Retail is a tough business. Your target customer base is literally everyone, and how do you make your product appeal to everyone? How do you know if your marketing strategies are paying off? Are the customers that are in your store (Virtual or Physical) there because of the TV advertisement you spent a huge chunk of your advertising budget on? All of these questions pose a major headache to any entity in the retail sector.
For any retailer, maintaining a good relationship with their customer is key for sustained growth and this is where Customer Relationship Management platforms or CRMs come into the picture. CRMs have been around since the late 90s, but have really hit their stride over the last decade. They’ve had a huge impact when it comes to generating leads and sales for enterprises across the world, and have even been integrated at many brick and mortar retail chains globally.
However, the retail game has changed, and now e-commerce has become a major driving force for retail sales worldwide. As always, CRM platforms have evolved to stay relevant in this segment and Salesforce is once again leading the pack.
Salesforce has many attributes which can greatly benefit enterprises and businesses and the Retail Sector can implement Salesforce to assist with the following:
- Vendor and Supplier management - when it comes to retail, Vendor and Supplier management is always a gruelling task and requires careful planning to minimize issues. With Salesforce, Retail businesses can easily manage their relationships with suppliers and vendors. It becomes easier to direct vendors towards customer focused products and using the information gained via analytics. Salesforce can enable retailers to manage vendors and seamlessly connect them with sales and marketing endeavours.
- Business Intelligence - Implementing Salesforce in your systems tends to generate a lot of data about your operations. This is especially true for retail, as they may have to deal with millions of potential customers daily. With the help of companies offering Offshore Salesforce Development, they can generate data which can be collated and presented via intuitive dashboards. One can then analyze this data to gain insights into customer requirements and do more effective supply chain management.
- Personalized Services - It’s possible to collect a significant amount of customer data via CRMs, but with Salesforce one can use this data in a more effective manner. Retailers can link shared social media accounts and personalize their offers and services according to events in their customers’ lives CRM data can keep you informed about when that customer would be needing the product again or would be requiring an upgrade. You can use this to send promotional offers which would be sure to appeal to the customer. This personal connection can go a long way in developing and maintaining relationships with customers, turning one-time buyers into loyal patrons.
- You can use Salesforce forms to manage different types of data.
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effective generation and usage of Payment Data - Retailers usually have multiple avenues for payments which can make it difficult to analyze payment data. Salesforce integration can ease this to a large extent as it can help one manage all payment-related data from billing to invoicing, for both successful and failed transactions.
CRMs offer analytics with which one can analyze payment trends and deduce who your highest value customers are, your best sources of revenue and many other metrics that can assist you in strategizing your next move. - Better Customer Service through Loyalty Programmes - It’s a simple fact that if you look after your customers, they’ll look after you. With Salesforce, retailers can form effective strategies that are customer-centric in nature. Loyalty programs are one such technique to retain customers. CRM systems can help you track purchases and then you can send promotional offers to the customer accordingly. This small element of personalization can go a long way in establishing a relationship with your customers.
If you’re in the retail sector, then you stand to gain considerably both financially and in terms of productivity by choosing to Hire Salesforce Developers. Implementing a CRM in your IT systems is a must that will continue to reward your organization down the line and Salesforce is a robust and scalable CRM that can be specced to suit your exact requirements.
