The Christmas song suggests “it’s the most wonderful time of the year,” but for many businesses, it’s also the most frantic and stressful. With enquiries and sales hitting their peak level in Q4, it can be a time of immense collective pressure on an organisation’s marketing, sales and customer service teams, with high expectations to deliver delightful experiences.
The impact of the pandemic has made commerce even more challenging and has threatened brand loyalty, which could impact sales at this crucial time of year – research suggests that while e-commerce leapt from one-fifth of all UK retail sales to a third during the lockdown, around half of consumers used this extra time online to discover and switch to other brands.
Amid the dramatic digital transformation most businesses have gone through in just 18 months, “shoppers increasingly expect businesses to be easy to buy from, engage with and get service from,” says Inken Kuhlmann-Rhinow, EMEA marketing director at HubSpot, a CRM platform for scaling businesses.
She continues: “The customer experience bar has been raised and customers expect businesses to maintain the same great digital experience they were forced to provide during the lockdown. This, together with the fiercer competition most businesses are experiencing these days, means organisations are under more pressure to provide a frictionless experience that encourages new and existing customers to engage with them.”
Know your customer
Kuhlmann-Rhinow is clear that a razor-sharp focus on the customer is more essential than ever. Those who don’t deliver perfect experiences will lose out to those who do.
“‘Who are your customers?’ is no longer a valid question,” she says. “Instead, you need to be able to have the complete picture of this and that specific customer. What does the digital journey look like? When, where and how have they interacted with your business? What do they need and want from you now and, most importantly, what will they expect from you next?”
Only those companies that anticipate their customers’ needs and wants, put them at the centre of everything they do, and deliver seamless, contextual experiences across all touchpoints will thrive in today’s highly competitive landscape.
To achieve this, marketing, sales and service teams must have a clear overview of their customer’s journey. “Only a single source of customer truth delivered through a powerful and easy-to-use CRM platform that customer-facing teams can feed into and pull from will enable them to remove friction in customer interactions and deliver delightful experiences,” says Kuhlmann-Rhinow. “That’s how business can show customers that their voice is heard and they are understood.”
Get teams to speak to each other
To make the most of the Christmas rush, business leaders must ensure their teams are coordinated and aligned on customers’ needs and wants. However, marketing, sales and customer service teams often use legacy systems that do not ‘speak’ to the rest of the business, meaning that they can’t adapt quickly or align teams, and valuable insights on the customer fall through the cracks.
In fact, HubSpot research shows that half of business leaders believe their CRM is difficult to use, and nearly half say that it cannot help them meet their business goals.
The consequence of this? Businesses are unable to deepen their relationships with customers and provide a best-in-class experience, which ultimately leads to lost sales and revenue. A CRM that is powerful and easy to use and can provide a single source of truth will mean teams can spend less time managing software, and more time connecting with customers.
The need for a modern CRM
Winning the battle for customer loyalty during the busiest, most competitive quarter of the year and ensuring the merriest – and most profitable – of Christmases is no easy task. But being customer-obsessed is the secret to success.
“It’s not about meeting your customers’ expectations,” says Kuhlmann-Rhinow. “Nowadays, you have to exceed them. For today’s buyers, being delighted isn’t an added value to their experience as your customer any more; it’s the inner foundation your relationship is built on. They are even more empowered to switch brands or services if the experience doesn’t live up to their expectations, so walking the talk on 'customer obsession' is more important than it has ever been.”
To meet, and even exceed customer expectations, businesses need to ensure their CRM can give teams a single source of truth. This takes the complexity and uncertainty out of the customer journey by focusing on the one thing that matters most – delivering delightful customer experiences.
To find out more about how HubSpot’s easy-to-use CRM platform can help your business deliver delightful customer experiences, visit hubspot.com.
