Stagnation is inevitable. CRM takes the fight

Devastation in the head - this short Bulgakov quote does not become obsolete and is unlikely to ever become obsolete. As the economic situation sways a little, prices rise or sales fall, company owners and private individuals panic. The only true action, in their opinion, is to stop buying, collect all the money and lie low "until better times." Thus, they provoke deeper stagnation, paralyze business and personal finances.

Remember the parable of the two frogs that landed in a lid with cream? One resigned herself, decided to keep her strength and went to the bottom, and the second beat her paws, whipped sour cream and got out, tired, but alive. Moral: crisis - time to beat paws. It is advisable to automate this process, because with the help of a blender, sour cream is usually whipped faster :).

Stagnation is inevitable. Stop panic

Stagnation in the company is inevitable, because you can not immediately insure yourself against negative market, financial, consumer and macroeconomic factors. The task of the leader and all employees is to make periods of stagnation predictable and as short as possible. Where does it come from, sometimes against the background of complete well-being?

• The company’s capabilities, technological ceiling, etc. have been reached. This happens - and many IT and non-IT companies felt this on their own: it is impossible to increase the volume of production, it is difficult to change the technology to cheaper and more advanced, modernization requires time, investment and, worst of all, production downtime. By the way, the same is true in the service sector - adaptation to changing needs is needed. The most painful points in this situation: time and money. We need insurance, a “financial pillow” to survive the time of modernization or reprofiling.
  
  The recipe is the diversification of a business, the creation of conditions for its scaling through an affiliate network or a network of representative offices, and access to foreign markets. Those. search for options for further development.
  
  
  
  
  On display: "Bob & Joe pillows with glass-filler."
  “I don’t know, Joe, maybe we are using some sort of fig glass? ...
  
  
• Few potential customers, narrow or saturated market. A company can operate in a narrow segment and at some point realize that the market is oversaturated. The company can work in the widest segment and realize that "everyone bought everything." This story overtook mobile operators in large regions around 2010 - mobile penetration in Russia exceeded one, and in 2016 it was already 164% in the regions and 233% in the capitals. By the way, we all could notice how the operators got out of the way - first due to VAS (content, beeps and other AntiAONs), and then due to mobile Internet. Actually, this is the secret to overcoming stagnation of this type.
  
  The recipe is the development, diversification and development of new market segments.
  
  
• The systemic macroeconomic recession is the saddest stagnation. At first glance (and at the second and even after a couple of weeks of analysis) it may seem that the company is powerless: driven by fear of the economic situation in the country and in the world, customers are "sitting on the money" and completely refuse to consume everything that seems to them unnecessary. In a strange way, hardware, software, and good employees who are ready to hit big salaries fall into excesses.
  
  However, the crisis among clients (individuals or businesses) is new headaches and problems. Your task is to understand and tell how you can solve them. During a crisis, the worst is to steam, the best is to be honest and help the client choose the right solution.
  
  Recipe- development of a local marketing campaign adapted to a specific economic situation. It should be temporary until macroeconomic indicators are restored. It must be balanced so that you do not give away your goods or services for free. There are people who earn it on crises. For example, if you buy real estate in times of crisis at a very low price, in the future, when the situation recovers, you can realize it with a significant profit. Be flexible, adapt to environmental conditions.
  
  
• Strong competitors dumping in the market. In the 21st century, competition comes to companies from where they did not wait. For example, in the same CRM market among players there is an IP-telephony operator (and not one) and a federal mobile operator. Of course, their programs are far from CRM, but which of the users will go sort it out - it simply turned out to be profitable for offices to open such a complementary service purely for marketing purposes. But, by the way, the story is not powerful, these guys, even with their huge client base, will not be able to compete with the classic CRM in any market segment.
  
  The story is brighter. Do you think Nokia or Blackberry saw a competitor in the face of Google? And he appeared, developed the Android operating system and actually redrawn the market towards other manufacturers - already experienced, but more accessible and flexible. Again, it is significant how well Apple survived under these conditions and how it got into a puddle of Microsoft with winphones. But this, of course, is a separate discussion about technology, marketing and the role of the individual in history.
  
  Recipe - trending and marketing analysis. See how your potential buyers will respond to possible improvements to your products or services. Conduct a survey. Take the best from competitors and improve.
  
  
• Force Majeure - stagnation is caused by temporary or systemic circumstances of force majeure. For example, sellers of ice cream and water in central Russia this summer are not as comfortable as last or hot summer of 2010.
  
  The recipe is the same as with a systemic decline.

In fact, there are many more reasons, and each company has its own. But in an aggregated state, they all fall into these four groups.

CRM to the rescue

Perhaps, for the first time in our 24 articles on Habré, we turn to the CRM term not as software, but as a complex of strategy and software. Because the period of stagnation is the time when the CRM system should not just stand and occasionally open, but work for you and your business, be a strategy, tactics and make money. What, what, and she knows how - as a tool in the hands of a master.

In the coordinate system "company - client"

The first thing to do is focus on the service , especially if the companies have nowhere to grow technologically, but they are uniformly competitive. Clients are paying more and more attention to the quality of service and how quickly and accurately the company solves their problems. CRM-system - a tool that can make the service almost perfect.


... this device works remotely and helps me convince you to buy our new product!
We will look, of course, on the example of RegionSoft CRM - what the business receives from the system to improve the service:

• a complete picture of working with a client - with one click you can raise the entire history of interactions and view the client profile;
  
  
• personalization of any offers - having a pool of information about the client, you can offer an individual offer based on his needs, and not on the needs of a group or segment;
  
  
• customer segmentation for mailings and other activities (by the way, mailings can be done directly from the CRM-system interface);
  
  
• productive telephone communication - thanks to the client’s pop-up card, your managers will immediately contact the client by name as if they were only doing what they were waiting for his call;
  
  
• CRM records all conversations with customers - which means you can monitor the quality of work and train managers on the best examples;
  
  
• three schedulers (a regular calendar planner, group and three-week), together with reminders guarantee that all meetings, transactions and calls will be held at the appointed time;
  
  
• the entire loyalty system - with discount cards, discounts, margins, etc.
  
  
• and even a ticket system for service or technical support.
  

By the way, we reason not only on the basis of our experience: world studies show the same trend of increasing consumer attention to the service.
 

Charted customer service - several studies

We selected several fresh graphs from various studies on the service, translated and redrawn them. So, Tech News World polled 500 organizations that implement CRM systems and found out what entrepreneurs expect to get from customer relationship automation. 74% of those polled expect primarily to improve customer service, and 66% - to increase customer satisfaction. By the way, other goals also coincided with our vision of how and for what it is possible to use a CRM-system.

ClickFox has found out how companies can retain customers from the customers themselves. So, 33% prefer to receive exceptional service 24/7. To be honest, it’s surprising that 12% voluntarily agreed to exclusive offers and 11% - to personalized products. By the way, Inside CRM research showed that more than 75% of the effect of improving the service is on increasing sales and increasing the number of customers.

But in the same survey, it turned out that jokes with customers are bad - the news about your worthless service is actively spreading. Social networks surveyed only 16%, but we think that in Russia this figure is clearly higher.

A study by The Rockefeller Corporation found that the main reason customers leave is their lack of attention.

In general, the service is extremely important and you should avoid leaving the client - at least because of your fault, since it is more difficult to deal with a number of other reasons.

The CRM system makes it possible to diversify a business based on trends : if stagnation is caused by a global recession in the market, then you need to try to shift to a niche that may be nearby, but is not stagnating now. Based on the information accumulated in the system, you can see what customers were interested in, why they refused to buy, what they willingly purchased, etc. Separately, you can see who your customers are and whether they may be interested in additional services ( for example, you sell air conditioners, and the summer of 2017 allows you to do without them yet. It's time to think about expanding the range due to, for example, breathers and start promote them plus offer paid installation, filter cleaning and other services ). Move to the sideareas with increased margins - offer services, maintenance, products with a large margin . Profitability in such conditions should grow. All data for the study of growth points are located in CRM.

Another way to use the information accumulated in the CRM system against stagnation and crisis is to use the language of commerce to “grind” the customer base: to make additional sales, offer services , etc. existing customers. Existing customers are already familiar with you, you are familiar with them, which means that the cost of sales is significantly reduced: you do not bear the costs of attraction and competition. Indeed, the CRM system is indispensable here:

• segment the customer base - and offer narrow segments and individual customers what suits them, conduct mailings;
  
  
  
  
  Jim got out of the lemonade business and decided to target the small, most profitable segment. Be careful with segmentation.
  
  
• conduct surveys - all profiles are attached to the client’s card and stored in the CRM system;
  
  
• process customers who haven’t passed the sales funnel and postponed relations with you “to think over”, “to see everyone”, “compare prices”, “expensive”, etc. For them, it’s worth preparing proposals different from those with which they are already familiar. A small note: after-sales should be really necessary and useful for the customer. You should not offer laces with a pink kitten for men's sneakers for 17,000, and Minecraft for network monitoring software.
  

Ideal offer: To be honest, this car is overrated, has a terribly huge mileage and smells just like steamed broccoli ... BUT it has dual-zone climate control!

By accumulating data in the CRM system, you get an understanding of all the client’s needs due to the fact that the card includes the most detailed information, data on payments, accepted and rejected commercial offers, discounts, orders, etc. are attached to it. In fact, this is a complete history that allows you to make an accurate diagnosis ( how to analyze and what data - we described in detail).

In general, analytics in the CRM system helps outnot only in times of crisis, but also in peacetime: you need to analyze the data and dive deep into information to find out troubles at an early stage and take action. Separate CRM boxes offer sophisticated dashboards (we even saw a weather widget and a lunar calendar), complex OLAP cubes (more precisely, a bunch of complex tables that are not really OLAP and which you won’t understand without half a liter). Our approach is this: IT tools must be reliable, easy to use and economical. By the way, again, according to foreign studies, 55% of CRM customers expect ease of use, 27% expect scheduled management (by the way, we implemented this using RegionSoft Application Server) Small and medium-sized businesses in Europe love CRM systems: only 21% consider them to be a pain point among software (for comparison, business intelligence systems are leading with 66%, and 13% of headaches are in the mail). At the same time, 61% are extremely satisfied with the CRM system, partly - 36%, and only 3% are not satisfied at all.

It will not be superfluous to reconsider integrationCRM systems and forms on the site from where it takes information. Perhaps you have too many fields or the customer’s path to purchase or order is not optimized - try shortening it. If your site sells, and CRM integration with the site is not configured, you may lose some potential customers. Set up integration. This will speed up the reaction time of your employees and formalize their actions. As a result, your customers will be more satisfied from interacting with your company.

In the coordinate system "company - employees"

Accelerating the flow of business processes is the first measure that you should take in case of stagnation, and even better before it occurs. In general, work with business processes should begin with self-recognition that the company is in some kind of mess, the deadlines for projects are broken, managers are on the nerves. The position “we are stars in the universe and our product will soon sell itself” is not relevant even for intergalacticworld-famous corporations. It is best to establish business processes with their automation in CRM - the structure of the process in the system will help you immediately understand what is most important, what is secondary, what documents and reminders should be included at each stage, what dates should be set, etc. In the future, it will be enough to start the process instance so that everything goes as it should. But working with business processes always takes time and requires the joint efforts of departments. This is exactly the case when it is better to lose a day, then fly in five minutes.

CRM system frees up staff timedue to automation of routine and standard action chains. This is not a reason to reduce staff and save on matches - this is an opportunity for employees to devote more time to service and communication with the client. Many companies have preserved, for example, regulations on the length of a conversation with a customer - if, say, the normative 5 minutes 30 seconds are prescribed, then in 10 minutes or 17 you can lose part of the premium without fulfilling the KPI standard. This phenomenon itself is a relic of antiquity, but in times of crisis it is simply destructive - you must devote as much time to the client as he needs. Invest in a relationship a temporary resource, the return will not be long in coming. By the way, a CRM system with configured telephony and call routing guarantees another cool service tool - the availability of managers.

The CRM-system also solves corporate problems, for example, coordinates relations and controls the circulation of information between departments . When each employee has a clearly organized digital desktop (CRM interface), and all the information is stored in a single database, different departments know exactly about their tasks and their place in business processes. This eliminates the transfer of responsibility and reduces the level of tension between departments.

Another bonus associated with CRM - a tangible increase in speedmanagers and even leaders. This is due to the unification of information, automation of work and reporting - you do not need to select data by hand or write tasks on a piece of paper and hang it in front of your nose. Everything is in electronic form, reminds of itself and is transparently controlled. By the way, when it comes to monitoring, RegionSoft CRM has a very well-implemented self-monitoring mechanism: managers see the dynamics of their KPI performance and can respond to subsidence of work areas.

Thus, the CRM system gives the company a chance to achieve maximum organizational potential, provides front-office tools, and helps motivate staff. CRM (in particular, the universal RegionSoft CRM) unifies part of the corporate IT infrastructure and thereby saves money by abandoning other corporate software products.

And about the risks - even without stagnation

Regardless of the phase of stagnation or growth, any company always faces potential risks, some of which are not even dependent on it. In principle, the set of risks differs depending on the field of activity, asset structure, management model, etc. - as a rule, they are spelled out in risk management strategies or are simply implied by management. However, there are four groups of risks to which all are exposed.
 
Strategic risks - caused by industry downturns, market changes and patterns of consumer behavior. For example, the fashion for touch-sensitive phones, which quickly captured all price segments, almost killed push-button devices - this was a strategic risk for phone manufacturers, they needed to be rebuilt.
 
But there are imaginary risks, a blind decision to minimize or eliminate which may bankrupt the company.
For example, cloud technologies and the SaaS delivery model appeared - many CRM vendors stopped developing desktop versions and sent all their efforts to web applications. However, by 2014, it became clear that medium and large businesses, as well as small businesses that respect their data, are not ready to enter into tripartite relations and transfer their data to the cloud. A little later, companies calculated and realized that SaaS is also more expensive. Look at CRM sites - almost everyone has server versions, and some vendors are actively developing and delivering a “box”. By the way, there were those who were able to visionarily calculate all the minuses of the cloud and continued to pay more (or all) attention to the desktop - RegionSoft Developer Studiowas one of them.
 
Financial risks - associated with the presence of deviations in the movement of cash flows. This may be accounts receivable, a crisis of non-payments, a misunderstanding of the structure of customer profitability (which part of the base brings most of the revenue - remember the Pareto principle?).
 
Operational risks - associated with problems within the company: a mess in business processes, sabotage of employees, mass layoffs during stagnation and crisis, malfunctions in performance monitoring, incorrect planning and non-fulfillment of KPI. Such situations can occur spontaneously at the junction of several minor problems or consciously come from employees and even the management itself, which decides to "brighten up" the difficult period of stagnation by tightening the screws.
 
Reputational risks- caused by problems with the customer service. As companies and analysts have repeatedly estimated, a customer dissatisfied with a service quickly spreads negative reviews to 2-4 of their acquaintances. Social networks only exacerbate the situation.
 
These risks must be monitored and managed - then you can anticipate a period of stagnation and minimize possible losses. Competent automation in this is a smart and trouble-free assistant. Pay attention to how the CRM-systems market is growing (fact + forecast) - even during the crisis years it did not have a recession, since automation has long been considered one of the main tools of crisis management.


 
In general, during stagnation, there is one rule. More precisely, it is timeless: always invest in the development of the company. Imagine that one donor constantly provides blood to one or several recipients, and this donor is not fed. Do you think he would have lived long? We doubt it. If a commercial project earns exclusively on the well-fed life of owners or even employees, sooner or later it will die. And if part of the earnings goes back to the project, he lives, multiplies the received and gives the owners even more.

Invest in your business - and most importantly, in automation . She will allow you to be engaged in development, but not accumulation. Development ensures compliance with every moment of time and market conditions. Corresponding - earn. The circle is closed.

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While writing the article, the idea arose to find out, but what about us? Therefore, a few simple questions on the topic.