Helping to build customer relationships

This may be relevant when addressing the needs of business communications within a firm's operations, such as accessing email on-the-go to process orders, downloading product information via the Internet or a Web link to a sales presentation. What mobile CRM does not usually take in account is that customers do not always have access to their laptops, PDAs, Internet cafés or the latest 3G-enabled cell phone.

Rather, mobile CRM should maximise on sending communications to those devices that most of their customers already have, that is: SMSing their cell phones.

SMS is the most effective means to ensuring satisfaction and goes a long way towards building customer relations. Pushing SMS messages to customers via cellular technology offers a company a cost-effective solution to instantaneously communicate with one or many of its customers, no matter their location.

There are several examples of push SMS services that benefit customers:

• Call centres provide ticket and agent's numbers via SMS, allowing a customer to speak to the right person when they next call.
• Car maintenance companies send reminders to vehicle owners that their vehicle is due for its next service. Notifications are also sent when a vehicle is ready for collection.
• Banking institutions send alerts verifying a transaction on a customer's account.
• Insurance companies provide ticket numbers for claims and provide regular updates on the claiming process.
• Airline and car rental agents send booking codes to customers to confirm a booking.

The principle behind each of these examples of mobile CRM is that the business process is made transparent to the customer. Customers are made aware of the status of an order, booking or transaction. This increases their satisfaction with the service and reduces worry and creates business efficiencies by cutting out unnecessary telephone calls on the part of the customer.

It also reduces the pressure on a company's support team or contact centre by reducing the number of incoming calls dealing with customer queries.

Clear benefits

The benefits of using SMS communications for mobile CRM then become clear. Through sending SMS messages, a company saves time by providing information updates at each step in the process instead of managing client expectations on the phone. This increases staff productivity and reduces the cost of CRM within the company. There are also cost savings to the customer, who does not need to incur the cost of one or several phone calls.

The future of mobile CRM should also see an increase in the use of SMSes as a primary medium for communications with customer. Airlines could look to sending notifications when flights are delayed. This service would offer benefits to travelers who are already out of office and only are only accessible on their mobile phone. Travel agencies too could make better use of SMS by offering customers updates on bookings. Instead of making several voice calls as and when each leg of a travel itinerary is confirmed, travel agents could send SMS updates to a customer.

The sending of SMS notifications enables companies who provide mission critical services requiring 99.9% up-time, such as Internet connectivity or electricity, with the ability to immediately contact all their customers to alert them to down-time or outages. This provides benefits to both the customer, who is made aware of service interruptions and can then manage this uncertainty, as well as the company, whose contact centre or customer support system does not bear the strain of high call volumes. Where a company does not have the resources to build a contact centre for the 0.1% down-time, SMS becomes the most cost-effective solution to communicate with customers and manage expectations.

Gauging customer satisfaction

Another future use of mobile CRM is the use of SMS to pull information from customers to gauge their satisfaction. A company can manage their information as these responses are stored electronically.

This approach to customer intelligence mitigates making phone calls that are inconvenient to a customer. A customer replies via SMS when it suits them. Furthermore, the company can offer customer loyalty rewards to incentive customers to providing product or service feedback by sending a code for redeeming a discount or the opportunity to win in a competition.

Lastly, it may be opportune to introduce a new customer communications ethic, especially in thinking about high-service levels in mobile CRM.

Companies should never leave voicemail on a cell phone when the information update could have been sent via SMS. Voicemail is inconvenient as the customer has to listen to all voice messages before accessing the information they want or they may battle to hear the message if in a noisy area like an airport lounge. Rather, the company should send a SMS notification which a customer can easily access and read.

Furthermore, by sending a SMS, the company has a record of these communications for archiving in the CRM system.

Current and future needs

SMS addresses the current and future needs of mobile CRM and provides a unique medium to communicate with customers. To most effectively benefit from this solution, companies should look to messaging service providers that offer an Internet-based bulk SMS solution that can be customised to integrate with a company's CRM system. The net result of using a bulk SMS service is that both company and customers save on time and cost by managing uncertainty through the use of SMS communications as the primary form of mobile CRM.