Solutions to Achieve Your 2010 CRM Goals

For your customers, this may be back-to-school season. But for retailers like you, it’s more like New Year’s — time to review 2009 and set your CRM resolutions for the year ahead.

Looking back, we see a chaotic year that changed the consumer mindset. Looking forward, we wonder how to make progress given the still-changing dynamics around us.

Here, we take a look at four common CRM goals and point you toward some solutions — tried-and-true as well as up-and-coming.

Many retailers have responded to the economic climate with mass discounting. “As the economy starts to recover, the challenge for 2010 is proving value and moving customers back to full-price purchasing,” says CCG Senior Vice President Lane Ware.

Start by reviewing transaction data to determine customer behavior before the recession, she advises. “Then consider that historical viewpoint within the context of today’s consumer mindset,” she says. “It will be a balancing act. For instance, some businesses are now offering new lines that provide lower price points. You can also add value through content — such as member newsletters — and through social media channels.”

This year, go beyond the basic review you might undertake if your loyalty program had simply gone stale. “There has been a paradigm shift in what a loyalty program is,” says Ware. “It’s the umbrella strategy for your customer engagement, and there are new questions to address. Is your program multi-channel? Does it still take three weeks for new members to get a card? Will your members even carry a card? Can customers enroll online? Do you know all the ways consumers are touching you and talking about you?”

“Companies are already overwhelmed by direct mail, e-mail, search engine optimization and Web sites. Now they’re having to consider mobile, SMS and social media,” says Ware. “Yet so many retailers still have separate e-commerce divisions, and they’re still siloing customer data.”

In an ideal world, she adds, companies would move quickly toward full data integration. New technologies, such as Software as a Service (SaaS), make this less of an issue by allowing retailers to do away with proprietary databases and meld disparate data into a 360-degree view of their customers.

Still, it’s vital to build connections between e-commerce and loyalty programs, and between online and bricks-and-mortar divisions. Otherwise, says Ware, “You miss opportunities and give customers a fractured experience.”

The good news is that, by focusing on your data collection methodology, you can also improve the efficiency of the enrollment process, streamline throughput, and manage cost, response time and accuracy. It’s easier than ever thanks to new technologjcal advances that improve the customer’s experience during enrollment and speed the process of connecting customer information to your database.

“We’re on the edge of the next generation, of being able to connect with the customer right at POS — a critical timeframe for the new customer,” says Ware. “For instance, there is now technology that lets you simply scan a customer’s driver’s license to populate an enrollment form at POS. The member is enrolled and can even receive offers instantly.”