The following are some ideas to help you try and leverage your existing internal resources to improve profitability.
I just returned from the Gartner CRM Summit in London. It was a wonderful event with a lot of innovative companies and in spite of the economy, a strong buzz around the idea of CRM.
One thing did catch my attention. Many attendees indicated that while CRM is still important to them, they have no budget to work with. So the question became, what sort of zero cost strategies can I pursue to accomplish CRM until things improve?
A few thoughts came to mind.
1. Communities: This might be a good time for firms to work on their attempts to get customers to link to them more tightly via on line communities. This doesn’t take any money, just creativity and strategies to make it happen.
2. Analytics: Most firms have more data than they know what to do with. And many already have analytic tools in place. This might be a good time to mine that info and see what it tells you.
3. Segmentation: Use some of that analytics work to determine good segments for your customers. One that I have always been interested in is segmenting by privacy attitudes.
4. Process redesign: Most firms simply automate broken processes. This would be a good time to try to fix some of them
5. Organizational redesign: Our firms are structured around products. Look at restructuring around customer segments, channels or process. Might even save some money with this one.
So what am I missing? Other ideas for zero cost strategies?
via Zero Cost CRM Strategies .
There are several free CRM systems you can implement without strict software costs. These may be better than spreadsheets or paper. Just put in ‘Free CRM’ to Google and do some research.
Remember that most free advice is worth what you paid for it.