Customers are the driving force behind a company’s success. In the current day and age, customers have more and more power over businesses, which means that understanding what makes your customers tick has never been more important. Every thing a business does, they need to know that it will resonate with their customer’s interests.
Cue a large increase in demand for Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems. “Great, we have a database of all our customers, now we can gain valuable insight into their behaviour and improve engagement, marketing, service and loyalty.” Alas, it isn’t that simple.
Your CRM could have all the bells and whistles you need to manage your customer data accurately and improve all the things mentioned above; as long as people are using it. Many business owners I have encountered have said their CRM system failed due to lack of staff buy-in, leading to minimal day-to-day use, and therefore lack of quality data.
Independent analyst firm Ovum suggests that poor-quality data is costing U.S. businesses around $700 billion a year, or 30 percent of the average company’s revenue. Actions and engagements based on inaccurate data can frustrate customers, who expect greater return out of the personal information they supply businesses.
But there could be a solution: Gamification
There’s no denying that games can often be addictive: 120 billion minutes, that’s 2 billion hours, are spent monthly on average on Xbox Live. There is also no denying that CRMs are resoundingly non-addictive. Gamification takes the same design and mechanics of these addictive games, and transfers them to a non-game context to help achieve a meaningful result (business growth, for example).
Rewards, achievements, points and other game-design concepts can increase users engagement with the CRM. A great example of a gamified CRM is Zurmo, which combines everything you need from a CRM with usability and industry leading gamification elements.
If you are looking for a CRM which actually encourages user participation and provides you with extremely valuable and accurate data, then think gamification!
