Keeping in touch with your customers There was a time when many businesses viewed new technologies with foreboding, intimidated by the dramatically new ways of working which breakthroughs in computers were bringing about. Those days are long gone and now the most successful businesses are the ones which harness the latest in technologies to make themselves more efficient and provide the best service to their customers. They are the companies that realise that computer technologies allow them to reap benefits in many areas, one of which is to ensure that tasks that once took many hours can now be done quickly. That can include everything from administrative tasks to scientific analysis. That is invaluable for any company - especially a small one - because it means that skilled members of staff are not preoccupied on tasks which do not require their creativity. They can instead concentrate on developing new products and exploring opportunities. And one of the biggest opportunities is in the way companies can use technology to improve their Client Relationship Management (CRM) - and in a recession that has never been more important. More and more companies have realised that a bog standard website is no longer enough when it comes to communicating with clients and potential clients. They have realised that a good website needs to have a sense of movement about it, to be constantly updated and to make life easier for those visiting it. Ease of use is vital because a client struggling to navigate round a website will soon give up and go elsewhere. Interactivity is also important and the latest Information Technology systems allow clients to communicate with companies through websites and for the companies to respond quickly and efficiently. It is amazing how much people appreciate the simple courtesies and that includes a reply to a message, even if the initial contact is computer-generated. It makes them feel that someone is listening. The truly switched-on companies have also realised that new technologies give them terrific ways of directly getting in touch with large numbers of customers through databases. Such databases allow them to send out mass emails which, rather than simply being advertising tools more likely to suffer the delete button than to be read, exhibit more thought. Such messages
update people on projects and products, answer the questions clients have been asking and seek out their views on improvements that can be made. And the rapid advance of hand-held technologies is opening up even more opportunities, giving companies the chance to communicate with clients who are on the move. Before computers and associated electronic developments, such tasks were possible but took a huge amount of time and a massive amount of manhours to administer. However, technology has changed all that. Today, technology helps companies to seek out new customers, and just as importantly, hang onto them in a competitive market place. Of course, many companies cannot achieve such successes on their own: they need to bring in expert help and the Southampton area has plenty of businesses specialising in Internet technology and supplying and installing the necessary hardware and software. It is a far cry from those early days when technology was regarded with so much suspicion.
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