03/09/2021
By Mohona Dutta | Reading time 7 mins
Customers are more informed than ever. It has changed; how they evaluate, buy and use the goods and services they purchase. But this change isn’t a problem; rules change all the time, and people adapt. The intelligent customer is here to stay. It doesn’t mean that they know every nitty-gritty detail about the product or service that you will offer, but surely, they are not ready to let their guard down and neither want to be hoodwinked.
With customer experience now becoming more important than ever, the key to increasing customer loyalty is comprehending the customer journey, mapping it correctly, and optimizing processes for recurring satisfaction and retention of customers. Microsoft Dynamics 365 is a great solution to start planning an effective customer experience strategy.
It is an integrated platform that enables small to midsize businesses to quickly and easily interact and respond with customers, empower employees, and improve service delivery.
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So, what is the customer’s journey?
The main goal of any company is to sign on new clients, for the business, revenue, and profit to increase. As a result, sales and marketing teams collaborate to provide the best possible buying experience for the prospective client; this includes mapping out the journey that the prospect will tread while engaging in the buying process. Creating a customer journey helps one understand how prospects progress from the discovery stage until the delivery period.
Every single interaction a customer has with a small and mid-sized business (SMB) about the product or service is incorporated in the customer journey.
Dynamics 365 and the customer’s journey
With this CRM for SMBs, you can streamline the sales process by which clients start discovering a product or service, assess whether it meets their requirements, look for a good offer, and finally seal the deal.
For an SMB entrepreneur, the Dynamics 365 customer journey helps you through automated messaging, activity generation, interactive decision points, and more. Your sales team will be able to identify a target segment and create a simple email campaign that talks to the prospects of that segment or create an elaborate customer journey that helps you plan, automate, and monitor the entire journey as prospects transfer from discovery, through nurturing and with a bit of luck and a lot of marketing zest moving on to becoming a qualified customer.
With this CRM, mapping out this conversion from prospect to the customer helps SMBs work out exactly why they should be nurturing them throughout the path towards the finish line.
Optimizing the steps in the customer journey
For your clients to be happy at every milestone and enabling a seamless and hassle-free journey, it is so important for you to keep in touch with them- before, during, and after the deal has been signed. With D365, you can optimize the journey at each stage and make it the best experience of your client’s life.
- Awareness
The awareness stage is when prospects identify their challenge or opportunity, they want to chase and discover your product or servicethat can meet their requirements. Dynamics CRM helps sales reps to generate leads across various sources like emails, LinkedIn, webinars, and events. If a buyer has been searching for a particular service, you could break the ice and send them an email, just talking about what they need. With contact information that is always updated, you can effortlessly take your leads into Dynamics 365 and create insights from your campaigns to increase impacts. It helps you create content that targets the right audience at the right time using the right campaigns, which generates better conversion rates. And it streamlines the sales pipeline as well.
Consideration
This is the stage when prospects have identified and defined the goal or challenge and have addressed it. Now, with Dynamics 365’s marketing automation option, you can choose from a multitude of different methods to nurture leads: create a marketing list, one-time email, weekly offers, or monthly newsletters. You can send personalized messages at specific intervals to keep in touch with the prospects. By updating their details into the list, you can select a suitable means of communication to start their customer journey.
Purchase
Now in this stage, the buyers take the call whether to go with your company or not. The focus here is on the price, the ROI, and the value proposition, and they would want a face-to-face interaction at this stage. They also want an assurance that by signing the contract, they haven’t made a mistake. Dynamic 365 helps your sales team to track the most significant information about the sales process. This makes the purchasing process effortless for the customers as they receive the right information. With advanced personalization, you can view a customer’s order history, preferences, and other details that help in providing a remarkable experience.
Retention
Customer loyalty and retention go hand in hand. You cannot have one without the other and if your client is happy with your service or product, he/she will ensure that your brand’s name is popularized through word of mouth. Unfortunately, most companies end their ties after the deal is done especially when the customer is looking for an after-sale support. Dynamics 365 enables you to offer the best possible experience throughout the customer journey leading up to ongoing service, and after-care support, ensuring you maintain a long-lasting relationship with your clients. It helps you to set timely follow-ups, provide reminders and alerts to proactively engage with customers
In the end
Customers have become more cognizant about their requirements, what kind of service or product they need. With the spur in digitization, they do their thorough research before they reach out to an organization for a solution. It’s no longer a business that is calling the shots anymore. SMB entrepreneurs are changing what they have to offer based on the customer of today. And with a plethora of options available for the prospective client, it has become almost mandatory to create a unique and ever-lasting relationship with your clients.
Using Dynamics 365 for marketing can not only simplify the buyer’s journey but help you improve customer experience and increase revenue and embark on the road to success. Start by asking yourself the questions about the existing CRM.
Or, you can download our eBook – Take the Challenge: 15 Questions to Identify the Gaps in Your CRM Processes.
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Author’s bio:
Mohona is a Content Writer for the Marketing team in AhaApps since 2019. When she is not busy attending to her creative, technical side, she likes to binge on sitcoms on Netflix. She loves writing poems and reading short stories when she wants to break away from the humdrum of life.
Why do SMBs need CRM?
Read about how a CRM can positively impact an SMBs operations in our blog