In order to maintain a high market share, increase profits and making new sales every firm needs to concentrate on its customer base, no matter how small or large they are. In order to sustain in the competitive market, it is essential to keep your business thriving among your target customers for which, your present customers are the important assets.

Today, most of the firms concentrate on developing a good connection with its potential customer and for this; they practice Customer Relationship Management (CRM). It is a kind of tool designed strategically to increase the profitability and alleviate the cost and customer churn by consolidating customer satisfaction. A firm can measure its relationship with the customer by the degree of satisfaction they receive while or after using their product or services.

There are certain ways by which the firm can maintain a good customer relationship with the potential customer. The few are:-

I. Stay in regular contact

The key to maintaining healthy customer relationships is being in regular touch with your customers.  Any kind of engagement with them should be considered as an opportunity to build strong connections and commitments which helps us ensure retaining and keeping clients for the long term. To be in regular contact you, can practice the following:-
•  Follow up your customer after the meeting by means of social networking, e-mail, phone calls.
•  Forward the important blogs, posts, and videos according to the customer interest that can be valuable for them.
•  Send customer a periodic update about the company, its product and its growth.

II. Building trust factor

Building trust is an essential element because trust and commitment alleviate the chances of forecasted risk. If you build trust with your customer, you can hold them for life. Trust in your customer relation can be built by:-
•  Showing compassion in your work.
•  Being honest, credible and keep your integrity.
•  Do not misinterpret the features and benefit of your product and services.
•  Avoid giving solutions in which customer is uninterested.
•  Respect their time and respond promptly.

III. Maintain transparency

Customer controls the future of any business and being transparent can overcome their dissatisfaction due to any kind of uncertainty. People relate to the organizations that are open and honest. Provide your customer with the information that is concise and accurate. Don’t tend to give false information, for the sake of minimum benefit, it affects your and company’s credibility.

IV. Schedule task and meet deadlines

Getting the work done on time is essential to maintain client relationships. Do plan your task and project timeline before initiating. Proper planning and prioritizing of task lead to time management and by managing your time you can easily avoid procrastination of your scheduled work and can meet the deadlines given to the customers. Some companies in this regard have also benefited by incorporating team planners in workplace. 

V. Relate to the customers

To foster customer relation, you need to be very tactic. You need to understand your customer and try to connect to them. In order to relate to your customer, you need to
•    Acknowledge them and indicate that you understand their needs.
•    Empathize and show genuine concern for the observed emotions.
•    Ask for the feedback and implement the change accordingly.
•    Give them solutions.

Overall, it's important to give customer Relationship Management a high priority for the business growth you wish to see.

If you have been a user of CRM at your company and have views/opinions to share, feel free to shoot them here in comments or tweet to us @iUeMagazine