Enhance Customer Satisfaction and Retention: Exploring the Power of AI-Driven CRM for Fitness Studios

What is a CRM system?

According to Bain & Company, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a process that companies use to understand their customer demographics and respond efficiently to changes in their customers’ preferences.

A CRM system, in turn, is a tool that enables a company’s CRM process. A CRM system compiles crucial customer data across different points of contact between the company and customers. Such data usually focuses on the unique features of the relationship that a customer has with a company. For example, how many times a customer has been contacted, how much business they’ve done with the company, and what sort of conversations have taken place between a customer and the company.

Why use a CRM system?

Customers are at the heart of every successful business. Increasingly, it has also been shown that careful attention to one’s customers is an important factor that determines whether or not a company makes it or breaks it. It is widely predicted that, by the year 2020, customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator when making consumer choices. At the same time, customers are also growing increasingly discerning. More than ever before, customers are expecting higher standards from the customer service they receive, with many, as PwC found, even willing to pay more to ensure better service.

Thus, businesses must address the evolving demands of their consumers in order to supply effective customer service. As Harry Gordon Selfridge (the retail magnate behind department store chain Selfridges) once said: “People will sit up and take notice of you if you will sit up and take notice of what makes them sit up and take notice.”

And what do customers consider better service? PwC found that nearly 80% of consumers point to speed, convenience, knowledgeable help, and friendly service as the most important elements of a positive customer experience. Think With Google insights also indicate that consumers also expect more personalized service and a “frictionless” transactional experience.

Thus, CRM systems can be a great asset in ensuring that these customer service features are provided to customers to improve both customer satisfaction and membership retention. In the next part of this article, we’ll explore how CRM systems do so.  

How does a CRM system improve customer service?

As briefly mentioned, CRM systems keep a log of the relationship between a customer and the business. It consolidates customer information and documents into a single database, so business users can more easily access and manage such user data. This increases the efficiency of customer service interactions (for both customer and staff), the effectiveness of your customer service strategy, and reduces avoidable human error.

1. Efficient:

Accenture found that 89% of customers get frustrated because they need to repeat their issues to multiple representatives. Since CRM systems keep a detailed log of the relationship between a customer and the business, any changes in the staff members handling a customer’s case can be done with ease since the representative can refer to the CRM system without the customer having to go through the pain of repeating themselves. In addition, since customer data is not ‘tied’ to any particular member of staff, staff can join and leave the business without customer data (and customer-business relationships!) being affected by such changes.

1. Effective:

While efficiency certainly plays into how effective customer service is, only having a quick response is not enough. Imagine having an urgent or important concern that you want to be resolved from a business that you patronize. Now imagine that concern not being resolved, not because you didn’t get a response quick enough, but because the customer service representative you are speaking to is not informed enough about the issue at hand. That’s got to be frustrating, right? Indeed, 84% of consumers are frustrated when the agent does not have information.

However, with a robust CRM system, members of staff can, at any time, easily access a clear picture of any customer’s interaction with the brand. When staff are able to get accurate information about the customer they are dealing with, they are better positioned to make the best customer service decision possible.

1. Error reducing:

Finally, having a CRM system reduces human error. Without a standardized CRM system, data about your customers are at the mercy of the way that your staff takes notes on their interactions with clients. Sure, some of your staff may be extremely organized, meticulously making digital copies of everything they note down and access to the whole team. However, more realistically, you may find notes about your clients lost on post-it notes, scribbled down on napkins, or not taken down at all in the first place! A CRM system protects you from such ‘nightmare’ scenarios.   

How can a CRM system improve customer retention?

67% of consumers cite bad customer service experiences as a reason for churn. In our other articles, we have also explored in greater depth how customer service and customer satisfaction impact membership retention rates.

In addition, CRM systems are another way for you to get an accurate snapshot of your customer demographic and the segments that it’s comprised of. This is an important aspect of risk scoring and targeted marketing, another important part of improving membership retention.

In summary, a good CRM system can elevate the standard of customer service that you can offer your clients, increase customer satisfaction, and boost your customer retention rates. What’s not to love?  

Book a 30mins demo, to discover more about how you can take back control of member retention with our powerful retention tool.