If you work in ecommerce, you know that one bad customer experience can spread like wildfire. The customer who had the bad experience could tell a dozen people about it. Online, that number might go even higher — where one bad review can reach hundreds of potential buyers.
One solution: customer relationship management (CRM) in ecommerce, which gives you the tools to reduce these negative experiences.
What Is CRM in Ecommerce?
CRM in ecommerce uses technology platforms to organize and connect customer-centric data, primarily to improve a customer’s experience with your company over time.
The better your CRM solution works for you, the more you can improve customer service. This is especially important in ecommerce, where it just takes one or two negative interactions for 86% of your customers to leave your business, as noted by artificial intelligence (AI) platform Gnani Innovations.
Since the ecommerce experience is almost entirely digital, your CRM becomes even more critical. It’s how you manage your digital outreach with every customer.
Consider a few features of CRM in ecommerce that will be especially useful in maintaining happy relationships with customers.
Workflow Automation
Too many customers reaching out via text, chatbot, or email can quickly become overwhelming. Set up your CRM properly, however, and you can automatically direct pressing queries to the right departments. This shortens response times and removes an extra step for your team on the back end.
Previous Contacts
When a customer reaches out to you, CRM can help fill in knowledge gaps on your end. If you don’t remember what the customer’s previous concerns have been in interactions from months ago, CRM can remind you by listing what happened in previous customer touch points.
Log Customer-Facing Interactions
Say a sales rep on your team touches base with a customer and pitches them a new service. It wouldn’t be responsible relationship management if another salesperson did the same thing within 24 hours. CRM tracks your outreach so you avoid repetitive pitches.
What Does Successful Customer Relationship Management in Ecommerce Look Like?
With CRM in ecommerce, your business becomes more “friendly.” CRM can be the difference between a company that can’t remember a customer’s name and a company that remembers not only the customer’s name but also their concerns.
Done right, CRM in ecommerce will build stronger customer relationships, incentivize more customer loyalty, increase customer lifetime value, and drive repeated purchases. But how can you be using CRM to accomplish all of the above?
Collecting and Analyzing Customer Data
A famous philosopher once said: “Know thyself.” In ecommerce, the rule of thumb? Know thy customer. CRM can help collect and analyze customer data to provide you with long-term customer insights.
According to Zendesk, more than half of small businesses integrate CRM into their customer support tools. Why? The more you know about your customers, the more you can craft future messaging to appeal to their needs. You can identify customer segments and build personalized messaging based on these different segments.
CRM analytics can handle the manual work associated with collecting customer data. This leaves you with a dashboard full of actionable insights.
Improving Customer Interactions
If a customer feels like your company “knows” them, it means they’re having a more personalized ecommerce experience. You can improve customer retention if you can create a “concierge” approach to the way you interact with them. CRM tools help you personalize every communication without added work from your sales reps, for example. Suddenly you’re on a first-name basis with everyone.
Since you’re using CRM to analyze customer data, you can use those personalized communications to build better experiences, too. You can run targeted promotions to specific customer segments. You can build sales and marketing automation pipelines to respond to your most common queries. The result is less work on your end while improving the speed at which you respond to customer requests.
Enhancing Overall Customer Satisfaction
Customer loyalty isn’t an accident. Customers know why they return to their favorite companies. As noted by Wordbank, 59% of 18- to 24-year-olds in the U.K. say that every brand should offer a customer loyalty program.
Customers want reasons to return to your ecommerce business. Good customer relationship management helps provide those reasons.
Implementing the features available with customer relationship management in ecommerce has a demonstrable impact on customer satisfaction. In fact, companies that implement CRM see a 47% improvement in customer retention and satisfaction ratings per Zippia.
Dial in Your CRM in Ecommerce — And Watch Customers Keep Coming Back
Have you noticed some discontent in the world of ecommerce? Customer returns are increasing. People are desperate for companies that offer notable, quality interactions — who treat them less like numbers on a dashboard and more like customers who walk into a brick-and-mortar store.
If you dial in your CRM, you can unlock ecommerce features that don’t only please customers, but give them a tangible reason to keep coming back: because they like you.
