Customers are the foundational stone of any enterprise. Further, the process of identifying them and retaining them as an integral part of their business functions. Now, the very purpose of a CRM software is manage the organization’s relationship with the customers. This relationship goes to five stages before turning into a mature and long term bonding. Developing a successful customer relationship management (CRM) strategy is the crux of the entire game with the sole objective of getting insights into customers’ buying behavior, and keeping them loyal.

Let’s discuss these customer life cycle stages:

1. Reach-

Major objective of this phase is to attract the customers.

This is done by letting them know about your brand and its characteristics. Here, the targeted market segments are identified and the key information are propagated through various media channels- such as, paper-based, electronic or internet-based etc.

This aims to make the customers curious to know more about it and facilitate them to ask you about it. For this, you must have a clearly defined brand strategy using marketing techniques- social media marketing, banner advertising, and content marketing etc.

2. Acquisition-

This phase provides for lead management.

Here, you acquire key information of the potential customers, such as- contact details, their preferences. Various modes of communicating with them are applied, such as- Email, sales calls etc.

3. Conversion-

In this phase, you actually convert a potential customer into a buyer or paid customer.

The sales persons attempts to convince them about the benefits of availing your products and services. In addition, the pricing is also negotiated. Once the leads are converted into opportunities, and they create sales orders, they become a new customer for you.

4. Retention-

Only a well satisfied customer can be loyal to you. For this, you will need to keep communicating with them. Many ways to do this are- care for them by asking the problems if any they are facing, encouraging them to provide their feedback. This way, you make them an integral part of your business process. Thus, as your business decision making becomes a more participative, there are greater chances of becoming it as a stronger and growth oriented enterprise.

5. Endorsement-

Once your customers are deeply satisfied, they are likely to become the carrier of word of mouth. They evidently spread the awareness of your brand into their own social networks. This way you get more potential customers from your existing and loyal customers.

Dynamics CRM, which is the state-of-the-art CRM solution provided by Microsoft, can extend you a helping hand in each of these crucial stages. As available with Dynamics 365 Marketing, numerous in-built features, such as leads, marketing lists, campaigns, quick campaigns help you in running an effective marketing campaigns. In these campaigns, you can automatically send the key messages to customers in any list through emails. This provides you ways to collect information about your products and sales literature, which you can share with the customers immediately at your wish. It also facilitates you to effectively manage the customer information, using Accounts and Contacts.

One of the most important Dynamics CRM feature is that you can effectively manage your workspace, through dashboards and activities. The dashboard provides you an integrated and comprehensive view of analytical CRM data. This, in turn, helps you in effective decision making. Furthermore, Activities tab presents you with an organized view about tasks, emails, phone calls, appointments, etc.

There are many more capabilities available with Microsoft Dynamics CRM that can make your customer relationship management as an exciting experience.