per month at of the end of 2016. LinkedIn, now owned by Microsoft and Twitter has 500 million and 330 million users per month respectively, as of the third quarter of 2017. This ever-increasing multitude of potential buyers presents the small and medium business community with easy opportunities to score. Hence, we can easily say that the CRM integration of Social Media is one the decisive factors that presently determines how much revenue and growth your business will experience in the days to come.

According to Google, Facebook is quickly closing in on its 2 billion users mark and it had 1.86 billion users per month at of the end of 2016. LinkedIn, now owned by Microsoft and Twitter has 500 million and 330 million users per month respectively, as of the third quarter of 2017. This ever-increasing multitude of potential buyers presents the small and medium business community with easy opportunities to score. Hence, we can easily say that the CRM integration of Social Media is one the decisive factors that presently determines how much revenue and growth your business will experience in the days to come.

The unique thing that social media platforms offer to its users is an arena to boost their sales in a clever and restrained way- by hearing rather than talking and answering rather than hawking and pitching their products and services directly on these platforms.

ConvergeHub allow single click accumulation of information through personalized lead capture application with Free Lead Generator Tool. Click To Tweet

Is integration to social media important for a CRM?

In the recent times, we have witnessed several CRM giants like Oracle and Salesforce acquiring social media startups. While Oracle (ORCL) purchased Vitrue, Salesforce (SFDC), another leading vendor of CRM technology bought Radian6 and Buddy Media, which are sentiment tracking and social media performance evaluation companies.

Therefore, not only big organizations have realized the importance of CRM integration of Social Media, but also for small and medium businesses, having a social media presence is vital for several reasons.

People nowadays like to understand more about the products, services, or brands they use and the companies they purchase their stuff from. In a recent study conducted by Forrester, it has been noted that apart from checking out on the websites, buyers also prefer to look into the internet to search on social media sites about their vendors online.

Social media platforms open up new vistas of interaction between the companies and their customers, be it in terms of lead generation, publicity or in the field of customer support. In a gist, businesses use social media based CRM for reaching out a wider array of audiences in lesser time as compared to brands that use traditional CRM systems for their business needs.

Traditional vs. Social CRM

Customer Relationship Management software primarily comprises of three basic elements: Marketing, Sales, and Post-sales Customer Support. The basic purpose of CRM is to move the leads, prospects, and customers through a pipeline, repeatedly. Hence, traditional CRM essentially focused on data that the software collects from its leads and customers, as all decisions or strategies regarding marketing, sales and support activities are based on this data.

However, CRM integration of Social Media has recently changed the whole paradigm. In the recent times, the crucial point of an organization’s operation is the customer itself. Hence, instead of accumulating data by pushing messages or marketing to the customers, business establishments nowadays collaborate directly with their customers to solve the customer’s issues, which empower the companies to build stronger customer relationships that make an ideal selling scenario for small and medium businesses.

The alliance between email marketing and social media

To help almost any type of businesses be it a large or small, to achieve its goals, email marketing, and social media makes a killer combination.

With the advent of new technology, brands can share their email campaigns on social media platforms in order to reach out even to people who are not on their mailing list. Additionally, this also increases the chance of more people signing up for their emails. By encouraging people to share the emails with their followers and fans, companies can widen their reach of reaching out indirectly. Apart from this, there is also another option of adding social buttons on your website and app, through which people can like or follow your brand’s social page.

How does it work?

Different CRM has different approaches when it comes to CRM integration of Social Media platforms. However, the most used approach is, seeing updates and capturing information from your contacts, prospects, and social circles, right into your CRM’s dashboard.

Normally, primarily you have to authorize the CRM system to extract data from different social media websites.

More advanced CRMs like ConvergeHub allow single click accumulation of information through personalized lead capture application e.g. Free Lead Generator Tool, that once activated from your web-browser pulls in details like name, phone no, address, company information, other personal data of the targeted leads and more into the CRM.

Some of the Web 2.0 sites and social media apps include Flicker, GitHub, YouTube, etc. However, most CRM platforms like ConvergeHub focus on sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Gmail, Yelp and Twitter for lead generation to increase customer base and revenue.

Steps for setting up ConvergeHub Free Lead Generator Extension in Google Chrome:

  1. Navigate to the Extension in the Google Chrome App Store

For adding the Lead Generator Chrome extension, navigate to “Customize and Control Google Chrome” in top right corner and click on “More tools”. Next click on “Extensions” to see all the extensions installed in your Chrome Browser.

  1. Search “ConvergeHub” and then install or “Add to Chrome” the ConvergeHub Lead Generator plug-in

In the Chrome Extension tab, click on “Get More Extensions” and search for ConvergeHub or ConvergeHub Lead Generator. After the search is done, select the extension “ConvergeHub Lead Generator” and then click on “Add to Chrome”.