Implementation of Customer Service

We talked Sales Force Automation, Lead Capcture, Lead Distribution in our past post. CRM Software Functions we are talking here. Agency Management System (AMS) include Customer Relationship Management.

Customer service may be provided by a person (e.g., sales and service representative), or by automated means called self-service. Examples of self service are Internet sites.
Customer service is normally an integral part of a company’s customer value proposition.

Implementation of customer service
Customer service may be employed to generate such competitive advantage as a particular service proposition can be harder to copy for competitors.

The implementation of a particular customer service proposition must consider several elements of the organization

ref: agency management system, insurance crm, insurance software, wikipedia

Customer Service - CRM

CRM Software Functions we are talking here. Agency Management System ( AMS ) include Customer Relatinship Management. We talked Sales Force Automation, Lead Capcture, Lead Distribution in our past post.


Today we are going to talk Customer Service.

Customer service (also known as Client Service) is the provision of service to customers before, during and after a purchase.

According to Turban et al, 2002 “Customer service is a series of activities designed to enhance the level of customer satisfaction – that is, the feeling that a product or service has met the customer expectation”

Its importance varies by product, industry and customer. As an example, an expert customer might require less pre-purchase service (i.e., advice) than a novice. In many cases, customer service is more important if the purchase relates to a “service” as opposed to a “product".

Customer service may be provided by a person (e.g., sales and service representative), or by automated means called self-service. Examples of self service are Internet sites.



ref: Agency Management System, wikipedia

Sales Force Management - Disadvantages

We are talking CRM Software Functions here in this blog. We are talking Advantages of Sales Force Management system's advantages to sales people, advantages to sales manager, advantages to marketing manager, strategice advantages.

Today we are going to talk Disadvantages of Sales Force Management.

Detractors claim that sales force management systems are:

• difficult to work with


• require additional work inputting data


• dehumanize a process that should be personal


• require continuous maintenance, information updating, and system upgrading costly


• difficult to integrate with other management information systems

ref: Insurance SFA & Insurance CRM software, wikipedia

CRM Software - Strategic Advantages

CRM software we are talking here. As a part of our talk we are talking on SFA. We talked advantage of SFA to Marketing Manager and Sales Manager. Today we are going to talk about Strategic Advantages of Sales Force Automation.


Strategic advantages
Sales force automation systems can also create competitive advantage. Here are some examples:

• As mentioned above, productivity will increase. Sales staff will use their time more efficiently and more effectively. The sales manager will also become more efficient and more effective.(see above) This increased productivity can create a competitive advantage in three ways: it can reduce costs, it can increase sales revenue, and it can increase market share.
• Field sales staff will send their information more frequently. Typically information will be sent to management after every sales call (rather than once a week). This provides management with current information, information that they will be able to use while it is still valuable. Management response time will be greatly reduced. The company will become more alert and more agile.
• These systems could increase customer satisfaction if they are used with wisdom. If the information obtained and analyzed with the system is used to create a product that matches or exceeds customer expectations, and the sales staff use the system to service customers more expertly and diligently, then customers should be satisfied with the company. This will provide a competitive advantage because customer satisfaction leads to increased customer loyalty, reduced customer acquisition costs, reduced price elasticity of demand, and increased profit margins.

ref: Insurance SFA and Insurance CRM, wikipedia

SFA Software - Marketing Manager's Advantage

CRM Software Functions we are talking here. As a part of CRM software we are talking Sales Force Automation. In our previous post we talked sfa advantage to Sales People and sfa advantages to Sales Manager.

Today we are going to talk SFA advantage to Marketing Manager.
It is also claimed to be useful for the marketing manager. It gives the marketing manager information that is useful in :

• Understanding the economic structure of your industry
• Identifying segments within your market
• Identifying your target market
• Identifying your best customers in place
• Doing marketing research to develop profiles (demographic, psychographic, and behavioral) of your core customers
• Understanding your competitors and their products
  Developing new products
• Establishing environmental scanning mechanisms to detect opportunities and threats
  Understanding your company's strengths and weaknesses
• Auditing your customers' experience of your brand in full
  Developing marketing strategies for each of your products using the marketing mix variables of price, product, distribution, and promotion
• Coordinating the sales function with other parts of the promotional mix (such as advertising, sales promotion, public relations, and publicity)
• Creating a sustainable competitive advantage
• Understanding where you want your brands to be in the future, and providing an empirical basis for writing marketing plans on a regular basis to help you get there
• Providing input into feedback systems to help you monitor and adjust the process.

ref: sfa and crm software, wikipedia

SFA - Sales Manager Advantages

Sales Force Automation we are talking here and Advantages to different people/department attach with it. In our last post we talk about Advantages to Sales People and Advantages to the Sales Manager.

Today we continue our talk on Advantages to the Sales manager. Advantages to the

sales manager. Sales force automation systems can also affect sales management. Here are some examples;

The sales manager can configure the system so as to automatically analyze the information using sophisticated statistical techniques, and present the results in a user-friendly way. This gives the sales manager information that is more useful in :

• Providing current and useful sales support materials to their sales staff
  
  
• Providing marketing research data: demographic, psychographic, behavioural, product acceptance, product problems, detecting trends
  
  
• Providing market research data: industry dynamics, new competitors, new products from competitors, new promotional campaigns from competitors, macro-environmental scanning, detecting trends
  
  
• Co-ordinate with other parts of the firm, particularly marketing, production, and finance
  
  
• Identifying your most profitable customers, and your problem customers
  
  
• Tracking the productivity of their sales force by combining a number of performance measures such as: revenue per sales person, revenue per territory, margin by customer segment, margin by customer, number of calls per day, time spent per contact, revenue per call, cost per call, entertainment cost per call, ratio of orders to calls, revenue as a percentage of sales quota, number of new customers per period, number of lost customers per period, cost of customer acquisition as a percentage of expected lifetime value of customer, percentage of goods returned, number of customer complaints, and number of overdue accounts.

ref: sfa & Sales Management Software, wikipedia