Implementation of Customer Relationship Management System (CRM)

Problem Definition :
A major Retailer was facing issues with customer engagement and low sales. The sales did not match the footfall recorded by the retailer and there was no mechanism to track the customer satisfaction. The client approached itechpath Associate to come up with a solution to overcome the problem.

Approach :
itechpath Associate’s knowledge of business standards, best practices, key performance metrics were used to assess the problem. A team of experts drawn from finance, operation, and sales were vested with the task to research & identify the root cause of the problem.

From the research, it was found out that the root cause of the problem was primarily due to lack of effective customer tracking mechanisms and absence of proper strategy to maintain customer relationship. The company had bare minimal knowledge about the exact data pertaining to the number of walk in’s entering the retail outlet, number of actual customers, ratio of walk-in to sales conversion rate, product preference of the customers and the reasons for purchasing the product.

Team members at itechpath Associate had spent sufficient time to assess the problem in detail. They analysed the CCTV footage of the Retail outlet for the last one month to find out the exact number of walk in’s and recorded the observation. This value was compared with the existing Customer Relationship Executive (CRE) report day-wise, week-wise and month-wise. The values didn’t match in any of the above mentioned scenarios and significant discrepancies were noticed in both the values. The CRE report which collated data about the walk in’s from the security guard as well as the overall counters in the retail store was found to be misleading. Once identified itechpath Associate worked towards putting in a comprehensive solution.

Solution:
To address this issue, itechpath Associate had recommended the client to implement Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System in order to analyse customer data and improve customer relationship. Customer Tracking process was streamlined effectively to a simple procedure and closely monitored by team members of itechpath Associate. The procedure used for customer tracking was as follows :

Feedback form from potential (walk-in’s) and actual customers was collected during their exit by the security and counter billing stage respectively
With the help of this feedback at the end of 6 months, data pertaining to the number of walk-in’s per day, hour, week could be easily retrieved. Also the salesmen most actively involved with customers, and maximum time spent on a product category as well as the counter most visited by the customer could be identified.
The feedback provided extensive clarity on walk-in’s and the reasons why they were not purchasing products at the client’s retail store. The reasons were categorised to multiple issues like product quality, design, staff behavior, shopping experience, price, product non availability and customer satisfaction.
Further deep analysis was carried out to determine when the customer conversion rates was highest, and on which day, hour or month as well as across which product category. High performing Salesmen involved with maximum customer conversion rates were identified.
Various Walk in, customer Key performance Indicators (KPI) were set for all the salesman and managers to maximise their capability and efficiency. Employee Scorecards were generated for the entire staff and monitored regularly.
Surprise Audits were also carried out to check the accuracy between the CRE report and CCTV data.