STRATEGIC THINKING FOR YOUR BUSINESS
WINTER 2014
WINNING AND KEEPING CUSTOMERS
Nigel Brooks & Dean Foreman, Capital Support
WELCOME... ...TO YOUR QUARTERLY MAGAZINE BUSINESS TALK Welcome to the winter issue of Business Talk from Capital Support. Whether it’s the consumer purchasing a new car or their grocery shopping, or a company looking for a new supplier of materials or services, there’s no doubt that the Internet has redefined how people buy. In this issue, we look at how technology is changing the way you can attract and win new customers, as well as retain and grow existing ones. From helping to stand out in your market to delivering excellence in customer service, there’s never been a better opportunity to create a competitive edge that will help your business succeed.
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Our ‘Meet the expert’ column on on page 11 features an insightful interview with the Co-Chair of the Chartered Institute of Marketing’s Technology Special Interest Group, Justin Bowser. I hope this issue provides some food for thought. As always, don’t hesitate to contact us to discuss any aspect of how we can help grow your business.
Nigel Brooks Capital Support
Mark Hollingsworth Managing Director Dean Foreman Capital Support
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11 WINNING AND KEEPING CUSTOMERS
Winning the digital customer
page 4
Keeping and growing customers
page 7
Meet the expert
page 11
Driving up customer performance
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One of the real advantages of digital marketing is the relative ease by which you can measure results >>
to use them to best effect. Examples of tactics you could employ include:
• Email marketing • Search engine optimisation (SEO) • Pay per click advertising • Website content • Digital PR • Social media • Viral marketing • Webinars • Web-chat • Apps • Loyalty programmes 4. Measure and refine. One of the real advantages of digital marketing is the relative ease by which you can measure results and assess how you are doing against the goals and objectives you set. It gives a clear and almost immediate indication of the return on your investment. For each of the tactics above, there’s a way to quantify and evaluate its effectiveness so you can refine your strategy over time. There’s also a range of tools and techniques you can employ to help measure the effectiveness of your digital marketing strategy. More notable examples include:
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• Google Analytics – offered free by Google,
it generates detailed statistics about your website’s traffic and traffic sources. • Hootsuite – a popular social media management tool enabling you to measure and manage your activity across a range of social networks. • Email marketing platforms – provide reports on who has opened your marketing emails and whether they have clicked on embedded links. • SEO reporting – tells you how well your website is faring on search engines. • Apps – providing detailed reports on usage and sign-ups for offers, etc.
The digital opportunity Digital marketing and related technologies enables any business to compete with the biggest brands; size is no longer king – being innovative in engaging customers and giving them a great online experience is what now counts.
Discuss with us how you can exploit technology to attract and win new customers.
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KEEPING AND GROWING CUSTOMERS Customer retention should be high on the minds of most businesses. In an increasingly competitive world, largely driven by the new age digital landscape, retaining customers and keeping them loyal has never been more important. Call 020 7458 1250 or go online at www.capitalsupport.com
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TUDIES SHOW that acquiring new customers typically costs as much as five to seven times more than simply retaining existing customers. The fact that customer profitability tends to increase over the life of a retained customer is an added incentive for businesses to allocate more resources to sharpening their customer retention strategies and technology is the key enabler. Here, we look at ways that today’s businesses can utilise technology to improve the customer experience they offer, boost customer loyalty, and gather and share customer intelligence.
The customer experience edge It’s never been easier for customers to walk. According to a survey by market research firm Harris Interactive, 86% of customers either leave or choose not to return because of a poor customer experience, whilst only 14% go elsewhere because they are unhappy with the product or the service. By bringing technology, customer service and marketing teams together, a programme of customer experience enhancements can be developed and implemented. Examples of how this can be implemented include: • New customer welcomes – email, video, customer portals and websites can all be used
to introduce new customers to your service or product they have purchased, helping them to understand how to get the best from their purchase. • Early warnings – use email, text or apps to provide customers with advance notice of changes in service or product issues. Customers appreciate being told as it allows them to avoid or be prepared for the problem. • Delivery confirmation – ask customers how they would like to be kept informed of deliveries or reminded about appointments. It may be a text, email, phone call or via a bespoke app. • Listening and learning – use technology to gather, collate and analyse customer feedback. Either provide channels for customers to communicate directly or, for service industries, enable your staff to provide the feedback on an individual customer basis. Then use this learning to enhance your products, service or brand.
Building loyalty and advocacy The Internet has brought about a transformational shift in power from sellers to buyers. This has meant that more and more businesses need to investigate ways they can keep their customers loyal – as well as utilise the Internet to enable their customers to advocate their products or services. In many instances, technology is the driving force behind why customers remain loyal. Some of the key technologies that most businesses should be looking at, and understanding its relevance to them, include: • Social media – now the single most influential technology that impacts on customer loyalty, giving the customer a voice that spans the world, reaching friends, colleagues and complete strangers, and influencing buying choices and brand allegiance. • Customer analytics – another key enabler for customer loyalty. By analysing customer behaviour, purchasing information and other data, it’s possible to respond to them as individuals to ensure they get a personalised experience.
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In many instances, technology is the driving force behind why customers remain loyal.
• Mobility – smartphones offer tremendous opportunity for virtually any business, not just consumer-focused sectors. Web access, email access, text, social media, apps are all common place today but tomorrow proximity marketing, digital wallets and wearable tech will bring yet more change. Gaining and sharing customer insight With the possible exception of businesses that have just a handful of clients, putting in place a system to collate customer (and prospect) intelligence is crucial to any customer retention and sales strategy. However, it’s surprising how many businesses end up relying on a jumble of email trails, spread sheets, accountancy records or, worse, individual knowledge to keep track of customers and prospects. Yet, powerful tools are available such as CRM (Customer Relationship Management) to enable the effective and efficient gathering and
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sharing of this vital information – information that enables you to understand your customers better (collectively and individually), see which ones are the most profitable, automatically flag up when it’s time to make contact, identify up-selling and cross-selling opportunities, and improve internal co-ordination and communications. At the same time, sharing customer data and intelligence across the business can help sales teams be more effective, customer service teams deliver an enhanced service, operational departments make improvements and marketing teams better target their messages. Collaboration technologies can also be used smartly to bring teams together to deliver projects, whether purely internal or involving your clients and third parties. Webinar applications can be used to pitch new ideas to customers and prospects alike and, of course, audio conferencing is simple and effective in bringing people together quickly and easily.
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TECHNOLOGIES FOR CUSTOMER RETENTION Here are some key technologies that can be used to deliver an enhanced customer retention strategy. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a system for managing a company’s interactions with current and future customers. CRM software helps to organise, automate and synchronise sales, marketing, customer service, and technical support. Social media such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest and others can be used from increasing brand awareness and improving brand loyalty to enriching your customer engagement and gaining deeper market insight. Email marketing is a highly cost-effective way to communicate with targeted audiences. It enables a graphic-rich message to be sent, customised with specific personal data, and provides measurement and analysis such as opens, click-throughs and conversion rates to evaluate the success of campaigns. Microsoft Lync is a platform that keeps everyone working together effectively, regardless of where they are or what device they are using. It utilises instant messaging, audio, web and video conferencing and a wealth of other features. Microsoft Sharepoint is a web application platform offering a set of tools that can be used to provide intranet portals, document and file management, collaboration and social networks, as well as process and workflow capabilities.
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Web chat is a form of real-time web-based communication between a customer and a sales or support person, enabling immediate interaction via a typed conversation. Webinars are online events hosted by an organisation and broadcast to a select group of individuals through their computers via the Internet, enabling interactive presentations to be given with accompanying audio, graphics and video content.
Find out how customisable software applications can improve your customer retention and sales activity. Contact us on the number below.
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MEET THE EXPERT
Business Talk interviews Justin Bowser, Co-Chair of the Chartered Institute of Marketing’s Technology Market Interest Group, about how technology is changing the way businesses market themselves.
Q: How rapidly is technology and the Internet changing how businesses win and retain customers? A: Fast! Google search has totally disrupted traditional B2B and B2C sales models. By the time a customer calls or visits your website, they have already researched your business and built their shortlist; they’re way better informed than they used to be. Social media has turned customer
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service on its head, with customers firmly in the driving seat when it comes to exposing poor products and services. They expect a response within an hour or so, and will vote with their feet, or a dissatisfied tweet. And customers are increasingly buying digital ‘subscriptions’ rather than owning things outright, which makes customer retention – and good customer service – more important than ever. Q: How can technology help me compete against established brands and market dominant players? A: Technology is creating giants in every sector, but smaller businesses can still compete effectively. The key is to find niche markets that the giants don’t address sufficiently well, in which you have some genuinely unique strengths. Then use technology to help you identify your target customers, and to serve
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them brilliantly. If you’re a B2C business, use social customer service to your advantage by creating fans who’ll recommend you to their friends, and a simple loyalty app to reward them. If you’re selling B2B, use tools like LinkedIn to help you understand your customers better and establish deeper business relationships. Q: What steps should my company take to adopt technology-based solutions to improve our marketing and sales activities? A: First think about your target markets and ‘personas’... what are your ideal types of customer? Then use a database or CRM tool to bring all your customer data together, so you can see who falls into each type – so you can send them relevant offers. Make sure your email marketing and sales (or CRM) software are joined up too, so you can measure success in terms of closed sales, not just email ‘opens’
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and ‘clicks’. And most importantly, have a measurable strategy… technology is no use unless you know what you want to achieve! Q: What examples are there of how IT can give me an edge in customer support and improve customer experience? A: There are now plenty of ‘cloud’ software tools for customer relationship management and online customer support. Look at lowcost social monitoring tools like HootSuite, SproutSocial or SocialSignIn, so you know when people are trying to talk to you, or are talking about you, and something like Autotask to professionalise the way you handle online and email support tickets. The important thing is to pick tools that work together, so that no matter how your customers want to contact you, you’re able to respond professionally. Q: What are the next developments in mobile marketing? A: SMS isn’t dead yet! It still gets very good response rates, so long as the content is relevant. Location-targeted offers will become more common across mobile and social apps, and we’ll see new hyper-local ‘proximity’ services based on iBeacon technology. Along with this we’ll see a shift to ‘real-time’ marketing, where for example an appropriate offer is pushed to a mobile app when the customer walks into a store. Will consumers like this? The jury’s out as far as I’m concerned; it can seem a little ‘stalky’, but if it’s used to deliver a better customer experience it can work well. Q: How can the cloud support my marketing and sales function? A: Most vendors of marketing and sales automation software are moving to the ‘cloud’, with what the industry calls ‘software as a service’. For small and mid-sized businesses, this can offer significant advantages in terms of cost saving, compared to buying software outright. Look for software that
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works together though, so you can give your marketing, sales and support teams a single joined-up view of each customer. Also try out ‘collaboration’ software like Yammer, Lync or Google Hangouts, so your marketing and sales teams can work together more efficiently.
Technology is creating giants in every sector, but smaller businesses can still compete effectively. Q: What ways can I use technology to reduce my marketing costs? A: It comes down to good strategy and measurement. Look at where your customers are when they’re online, then apportion your overall budget by ‘channel’ – e.g. SEO and paid search, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn groups, forums etc. Social media can be fun, but don’t waste time and money on it if your customers aren’t there. Instead, spend your time testing, measuring and improving – for example by testing two versions of an email, Tweet or web page. The great thing about digital technology is that it’s very measurable, and quick to see what’s working and what’s not. Q: What new technologies can we expect to see in the next few years that could play a role in how we market? A: The adoption of ‘marketing automation’ software outside of the technology sector is still very low – this will increase over the next few years as cost reduces and ease-ofuse increases. Proximity-based services will increase, thanks to game-changing events like the launch of Apple Pay that will help mobile wallet-style services to reach the mainstream. I also expect the ‘Internet of Things’ will start to deliver some niche but useful services (your fridge will tell you what food to buy) and the wearable tech / fashion tech sector will come of age. It’s an exciting time to be in technology marketing!
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DRIVING UP CUSTOMER PERFORMANCE Technology is able to unlock significant improvements across virtually any aspect of an organisation’s customer-facing activities, helping to attract and win new customers and retain and grow existing customers. Here are examples of how two firms have exploited IT to re-invent parts of their business to improve their customer processes.
CASE HISTORY SharePoint delivers a competitive edge A major tyre distributor had been using manual processes to manage bespoke customer quotes. However, after implementing Microsoft SharePoint, significant business benefits were achieved resulting in a transformation of this critical organisational procedure. Key issues with their manual process included slow decision making, disparate information silos, and cumbersome and complex processes. Recognising that they were losing out to their competitors, they looked for a solution and chose SharePoint. Working with the client, a solution was developed to re-engineer the end-to-end process by taking advantage of a range of key features offered by SharePoint, enabling data to be extracted from a
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number of systems and integrating it into an efficient new workflow. The workflow now starts with the initiation of a quote by completing a SharePoint web page which interfaces to an existing system to help make field selection easier and more accurate. Once the quote has been initiated, the automated workflow is then launched. Previously, quotes were taking up to 7 days to complete but, with the new system in place, this was cut to 48 hours. Additional business benefits resulting from the solution included improved end-to-end visibility of the status of all quotes, better internal communication and collaboration, and the elimination of quoting errors and associated re-work. These and other benefits have enhanced the company’s competitiveness whilst delivering significant returns on investment.
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CASE HISTORY Making money from waste
Improved information management has enabled the company to grow sales by 35% without adding any additional people
Implementing a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system for one waste management company has transformed their business: increasing sales, retaining more customers and driving company developments. Before installing their CRM, the company managed each of their 500 customers on an individual spreadsheet. Logging orders, scheduling collections and making notes on individual customers was cumbersome, inconsistently implemented and restricted access and management of vital information. Now, with a new CRM system installed, a fresh breeze has blown through the organisation. Relevant people from all departments can easily access the same information which is presented in a consistent way. The breadth and depth of reporting made available means any metrics can be examined quickly and simply. Improved information management has enabled the company to grow sales by 35% without adding any additional people, and productivity in their customer service department has increased by 40%. Solving customer issues has been speeded up, improving the customer experience, and the intelligence and insight the system gives is now driving the company’s future development plans. The firm found that implementing the CRM system was very straight-forward; a seamless exercise across all departments. The customisable user interface meant that the system was tailored to meet their precise requirements and internal procedures, whilst all customer data is now much more secure and controllable.
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