Keeping Customer Databases with SCD

Introduction

Earlier we discussed how a customer database can help build and maintain mututally benefitial relationships with your customers. This article focuses on more technical aspects and tasks that customer database software may need to perform, including:

• Setting up the Database
• Working with customers 1-on-1
• Entering postal addresses
• Deduplication
• Tracking sales and invoicing
• Tracking customer sources
• Marketing to customers
• Regular services
• Cross-selling
• Retaining customers longer
• Measuring productivity

Setting up the Database

Customer database is your central reference point for all customer information. As each business is unique, so is the information it needs to keep about the customers. This information may include sales, appointments, organisational structure, referrals and so on. The data in any database is stored in records and SCD allows you to tailor the database to your needs by adding different record types as well as adding or removing fields from the records.

The base record type in SCD is Contact. It represents individual people your business is dealing with. Using function “Add/Remove Fields” you can add extra parameters/fields or remove the existing ones. For each new field, you can specify type, size, whether it should be mandatory, whether the system should maintain the list of values for this field and how, whether the field should be included in the record filter. After you’ve entered the required fields and “Applied New Structure”, the program not only modifies the database, but automatically includes new fields into its screens and reports.

Other types of records can be added by installing add-on modules together with new functionality. For example, Organisational Structure add-on introduces a new record type – organisation. It also adds the organisation screen to the program and the functions to maintain organisations and link contacts to them. Extra fields can be added to the new record types using function “Add/Remove Fields”.

SCD offers a variety of database configurations to suit different needs which you can further enhance through custom fields.

To set up the appropriate database structure, you first need to determine who are your customers and what information you need to track:

• If your customers are individuals, then all your database requires is Contact records, which are readily available in SCD
• If your customers are companies but you are dealing with one person per company, you can add field “Company Name” to the Contact record type.
• If your customers are companies and you are working with multiple people per company and you need to track information related to the entire company, such as sales, industry, number of employees, then use Organisational Structure Add-on to link different contacts to the company.
• If your customers are companies and you are working with multiple people per company, but you either do not wish to track sales on this database or sales are attributed to individuals, rather than the entire organisation, then your customers information can be recorded under Contact.

Another important decision is whether you wish to track sales and how. Even if you track sales elsewhere, eg in your accounting program, it is advantageous to have them on the customer database as well. That way, when a customer calls you can instantly see what she has purchased before, service her better and have a better chance of cross-selling. If you intend to use your database for marketing, the sales information will allow a more accurate targeting of your marketing communications.

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Working with Customers 1-on-1

One of the main reasons for using a database is to improve and automate services to the existing customers. Being able to quickly find a customer record and have all relevant information at your fingertips goes to the core of such automation.

SCD allows finding a customer by any parameters in any combination. Most users find customers by their names, but it is also possible to find the customer by the customer number, address and so on. You can also search by parts of the name and address. For example, one could enter “Smi*” into field Last Name to find John Smith. SCD also has a Quick Search bar where the user could click on the first letter of the name to display all records where name starts with that letter.

Once found, the system displays the customer information in a tabbed screen for user review and possible update. The operator can add new sales and new communications and perform other functions from that screen.

If the program cannot find the record you specified it will offer to create a new one. This feature allows you to verify if the person is already in the database and him or her if not. You can also go straight to a new screen and start entering the details of the new customer.

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Entering Postal addresses

When the data is entered manually into the program, it automatically suggests parts of addresses based on previously entered information. For example, if the database already contains a record with post code 33176 in Miami, Florida, then entering this postcode into a new record will cause the system to put Miami, Florida, into the City and State fields, respectively. If you put Miami into the City field and then drop down the list of postcodes, SCD will only list postcodes for Miami from its database.

This basic system of address verifications can be enhanced by using the postal codes database add-ons, which are available free of charge for Australia and UK, courtesy of their postal services.

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Deduplication

As you enter details of the new person or company, it might turn out that they (or a similar person) are already in the database. In this case the program will alert you when trying to save the record and allow you to either save your data as a new record or to merge it with the existing one.

Even if you chose to add a new one and have second thoughts later, you can easily correct the situation by using the Deduplication function.

Firstly, this function lists all “suspect” duplicates according to its own criteria, that may be different from the main deduplication criteria. Typical criteria would be the combination of first and last names, which will flag the two John Smiths from the example above as suspect duplicates.

The user then uses his or her judgement to determine if the two records are in fact duplicates, and if they are, uses the merge function to combine the records into one.

Deduplication then can be repeated using another criteria, such as email or mailing address, gradually cleansing the database.

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Tracking Sales and Invoicing

If your business is non-repeat, then you can track sales by adding a few fields, such as product and amount, to the contact record or organisation record, depending on whom you sell to.

For the businesses that sell repeatedly to the same customers, we recommend the Sales Tracking add-on which allows you to:

• record multiple sales per customer
• track sale status
• print invoices
• measure sales volumes by salesperson and by product

This add-on includes basic information about sales into the database – date, name of the salesperson, status, product and amount.

You can create customised invoice template in MS-Word with your logo, company details and format. Invoices can be printed for individual sales or in bulk, such as all sales in a given range.

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Tracking Customer Sources

The default database configuration includes field “Contact Source” for Contact records, which you can use to track how people find out about your business. After entering source information into the database, you can run Contacts Summary report filtered by various values of that field to see how many customers different sources generate for you. If your database includes sales information, then filtering sales report by Contact Source will show you the sales to customers coming from that source.

However, if you use this information on a regular basis, such as monthly, we highly recommend the Tracking Customer Sources add-on which will add simple to use summary reports to the Analysis section of the program. These reports summarise the Contact records into a breakdown by Contact Source.

Marketing to Customers

To market successfully to existing customers you need to make your offers and communications relevant to them, and to their experience with your business.

SCD helps to stay in touch with your customers using mail, e-mail, fax or telephone. It can send personalised messages to your customers – the entire database or any selection of them. Its flexible selection system allows you to implement well targeted database marketing campaigns tailored specifically to the needs of your customers.

The default database configuration includes field “Contact Source” for Contact records, which you can use to track how people find out about your business. After entering source information into the database, you can run Contacts Summary report filtered by various values of that field to see how many customers different sources generate for you. If your database includes sales information, then filtering sales report by Contact Source will show you the sales to customers coming from that source.

However, if you use this information on a regular basis, such as monthly, we highly recommend the Tracking Customer Sources add-on which will add simple to use summary reports to the Analysis section of the program. These reports summarise the Contact records into a breakdown by Contact Source.

Regular Services

If the goods you sell get replaced or replenished regularly or the service you provide requires repetition, you will have a better chance of customer returning to you if you remind them a bit ahead of time. For example, an office equipment company that installed a printer for the customer can easily get the job of servicing that printer if they remind the customer in time for the next service.

SCD facilitates this “on-time” reminding in several ways:

• Selecting customers by product and/or purchase date.
  The program can list the customers who purchased from you last week, last month or in any specified date range. It can also filter the customers who did not purchase in the specified date range. Combining this with product information you can easily select the customers who need reminding, such as “Customers who purchased an office printer 6 months ago but did not purchase service between 6 months ago and now”. You then can send a personalised reminder message to these people, or, if they are companies, to the appropriate staff member, eg “office manager”.
  As you get more products with different service intervals, it becomes progressively more difficult to follow-up with the customers that way. Then you can accomplish the same task using a different method:
   
• Reminders.
  After completing a sale record, the operator can create a reminder for some future date, together with type, subject and description.
   
• Call Cycle
  Continuing our example of an office equipment company - if the services are not regular but need to be performed in a more complex pattern, such as 30,180, 450 days after installation – the best way to handle this is using the Call Cycle add-on. This module allows you to create multiple sequences of reminders and link a customer to a sequence, creating a series of reminders at required intervals. You can have one sequence per product or a group of products or on any other basis.

Cross-Selling

Once a customer bought your product, the opportunity is open to sell complementary products or services.

If you track your sales on SCD, it can easily identify the potential targets for cross-selling by selecting customers who have purchased a particular product, but have not purchased a complementary one. You then can start promoting the complementary product(s) by sending personalised targeted messages to this group of customers.

There are several ways of handing that:

• Send messages when you have something to say.
  If you decided to make a special offer to these customers, or there is a new variant of this complementary product, a vendor-sponsored promotion etc, you can select customers on an ad-hoc basis and send them personalised messages with an offer.
   
• Implement a systematic Call Cycle process.
  If you know there is a good chance the customers would want the additional products, but it takes time to settle from the previous purchase, following up with  Call Cycle is more likely to catch them at a time when they are ready to buy again. The process itself has been described in great details above, so I won’t repeat it here.

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Retaining Customers Longer

If yours is a repeat business, you would want to keep your customers for as long as possible. In order to do that, you need to know which of your customers have left, why, and how to woo them back. SCD can help you with these tasks:

• The flexible query system can list the customers who were actively buying some time ago but stopped since. Using the statistical reports available in the analysis section in conjunction with this filter, you can calculate customer attrition rate.
• Having a complete sales and communications history for each customer enables you to review any complaints or enquires that they have made and that went unanswered. The Communication Summary report will give you an overview of such enquiries. Are the majority of enquiries about a particular product? Have these customers been serviced by a particular salesperson? Similarly, the Sales Summary report will give you a similar picture in relation to sales.
• Having understood what the problems are and fixed them, it would be appropriate to contact the former customers and let them know. Send out simple personalised emails or letters to these people and let them know that you listen. Make them a special woo-you-back offer and explain your reasons - people love being treated in a special way.

Tip: using Multiple Contacts Lists management add-on will facilitate this analytical work. Rather than entering the selection criteria every time you need to select former customers, you can create list “Former Customers” and link contacts to that list. Any subsequent operations will become easier as you can select members of this list with one simple filter.

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Measuring Productivity

To keep business under control you need to monitor the productivity statistics. How many customers you have? How many customer contacts your salespeople make? How many sales does your business generate – both in volume and dollar terms? What are bestselling products?

SCD provides this vital statistics “on tap”. The standard reports, such as Contact Summary, Communications Summary, Sales Summary (if you installed Sales Tracking Add-on), combined with a flexible filter will answer the questions above and will give you a pretty good overview of your business.

The example below shows the breakdown of a customer database by customer type:

To get access to the full power of the management reporting, we recommend add-ons “Statistical reports” or “Ad-hoc Report Generator”. These modules enable you to take any data available in the database, filter it by flexible criteria, and aggregate to any level available. For example, if you capture demographic parameters and occupation, these tools can show the distribution of the entire customer base by these two parameters, or zero in on people who contacted you last month and profile them only.

They are indispensable for a professional marketer with a large database, or a manager who wants to keep an eye on his or her business.

“Statistical reports” allows you to create new reports and save them on the database and is a cost-effective method when you are only interested in a relatively small number of pre-defined reports.

“Ad-hoc report generator” is more expensive but allows instant ad-hoc creation of reports and “no holds barred” interrogation of the data as well as includes full functionality of “Statistical reports”.

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