Knowing how to manage customer relationship is vital for a business’s success. It improves loyalty and brand recognition and ensures you’re doing things your customers want to see.

But how does a business build a strong customer relationship? The key is in the content and its delivery, as we’ll discuss below.

What is Customer Relationship Management?

Customer relationship management (CRM) is the way a business engages with its audiences to improve their experience. The most obvious branch is customer services, but marketing plays a strong role in managing customer relations, too.

Knowing how to best manage customer relationship involves communication between these departments. It requires customer feedback to understand pain points and previous engagement, which is then converted into positive marketing opportunities.

There are two areas a business must cover to build a strong customer relationship:

• Reactive

This involves managing customer complaints, responding to feedback, and so on in response to customer engagement.

• Proactive

This involves establishing brand loyalty and long-term interaction, such as discounts, promotions, and information.

Why is Managing Customer Relationship Critical for Business?

Managing customer relationships is vital to effective business function. After all, you want happy and loyal customers otherwise you won’t have a business.

Here are some of the benefits of a business managing its customer relationships:

• Establishes trust. CRM can provide a “human” element to a business through its communications.
• Builds loyalty between a brand and its customers.
• Provides a high ROI. One survey found the ROI on CRM is $8.71 for every dollar spent.
• Offers a better understanding of your audience. In another survey, 74% of companies reported CRM software gave them better access to more usable customer data.
• Improves word-of-mouth marketing. Customers can share discount codes with friends or tell others about promotions you’re running.
• Increases customer satisfaction. A good relationship with customers means it’s easier to deal with complaints in future.

Best Practices to Build Strong Customer Relationship

As with other marketing processes, there are best practices to follow to build a strong customer relationship. Here are some of the highlights.

Segment Your Markets

Use your customer data to build marketing groups based on buying habits and interests, age, etc.

Doing so means you can provide more targeted CRM efforts, in turn increasing lead generation and conversion.

Write Killer SMS/MMS

If you’re communicating with customers via text (which you should be), ensure they’re well written, engaging, and reflect your brand.

SMS campaigns are ideal for building strong customer relationships thanks to their high open and click-through rates. Also, they’re perfect for customers to share with friends and family, improving your word of mouth marketing.

Gather and Use Feedback

Listening to customer feedback shows you care and is vital for you to build a strong customer relationship. See what they say about your brand and do something with it.

Stay Connected

Reach out to customers on a regular basis, whether through direct marketing or by engaging with them on social media. As part of this, respond to concerns or positive comments. 28% of customers say they’ve communicated with a business on social media, and dealing with complaints in public shows you care.

Reward Loyal Customers

Rewards are one of the easiest ways to keep customers loyal. Whether it’s discount codes, samples, a points system or something else, rewarding loyalty is vital to build a strong customer relationship.

What is CRM Software and Which Should You Use?

If managing customer relationships sounds like a lot of work, you’ll be pleased to know CRM software exists. What is CRM software, you ask? It’s essentially a platform you use to manage customer relationships from a single place.

Here are 3 big players in the CRM software market.

1. HubSpot

If you’re in marketing, you probably already know the name HubSpot. It offers free-to-use CRM software that includes up to 1 million contacts and email management. Hubspot’s CRM software has plenty of features for different areas, such as marketers, sales managers, customer service, and more.

There’s also a premium option with more features that comes as part of its marketing hub package. The price starts at $45/month.

2. Zoho

Zoho offers a complete CRM platform that’s entirely customizable. You get access to analytics, project trackers, plenty of customer engagement routes, and an automation feature 

It’s free to sign up and the premium packages start at around $15 a month. Zoho is a good choice for small businesses that want all their CRM options in a single location.

3. Salesforce

Salesforce has an extensive CRM library that covers all aspects of customer engagement and analytics. It’s cloud-based, meaning you can access it from any device without installing software. This also means its fully scalable to the size of your business, making it a good choice for companies that are growing.

However, because there’s not a single CRM platform, pricing is more difficult. You can pay for the areas you need, which typically start around $25/month. As such, it might not be the best choice for smaller businesses.

Get Ready to Manage Customer Relationship with Textr

Begin managing customer relationships with Textr. You can send marketing SMS campaigns, have two-way conversations, segment customer categories, and more.

Textr works on iOS and Android and has a web app, too. Pricing plans are flexible, making Textr an ideal marketing solution for businesses of all sizes.

Textr also has a free Carrier Look Up tool. You can use it to gather valuable mobile carrier information about your customers, allowing you to streamline marketing efforts. Doing this before starting your SMS campaign helps cut down on lost messages and wasted money.

Final Thoughts on How to Manage Customer Relationship

All businesses already manage their customer relationship at some level. However, using CRM software to build a strong customer relationship makes the whole process much easier.

Before rushing off to sign up, spend some time researching the market to find a CRM solution that suits your business size and needs.