By Justin Languirand,
Obviously, that’s a gross over-simplification. If you read the entire article in the October issue of CRM (the magazine), you’ll see that there’s a lot more to it. The author, Associate Editor Lauren McKay, has organized her thoughts into some pretty logical sections:
Proactive Service
Proactive Suggestions
Proactive Notifications
Proactive Communications
Proactive Problem Solving
and, The Proactive Promise
McKay has also provided relevant, real world anecdotes to illustrate the benefits of each. Here are a couple of examples that I came up with.
At Altico Advisors, we use the service component for case management and for tracking support requests. So you’re thinking, “That’s reactive, right?” And you’re quire right. A client calls the support desk and the case is entered and tracked in CRM. But it doesn’t have to end there. The final step could be proactive – a personalized email out of CRM asking the client for feedback on the service received.
Second example. I’m proud to say that we communicate twice a month with our clients and that falls into the category of marketing automation in . In and of themselves, those twice monthly missives may be seen as proactive. But perhaps as the years have passed, they’re lost their impact. These messages are part of a routine. To add a refreshing, proactive lift to our marketing communications with our clients, we could program a workflow that generates a personalized “Happy Anniversary and Thank You for Your Business over the Last X Years” based on the date they officially became an Altico Advisors client.
Perhaps that doesn’t quite rank as a Random Act of Kindness, especially since it’s a pre-programmed workflow, but you get the point.
So when you’re evaluating CRM systems, ask a tough question, such as: “Given what you’ve learned about my business, what recommendations do you have for our company to use Dynamics CRM proactively?” I sure hope they can answer that question.
Submitted by Altico Advisors,
