Every business agrees about wanting to drive greater customer satisfaction; it’s pretty much an indisputable goal. Personally, I prefer the idea of driving higher customer engagement. While an engaged customer may not always be a satisfied customer, they are engaged enough to let you know if you haven’t met their expectations. A disengaged customer will probably just get a new vendor. This means that both satisfaction AND engagement are important measures of your business's long-term success.
So how does software help you improve customer satisfaction and engagement? A popular response to that question would be to look at a CRM solution, such as Microsoft Dynamics CRM. After all, CRM tools are built to support sales, marketing and customer service functions. They are also flexible applications that can be easily customized to meet your unique business needs. However, I think a CRM system is more focused around driving customer satisfaction than true engagement.
True, a stand-alone CRM system will keep better track of your data, help you automate certain processes, and provide insight into your relationship and history with a client. However, it falls short in two key areas. First, there tends to be a significant amount of customer data in a company that isn’t located in a CRM system. Examples of this would be documents and accounting data. Integrating your CRM solution to a document management solution like SharePoint or to your ERP solution significantly adds value to your CRM experience. Now, your employees can find documents, invoice data, and other important information all in a single location.
The second shortcoming of a CRM system is that your customers themselves don’t have access to this information. Now, let me be clear – there is certainly information that customers should not have access to! However, allowing customers to interact with your business through a CRM system can provide huge efficiencies and can be a great tool for driving customer engagement. Some examples include allowing customers a self-service portal to reprint an invoice, open a support case, search for a knowledge base article or register for an event. Tying your web/internet presence to your Microsoft Dynamics CRM system can deliver significant value to your customers while lowering your overall costs!
Small and medium sized business today tend to invest heavily in a web strategy that is often totally segmented from their backend systems. In the past, portals for Microsoft Dynamics CRM have been too costly or time consuming for many CRM customers. Therefore, they were forced to single-channel support options, such as phone or email, to get questions answered. This may be acceptable to some customers, but many have expectations driven by the consumer tools, apps, and sites they use every day. So, how is a company supposed to provide a customer support portal integrated into their backend systems? If they are running Microsoft Dynamics CRM we have the answer - CRM Vertex is a Portal solution for Microsoft Dynamics CRM which can be purchased via a monthly subscription or a one-time software purchase. The subscription purchase can be provisioned in a matter of minutes via an Azure hosted site and can be configured equally as quickly.
This product provides a unique out-of-the-box application to get a Customer Portal, Community Portal, Partner Portal, or numerous other types of portals up and running in a matter of minutes. It also provides the opportunity to have a completely customizable solution, using 100% point-and-click configuration from within the familiar CRM interface.
Take advantage of the CRM Vertex platform, extend your investment in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and engage your customers in brand new ways with a CRM portal! Visit for a free 30-day trial today!
See more at: http://crmvertex.com
by CRM Vertex
