Customer relationship management and SMS: How do they fit?

CRM and SMS messaging

With customer relationship management and SMS technology often holding hands in the eCommerce arena, it makes sense to take a step back and see how they fit together. Mobile developers are hyper-aware of text messaging, but they sometimes dismiss it as a secondary tactic and don't realize its true potential as part of a well-rounded CRM strategy. Inspired eCommerce customer relationship management begins and ends with the ability to use specific communication vehicles to reach, support, and maintain your niche audience.

The ultimate goals of CRM: Understanding communication

There comes a time in every mobile developer's workflow when their clients' eCommerce site is earning, but their CRM and eCommerce offering needs to improve. This often means transforming strategic platform goals into process goals, so that fresh, data-driven practices can be implemented, tracked, and eventually - analyzed for functional software enhancements. A customer relationship management SMS is a method of connecting or reaching out to customers, to provide them with a measurable service. This specifically targets certain goals in CRM that are always part of a quality CRM strategy. For any CRM in eCommerce practice to succeed you need to hit on certain goals. These 'ultimate' goals help explain why the medium of text messaging fits with CRM.

• High level of customer service

• Lower operating costs

• Attainment of usable data for marketing

• Account management

• Incentive administration

• Customer experience tracking, cross-selling, retention, and more!

How these goals make SMS a CRM asset

CRM text solutions are a vastly underutilized method of checking nearly all of the boxes when building an effective CRM solution. A quick glance up to the goals I listed above, and they reveal some interesting patterns.

A customer relationship management SMS or CRM SMS for short has incredible value where customer management is concerned. Not only are text messages low cost, but they can be automated - further lowering your time investment. As a supportive CRM tool, these texts perform many crucial functions that assist in maintaining a particular level of customer service, experience, and satisfaction. From sent product tracking alerts, customer loyalty texts, and free incentives (coupons), to account detail management - SMS ties together your CRM strategy for incredible results.

How customer relationship management and SMS fit together in eCommerce

All customer relationship management SMS messages can be tracked, stored, analyzed, and measured - which will improve your CRM goals over time. The more data that you have access to from your customers, the better your service offering will become. The data collected from your text engagement will filter into your 'big data' and become part of the reason why your customer experience is so strong. In the latest poll by The International Customer Management Institute, 80% of respondents indicated that they do want customer support in the form of text messages. This is undeniable proof that  SMS is an essential tool in any successful CRM strategy.