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Today, customers expect their interactions with every company to be intuitive, convenient, and contextual. In fact, a 2021 study showed that 63% of Singaporean consumers would be put off buying again from a brand due to a bad experience. The same study also revealed that 66% of Singaporean consumers only buy from brands that make them feel they understand their preferences, such as communicating with them through their favourite channels or providing tailored deals.
Customer experience is just as important in a B2B environment as it is in the B2C world. Research from McKinsey shows B2B companies that transformed their customer experience processes saw benefits including revenue growth, higher client satisfaction scores, improved employee satisfaction and reduction in operational costs.
Taking learnings from the past two years of rocket-speed digitalisation, the evolving customer-business dynamic has set a new standard for what buyers expect from businesses. This shift is critical for organisations to acknowledge and adapt to as nations continue to open up in 2022.
The evolved buyer experience
Today’s buyer is more informed than ever before, thanks to the vast amount of information available at their fingertips. Customer expectations are higher than ever before, with businesses expected to not only meet customer desires, but to anticipate their needs and proactively put the customer at the centre of everything they do. The power balance has shifted, with the standard now set for businesses to deliver seamless, contextual experiences across the buyer’s path to purchase.
In order to be successful, companies must evolve their mindset from selling to helping by understanding customers’ behavioural patterns, needs and expectations. Ensuring effective customer relationship management is at the heart of your business is a great way to achieve this.
For retail businesses, effective customer relationship management (CRM), via the right tools, gives retailers the option to sync shoppers’ data, understand purchasing habits from a suite of segmentation tools, and personalise communications with customers. This essential data allows organisations to truly understand all aspects of their customer and know what they expect from a business when entering a store or shopping online. The benefits are evident, with a recent study by HubSpot finding that organisations that put their CRM at the core of everything they do scored 2.8x higher in customer satisfaction compared to organisations that didn’t value CRM in the same way.
Is your CRM keeping up?
Nowadays, businesses need a powerful, easy-to-use software platform that enables them to create a single point of customer truth, remove friction and create real customer connections. While giving 100% to each customer isn’t always a reality, an effective CRM platform can help bridge the gap in relationship building by enabling businesses to deliver personalised experiences at scale.
A business’s CRM has the power to completely transform the way you connect with customers, fostering positive relationships through a synergy of automation and personal touch. A great example of an organisation that transformed its customer experience through the use of a CRM platform is Vinomofo, one of Singapore’s beloved online wine retailers.
Before implementing their CRM, Vinomofo had a plethora of disjointed systems and no central source of truth for their customer data or communications. They centralised their data with HubSpot. Using the HubSpot CRM platform gave them a single customer view and source of truth across teams that allowed them to personalise at scale and create a truly omnichannel experience for their customers. As a result, Vinomofo was able to leverage spikes in demand for wine during the pandemic to drive a 70% increase in sales.
In today’s highly competitive market, it’s vital for organisations to put customers at the centre of their strategy. A CRM platform is an effective path to building a connected team around a single data source — alleviating the friction associated with cobbling together different reports and systems to extract insights. Through less manual work, and minimal employee time cobbling, organisations are able to gain a competitive edge by investing that time in their customers.
Data to drive post-pandemic business growth
Utilising a powerful CRM platform in partnership with the practice of personalised customer relationship management has a significant impact in improving customer relationships, but how does this translate to business growth?
The first step is to recognise that a CRM is not simply a sales tool. Your CRM software should be at the heart of your business, extending beyond sales to support your entire front office teams, meaning any team who interacts with your customers. The second is that when your entire front office team — and the tools they use are aligned — your CRM enables you to go beyond linear growth and scale.
Data from HubSpot reveals businesses that use a CRM platform experience increased customer satisfaction and grow nearly two times faster than businesses without, demonstrating the full circle benefits of employing powerful CRM integration at the core of business growth.
In the wake of fundamental shifts in customer-business interactions driven by rapid digitalisation, it’s no longer enough for organisations to follow the basics of positive customer experiences. Now is the time to transform your approach to customer relationship management to not only survive, but thrive in the digital era.
Kat Warboys, APAC marketing director at HubSpot
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