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It provides a single 360° view of customers and the information is accessible anytime, anywhere.\r\n\r\nProductivity is increased, operations are streamlined, insightful decisions are made and the business is better equipped to differentiate against the competition.\r\n\r\nToday 1400 customers in over 50 countries trust Workbooks to run their business.","companyTypes":[],"products":{},"vendoredProductsCount":1,"suppliedProductsCount":1,"supplierImplementations":[],"vendorImplementations":[],"userImplementations":[],"userImplementationsCount":0,"supplierImplementationsCount":1,"vendorImplementationsCount":1,"vendorPartnersCount":0,"supplierPartnersCount":0,"b4r":0,"categories":{},"companyUrl":"https://www.workbooks.com/","countryCodes":[],"certifications":[],"isSeller":false,"isSupplier":false,"isVendor":false,"presenterCodeLng":"","seo":{"title":"Workbooks","keywords":"Workbooks, business, price, management, customers, view, 360°, single","description":"<div>Headquartered in Reading, United Kingdom, Workbooks delivers cloud-based CRM and business applications to growing and mid-market organisations, at an affordable price.</div>\r\n<div></div>\r\n<div>Workbooks extends beyond sales, marketing and customer support","og:title":"Workbooks","og:description":"<div>Headquartered in Reading, United Kingdom, Workbooks delivers cloud-based CRM and business applications to growing and mid-market organisations, at an affordable price.</div>\r\n<div></div>\r\n<div>Workbooks extends beyond sales, marketing and customer support","og:image":"https://old.roi4cio.com/uploads/roi/company/Workbooks.png"},"eventUrl":""}],"products":[{"id":1135,"logo":false,"scheme":false,"title":"Workbooks.com","vendorVerified":0,"rating":"1.00","implementationsCount":1,"suppliersCount":0,"alias":"workbookscom","companyTypes":[],"description":"<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Workbooks CRM helps you run campaigns and generate more quality leads.&nbsp;</span>\r\nWe give you the tools you need to execute your marketing strategy and measure ROI.\r\nFeatures to support Marketing Success\r\nData Management, Profiling &amp; Targeting\r\nGather business intelligence on your target accounts/market. Manage all your accounts/contacts within your CRM. Target your ‘ideal’ customer, based on their profile.&nbsp;\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Email Campaigns</span>\r\nSegment your database. Use templates to send targeted email messages or integrate directly with leading email marketing providers such as MailChimp or dotmailer. Gain visibility of all prospect/customer interaction and track key metrics (such as open and click rates) against relevant marketing campaigns.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Event Management</span>\r\nPlan, organise and promote live events, webinars or training courses from within Workbooks CRM. Allow delegates to self-register and automatically manage scheduled communication to contacts.&nbsp;\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Lead Scoring</span>\r\nAllocate criteria to help sales and marketing prioritise their time. Distribute leads to the right teams for follow-up. Use scoring to ensure sales spend their time following-up on the deals most likely to convert.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Website Analytics</span>\r\nTurn anonymous traffic into sales by discovering who was on your website and what pages they viewed. Knowing visitor interests prior to a call will help sales conversion rates and marketing can nurture more effectively by sending the most relevant information.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Supplier Management</span>\r\nTypically you will have a multitude of partners who provide you with marketing services such as lead purchase, email marketing, lead nurturing, event management, design &amp; print contractors etc. Track and manage these suppliers in Workbooks so the relevant information is stored in one place.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Track Marketing Activities</span>\r\nManage your/your team's day-to-day workload and keep on top of outstanding actions to ensure project milestones are hit and campaigns are delivered on time. Tasks and Meetings can be associated with specific marketing campaigns to provide full visibility.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Telemarketing Campaigns</span>\r\nData can be segmented and added to Marketing Campaigns to enable Telemarketing teams to focus on delivering targeted messaging. Track progress and review performance easily and effectively.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Lead Management</span>\r\nIdentify your most profitable lead channels by tracking the source of your leads. Automatically assign leads to Marketing Campaigns. Categorise your leads and harvest relevant contact information in one place to help you convert more prospects into sales.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Website Lead Capture</span>\r\nAutomatically capture leads from your website, assign them to queues/campaigns and notify your sales team members.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Marketing Metrics</span>\r\nCapture key information such as campaign ROI, lead volumes by source, lead conversion. Use Dashboards and Reports to ensure you have real-time information at your fingertips rather than spending time manually updating outdated spreadsheets.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">POs Management</span>\r\nManage your marketing expenditure more effectively. Raise Purchase Orders and track marketing expenditure for goods or services you are purchasing. Easily identify the current status of Supplier Orders and whether they have been approved/paid/delivered.\r\nWorkbooks CRM enables you to work more effectively, to better identify opportunities, close more deals and grow revenue.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Features to support Sales Success</span>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Contact Management &amp; Prospect Profiling</span>\r\nUse every interaction with a prospect to further your business intelligence. Capture knowledge, map relationships and segment your data to improve sales prospecting. Sync everything with Outlook, Microsoft Exchange/Office 365 or Google Apps.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Opportunity Management</span>\r\nManage sales opportunities, improve conversation rates, drive best practice across your sales team and grow revenue. With a CRM system undermining your sales execution, you can ensure that your Sales people share a common methodology, understand where their prospects are in the sales process and address their needs effectively - ultimately increasing closure rates.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Sales Performance Metrics</span>\r\nGenerate Reports and Dashboards that give you insight into your sales pipeline and performance. By understanding your sales performance you can improve execution, increase conversion rates and grow your revenues.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Quotations</span>\r\nBuild professional looking quotations in a matter of minutes. Standardise terms and conditions, control discounting and ensure quotations are followed-up effectively.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Tracking Sales Activities</span>\r\nRecord Sales Activities to ensure that Opportunities are progressed effectively and no calls are overlooked. Analyse which activities are the most productive and replicate these as best-practice examples for the whole team.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Sales Forecasting</span>\r\nEnable your sales people to forecast effectively. Identify your ‘best case’ and ‘commit’. Determine how likely those deals are to close and if your team is likely to hit target. Generate Reports and Dashboards to provide real-time visibility to sales teams and managers.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Existing Account Management</span>\r\nManage your customers more effectively by using the data held in your CRM. Understand your customer landscape, improve retention rates, up-sell within an account. Improve your customer service.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Order Creation &amp; Processing</span>\r\nCreate and manage orders within your CRM. Turn quotes into orders with a single click and track the status of orders as they are fulfilled and invoiced.","shortDescription":"Workbooks.com CRM brings your Sales, Marketing and Customer Service teams together.","type":null,"isRoiCalculatorAvaliable":false,"isConfiguratorAvaliable":false,"bonus":100,"usingCount":15,"sellingCount":12,"discontinued":0,"rebateForPoc":0,"rebate":0,"seo":{"title":"Workbooks.com","keywords":"your, sales, marketing, effectively, Management, more, with, ensure","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Workbooks CRM helps you run campaigns and generate more quality leads.&nbsp;</span>\r\nWe give you the tools you need to execute your marketing strategy and measure ROI.\r\nFeatures to support Marketing Success\r\nData Management, Pr","og:title":"Workbooks.com","og:description":"<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Workbooks CRM helps you run campaigns and generate more quality leads.&nbsp;</span>\r\nWe give you the tools you need to execute your marketing strategy and measure ROI.\r\nFeatures to support Marketing Success\r\nData Management, Pr"},"eventUrl":"","translationId":1136,"dealDetails":null,"roi":null,"price":null,"bonusForReference":null,"templateData":[],"testingArea":"","categories":[{"id":71,"title":"CRM - Customer Relationship Management","alias":"crm-customer-relationship-management","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Customer service</span> is the provision of service to customers before, during and after a purchase. The perception of success of such interactions is dependent on employees &quot;who can adjust themselves to the personality of the guest&quot;. Customer service concerns the priority an organization assigns to customer service relative to components such as product innovation and pricing. In this sense, an organization that values good customer service may spend more money in training employees than the average organization or may proactively interview customers for feedback.\r\nA <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">customer support</span> is a range of customer services to assist customers in making cost effective and correct use of a product. It includes assistance in planning, installation, training, trouble shooting, maintenance, upgrading, and disposal of a product. These services even may be done at customer's side where he/she uses the product or service. In this case it is called &quot;at home customer services&quot; or &quot;at home customer support.&quot;\r\nRegarding technology, products such as mobile phones, televisions, computers, software products or other electronic or mechanical goods, it is termed technical support. \r\nCustomer service may be provided by a person (e.g., sales and service representative), or by automated means, such as kiosks, Internet sites, and apps.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM </span>(Customer Relationship Management) is an approach to manage a company's interaction with current and potential customers. It uses data analysis about customers' history with a company to improve business relationships with customers, specifically focusing on customer retention and ultimately driving sales growth.\r\nOne important aspect of the CRM approach is the systems of CRM that compile data from a range of different communication channels, including a company's website, telephone, email, live chat, marketing materials and more recently, social media. Through the CRM approach and the systems used to facilitate it, businesses learn more about their target audiences and how to best cater to their needs.\r\nCRM helps users focus on their organization’s relationships with individual people including customers, service users, colleagues, or suppliers.\r\nWhen people talk about customer relationship management system, they might mean any of three things: \r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as Technology</span>: This is a technology product, often in the cloud, that teams use to record, report and analyse interactions between the company and users. This is also called a CRM system or solution.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as a Strategy</span>: This is a business’ philosophy about how relationships with customers and potential customers should be managed.&nbsp; </li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as a Process</span>: Think of this as a system a business adopts to nurture and manage those relationships.</li></ul>\r\n<br /><br /><br />","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">Why is CRM important?</span></h1>\r\nCRM management system enables a business to deepen its relationships with customers, service users, colleagues, partners and suppliers.\r\nForging good relationships and keeping track of prospects and customers is crucial for customer acquisition and retention, which is at the heart of a CRM’s function. You can see everything in one place — a simple, customizable dashboard that can tell you a customer’s previous history with you, the status of their orders, any outstanding customer service issues, and more.\r\nGartner predicts that by 2021, CRM technology will be the single largest revenue area of spending in enterprise software. If your business is going to last, you know that you need a strategy for the future. For forward-thinking businesses, CRM is the framework for that strategy.\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What are the benefits of CRM?</span></h1>\r\nBy collecting and organising data about customer interactions, making it accessible and actionable for all, and facilitating analysis of that data, CRM offers many benefits and advantages.<br />The benefits and advantages of CRM include:\r\n<ul><li>Enhanced contact management</li><li>Cross-team collaboration</li><li>Heightened productivity</li><li>Empowered sales management</li><li>Accurate sales forecasting</li><li>Reliable reporting</li><li>Improved sales metrics</li><li>Increased customer satisfaction and retention</li><li>Boosted marketing ROI</li><li>Enriched products and services</li></ul>\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What are the key features of most popular CRM software programs?</span></h1>\r\nWhile many CRM solutions differ in their specific value propositions — depending on your business size, priority function, or industry type — they usually share some core features. These, in fact, are the foundation of any top CRM software, without which you might end up using an inferior app or an over-rated address book. So, let’s discuss the key features you need to look for when figuring out the best CRM software for your business.\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Contact management</span>. The best CRM solutions aren’t just an address book that only organizes contact details. It manages customer data in a centralized place and gives you a 360-degree view of your customers. You should be able to organize customers’ personal information, demographics, interactions, and transactions in ways that are meaningful to your goals or processes. Moreover, a good contact management feature lets you personalize your outreach campaign. By collecting personal, social, and purchase data, it will help you to segment target audience groups in different ways.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Reporting and dashboards</span>. These features of customer relationship management allow you to use analytics to interpret customer data. Reporting is very useful if you want to consolidate disparate data and churn out insights in different visualizations. This lets you make better decisions or proactively deal with market trends and customer behavioral patterns. The more visual widgets a CRM software has, the better you can present reports. Furthermore, a best customer relationship management software will generate real-time data, making reporting more accurate and timely. Reporting also keeps you tab on sales opportunities like upsell, resell, and cross-sell, especially when integrated with e-commerce platforms.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Lead management</span>. These features let you manage leads all the way to win-loss stage. They pave a clear path to conversion, so you can quickly assess how the business is performing. One of the main three legs that comprises the best client relationship management software (the other two being contact management and reporting), lead management unburdens the sales team from follow-ups, tracking, and repetitive tasks.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Deals and tasks</span>. Deals and tasks are closely associated with leads. Deals are leads at the negotiation stage, so it’s critical to keep a close eye on their associated tasks for a higher chance of conversion.<br />CRM software tools should also let you track both deals and tasks in their respective windows or across the sales stages. Whether you’re viewing a contact or analyzing the sales pipeline, you should be able to immediately check the deal’s tasks and details. Deals and tasks should also have user permissions to protect leaks of sensitive data. Similarly, alerts are critical to tasks so deadlines are met. Notifications are usually sent via email or prominently displayed on the user’s dashboard.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Campaign management</span>. Solid CRM software will integrate this feature to enable marketing processes from outreach concept to A/B testing to deployment and to post analysis. This will allow you to sort campaigns to target segments in your contacts and define deployment strategies. You will also be able to define metrics for various channels, then plow back the insights generated by post-campaign analytics into planning more campaigns.<br />Recurring outreach efforts can also be automated. For instance, you can set to instantly appropriate content to contacts based on their interest or send tiered autoresponders based on campaign feedback.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Email management</span>. By integrating with popular email clients like Gmail and Outlook, CRM solutions can capture email messages and sort important details that can be saved in contacts or synced with leads. They can also track activities like opened emails, forwarded emails, clicked links, and downloaded files. Emails can also be qualified for prospecting.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Social media management. </span>Popular CRM systems feature an integrated social media management where you can view different social media pages from the CRM’s interface. This is a convenient way to post, reply on, and manage all your pages. Likewise, this feature gives you a better perspective on how customers are interacting with your brand. A glean of their likes and dislikes, interests, shares, and public conversations helps you to assess customer biases and preferences. Customers are also increasingly using social media to contact companies; hence, a good CRM should alert you for brand mentions.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Mobile access</span>. With more users accessing apps via mobile devices, many vendors have been prioritizing mobile-first platforms. Emergence Capital Partners study found over 300 mobile-first apps so far and CRM is definitely one their targets. Many CRM solutions have both Android and iOS apps. Mobile access works in two ways to be highly appreciated: accessing data and inputting data while on location. Field sales with the latest sales information on hand may be able to interest prospects better. Conversely, sales reps can quickly update deals across the pipeline even as they come off a client meeting.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/CRM_-_Customer_Relationship_Management.png"},{"id":341,"title":"Customer Service","alias":"customer-service","description":" Customer service is the process of ensuring customer satisfaction with a product or service. Often, customer service takes place while performing a transaction for the customer, such as making a sale or returning an item. Customer service can take the form of in-person interaction, a phone call, self-service systems, or by other means.\r\nCustomer service is an important part of maintaining ongoing client relationships, which is key to continuing revenue. For this reason, many companies have worked hard to increase their customer satisfaction levels.\r\nMost successful businesses recognize the importance of providing outstanding customer service. Courteous and empathetic interaction with a trained customer service representative can mean the difference between losing or retaining a customer.\r\nWhen problems arise, customers should receive timely attention to the issue. Prompt attention to emails and phone calls is critical to maintaining good relations. Requiring customers to stand in long lines or sit on hold can sour an interaction before it begins.\r\nIdeally, customer service should be a one-stop endeavor for the consumer. For example, if a customer calls a helpline regarding a problem with a product, the customer service representative should follow through with the customer until the issue is fully resolved.\r\nThis may entail scheduling appointments with in-person repair personnel if the problem cannot be resolved on the phone, or transferring a call to skilled technicians in another department. Proactively following up with the customer to ensure that he or she is fully satisfied is another smart move.","materialsDescription":" What are customer service standards?\r\nCustomer service standards are an internal corporate set of rules governing the company's customer service activities, an algorithm for communicating with customers, and general standards for responding to unusual situations. The standard of customer service is an integral part of the corporate standard of the company.\r\nFunctions of customer service standards:\r\n<ol><li>To order. The client does not encounter problems, does not see them, which means that he is confident that all the staff without exception are professionals who know their business.</li><li>To control. It is difficult to assess and monitor the work of each manager if there are no clear criteria for evaluation. At the same time, the implementation of the sales plan cannot be the only parameter of the assessment; you need to know whether the manager of customer service standards adopted in this company adheres.</li><li>To adapt. Among other things, the availability of customer service standards simplifies the procedure.</li></ol>\r\nCustomer service standards are effective if the customer does not see the difference between the work of two (or more) managers, and sees only “proprietary” service, always the same, regardless of any external factors or circumstances. The customer service standard, which has been tested in practice, backed up by experience (perhaps even someone else's), created on the basis of analytical studies and recognized methods, can be called &quot;gold&quot;. It allows you to increase profits, improve the image of the company, attract new customers.\r\nCustomer service standards are an important part of the company's brand. But, in addition, the standards are necessary and other units, in particular, the department to work with staff. Therefore, their development must take into account the needs of all interested services of the company.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What is the purpose of introducing customer service standards in the company?</span>\r\nThe objectives of implementing the standards are as follows:\r\n<ul><li>For employees with experience: minimize the number of erroneous and unnecessary actions. The result of this will be saving time of each employee (no errors - no need to spend time correcting them). And, as a result, increased productivity.</li><li>For novice employees: customer service standards allow you to transfer the necessary knowledge in the most concise manner and in a short time.</li><li>For the company: the abolition of dependence on the old-timers. Not all employees who have worked in the company for many years (or even since the day of foundation) are able to resist the so-called star disease. Having knowledge and experience, a person loses the ability to objectively evaluate his work, he begins to think that he is the best manager in the company. It can end very badly - in the event of dismissal, such an employee will take the base, and turn clients against the company. Standards for customer service are needed to ensure that all employees can be assessed on a single scale, based on the actual benefits they bring to the company, as well as the attitude of the employee to the company.</li><li>For the company: the uniformity of control activities of managers. Standards are unequivocal, exclude double interpretations, and therefore cannot cause controversy about the rightness of an employee or employer.</li><li>For managers: the standards of uniform customer service are the same for all managers, and this makes it possible to make the pay of each manager absolutely transparent and intelligible. Realizing that there will be no double interpretations, the manager may not be afraid that he will be paid less than expected - all his mistakes and achievements are immediately visible and understandable.</li></ul>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">The application of service standards allows you:</span>\r\n<ul><li>to develop a company style in dealing with clients;</li><li>to increase the effectiveness of the work of managers with new customers;</li><li>to bring the quality of communication with customers to a higher level;</li><li>to create a positive opinion of the company about the company, so that it can be recommended to its acquaintances, thus increasing the number of potential and then real customers;</li><li>to minimize conflicts between the manager and the customer;</li><li>to develop a technology for training newcomers;</li><li>to transfer the assessment of the work of the manager from the subjective to the objective, transparent and understandable to everyone;</li><li>to establish a procedure for controlling the work of personnel;</li><li>to increase the motivation of managers to work.</li></ul>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Benefits of applying service standards</span>\r\n<ul><li>The accumulation of experience: the entire base focuses on the company, and not on the hands of managers, &quot;old-timers.&quot; Thus, the departure of one or several “old” employees does not become a “natural disaster” for the company.</li><li>Motivation, analysis and control: customer service standards make it possible to develop a transparent scheme of managers' motivation based on a clear, almost mathematical analysis of their work. The sales process is optimized.</li><li>Setting goals. With the help of standards, the company has the ability to set clear, reasonable plans. This allows you to keep the atmosphere in the team friendly and stable, and the lack of &quot;muffled&quot; tasks - to increase the loyalty of managers to the company.</li><li>Standards of customer service is a fairly mobile system that allows you to immediately detect errors in working with clients and quickly eliminate them. In addition, at any stage of working with a client, the head of the sales department can intervene in the process, noticing an error in the work of the manager, and even be proactive in order to prevent an error to which the manager is heading.</li><li>Quick and easy start for beginners. Customer service standards are actually a knowledge base, collected, analyzed, and streamlined. Such information is easily transmitted and assimilated by beginners, which means that the beginner quickly gets to work and starts to make a profit. In addition, a newbie will not spoil relations with a client by awkward actions, since he already knows what to do in any conflict and problem situations.</li><li>Customer confidence. Customer service standards allow the latter to feel confident in the company - no matter where the customer is, he will always easily recognize “his” company by brand features and can be absolutely sure that in a small town they will be served as qualitatively as in a million-plus city, because that the company is well aware of their work. So, such a company can be trusted.</li></ul>","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Customer_Service.png"},{"id":339,"title":"Marketing","alias":"marketing","description":" Marketing is the study and management of exchange relationships. It is the business process of creating relationships with and satisfying customers. Because marketing is used to attract customers, it is one of the primary components of business management and commerce. Marketers can direct product to other businesses (B2B marketing) or directly to consumers (B2C marketing).\r\nRegardless of who is being marketed to, several factors, including the perspective the marketers will use. These market orientations determine how marketers will approach the planning stage of marketing. This leads into the marketing mix, which outlines the specifics of the product and how it will be sold. This can in turn, be affected by the environment surrounding the product, the results of marketing research and market research, and the characteristics of the product's target market.\r\nOnce these factors are determined, marketers must then decide what methods will be used to market the product. This decision is based on the factors analyzed in the planning stage as well as where the product is in the product life cycle.\r\nMarketing is defined by the American Marketing Association as &quot;the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large&quot;. The term developed from the original meaning which referred literally to going to market with goods for sale. From a sales process engineering perspective, marketing is &quot;a set of processes that are interconnected and interdependent with other functions of a business aimed at achieving customer interest and satisfaction&quot;.\r\nPhilip Kotler defined marketing as &quot;Satisfying needs and wants through an exchange process&quot;, and a decade later defines it as “a social and managerial process by which individuals and groups obtain what they want and need through creating, offering and exchanging products of value with others.”\r\nThe Chartered Institute of Marketing defines marketing as &quot;the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably&quot;. A similar concept is the value-based marketing which states the role of marketing to contribute to increasing shareholder value. In this context, marketing can be defined as &quot;the management process that seeks to maximise returns to shareholders by developing relationships with valued customers and creating a competitive advantage&quot;.\r\nIn the past, marketing practice tended to be seen as a creative industry, which included advertising, distribution and selling. However, because the academic study of marketing makes extensive use of social sciences, psychology, sociology, mathematics, economics, anthropology and neuroscience, the profession is now widely recognized as a science, allowing numerous universities to offer Master-of-Science (MSc) programs.\r\nThe process of marketing is that of bringing a product to market, which includes these steps: broad market research; market targeting and market segmentation; determining distribution, pricing and promotion strategies; developing a communications strategy; budgeting; and visioning long-term market development goals. Many parts of the marketing process (e.g. product design, art director, brand management, advertising, inbound marketing, copywriting etc.) involve use of the creative arts.","materialsDescription":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What the differences between B2B and B2C Marketing?</span>\r\nThe different goals of B2B and B2C marketing lead to differences in the B2B and B2C markets. The main differences in these markets are demand, purchasing volume, amount of customers, customer concentration, distribution, buying nature, buying influences, negotiations, reciprocity, leasing and promotional methods.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Demand:</span> B2B demand is derived because businesses buy products based on how much demand there is for the final consumer product. Businesses buy products based on customer's wants and needs. B2C demand is primarily because customers buy products based on their own wants and needs.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Purchasing Volume:</span> Businesses buy products in large volumes to distribute to consumers. Consumers buy products in smaller volumes suitable for personal use.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Amount of Customers:</span> There are relatively fewer businesses to market to than direct consumers.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Customer Concentration:</span> Businesses that specialize in a particular market tend to be geographically concentrated while customers that buy products from these businesses are not concentrated.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Distribution:</span> B2B products pass directly from the producer of the product to the business while B2C products must additionally go through a wholesaler or retailer.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Buying Nature:</span> B2B purchasing is a formal process done by professional buyers and sellers while B2C purchasing is informal.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Buying Influences:</span> B2B purchasing is influenced by multiple people in various departments such as quality control, accounting, and logistics while B2C marketing is only influenced by the person making the purchase and possibly a few others.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Negotiations:</span> In B2B marketing, negotiating for lower prices or added benefits is commonly accepted while in B2C marketing (particularly in Western cultures) prices are fixed.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Reciprocity:</span> Businesses tend to buy from businesses they sell to. For example, a business that sells printer ink is more likely to buy office chairs from a supplier that buys the business's printer ink. In B2C marketing, this does not occur because consumers are not also selling products.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Leasing:</span> Businesses tend to lease expensive items while consumers tend to save up to buy expensive items.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Promotional Methods:</span> In B2B marketing, the most common promotional method is personal selling. B2C marketing mostly uses sales promotion, public relations, advertising, and social media.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What are marketing orientations?</span>\r\nA marketing orientation has been defined as a &quot;philosophy of business management.&quot; or &quot;a corporate state of mind&quot; or as an &quot;organization[al] culture&quot;. Although scholars continue to debate the precise nature of specific orientations that inform marketing practice, the most commonly cited orientations are as follows:\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Product</span></span>\r\nA firm employing a product orientation is mainly concerned with the quality of its product. A product orientation is based on the assumption that all things being equal, consumers will purchase products of superior quality. The approach is most effective when the firm has deep insights into customer needs and desires as derived from research and/or intuition and understands consumer's quality expectations and price consumers are willing to pay. Although the product orientation has largely been supplanted by the marketing orientation, firms practicing a product orientation can still be found in haute couture and arts marketing.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Sales</span></span>\r\nA sales orientation focuses on the selling/promotion of the firm's existing products, rather than developing new products to satisfy unmet needs or wants. This orientation seeks to attain the highest possible sales through promotion and direct sales techniques. The sales orientation &quot;is typically practiced with unsought goods.&quot; One study found that industrial companies are more likely to hold a sales orientation than consumer goods companies. The approach may also suit scenarios in which a firm holds dead stock, or otherwise sells a product that is in high demand, with little likelihood of changes in consumer tastes diminishing demand.\r\nA 2011 meta-analyses found that the factors with the greatest impact on sales performance are a salesperson's sales-related knowledge (knowledge of market segments, sales presentation skills, conflict resolution, and products), degree of adaptiveness (changing behavior based on the aforementioned knowledge), role clarity (salesperson's role is to expressly to sell), cognitive aptitude (intelligence) and work engagement (motivation and interest in a sales role).\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Production</span></span>\r\nA firm focusing on a production orientation specializes in producing as much as possible of a given product or service in order to achieve economies of scale or economies of scope. A production orientation may be deployed when a high demand for a product or service exists, coupled with certainty that consumer tastes and preferences remain relatively constant (similar to the sales orientation). The so-called production era is thought to have dominated marketing practice from the 1860s to the 1930s, but other theorists argue that evidence of the production orientation can still be found in some companies or industries. Specifically, Kotler and Armstrong note that the production philosophy is &quot;one of the oldest philosophies that guides sellers... [and] is still useful in some situations.&quot;\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Marketing</span></span>\r\nThe marketing orientation is the most common orientation used in contemporary marketing. It is a customer-centric approach that involves a firm basing its marketing program around products that suit new consumer tastes. Firms adopting a marketing orientation typically engage in extensive market research to gauge consumer desires, use R&amp;D (Research &amp; Development) to develop a product attuned to the revealed information, and then utilize promotion techniques to ensure consumers are aware of the product's existence and the benefits it can deliver. Scales designed to measure a firm's overall market orientation have been developed and found to be robust in a variety of contexts.\r\nThe marketing orientation has three prime facets, which are:\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Customer orientation:</span> A firm in the market economy can survive by producing goods that people are willing and able to buy. Consequently, ascertaining consumer demand is vital for a firm's future viability and even existence as a going concern.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Organizational orientation:</span> The marketing department is of prime importance within the functional level of an organization. Information from the marketing department is used to guide the actions of a company's other departments.\r\nAs an example, a marketing department could ascertain (via marketing research) that consumers desired a new type of product or a new usage for an existing product. With this in mind, the marketing department would inform the R&amp;D department to create a prototype of a product/service based on consumers' new desires.\r\nThe production department would then start to manufacture the product, while the marketing department would focus on the promotion, distribution, pricing, etc. of the product. Additionally, a firm's finance department would be consulted, with respect to securing appropriate funding for the development, production, and promotion of the product. Finance may oppose the required capital expenditure since it could undermine a healthy cash flow for the organization.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Mutually beneficial exchange:</span> In a transaction in the market economy, a firm gains revenue, which thus leads to more profits, market shares, and/or sales. A consumer, on the other hand, gains the satisfaction of a need/want, utility, reliability and value for money from the purchase of a product or service.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Societal marketing</span></span>\r\nA number of scholars and practitioners have argued that marketers have a greater social responsibility than simply satisfying customers and providing them with superior value. Marketing organizations that have embraced the societal marketing concept typically identify key stakeholder groups such as employees, customers, and local communities. Companies that adopt a societal marketing perspective typically practice triple bottom line reporting whereby they publish social impact and environmental impact reports alongside financial performance reports. Sustainable marketing or green marketing is an extension of societal marketing.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Marketing.png"},{"id":337,"title":"Sales","alias":"sales","description":" Sales are activities related to selling or the number of goods or services sold in a given targeted time period.\r\nThe seller, or the provider of the goods or services, completes a sale in response to an acquisition, appropriation, requisition, or a direct interaction with the buyer at the point of sale. There is a passing of title (property or ownership) of the item, and the settlement of a price, in which agreement is reached on a price for which transfer of ownership of the item will occur. The seller, not the purchaser, typically executes the sale and it may be completed prior to the obligation of payment. In the case of indirect interaction, a person who sells goods or service on behalf of the owner is known as a salesman or saleswoman or salesperson, but this often refers to someone selling goods in a store/shop, in which case other terms are also common, including salesclerk, shop assistant, and retail clerk.\r\nIn common law countries, sales are governed generally by the common law and commercial codes. In the United States, the laws governing sales of goods are somewhat uniform to the extent that most jurisdictions have adopted Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code, albeit with some non-uniform variations.\r\nA person or organization expressing an interest in acquiring the offered item of value is referred to as a potential buyer, prospective customer, or prospect. Buying and selling are understood to be two sides of the same &quot;coin&quot; or transaction. Both seller and buyer engage in a process of negotiation to consummate the exchange of values. The exchange, or selling, process has implied rules and identifiable stages. It is implied that the selling process will proceed fairly and ethically so that the parties end up nearly equally rewarded. The stages of selling, and buying, involve getting acquainted, assessing each party's need for the other's item of value, and determining if the values to be exchanged are equivalent or nearly so, or, in buyer's terms, &quot;worth the price&quot;. Sometimes, sellers have to use their own experiences when selling products with appropriate discounts.\r\nAlthough the skills required are different, from a management viewpoint, sales is a part of marketing. Sales often form a separate grouping in a corporate structure, employing separate specialist operatives known as salespersons (singular: salesperson). Selling is considered by many to be a sort of persuading &quot;art&quot;. Contrary to popular belief, the methodological approach of selling refers to a systematic process of repetitive and measurable milestones, by which a salesman relates his or her offering of a product or service in return enabling the buyer to achieve their goal in an economic way.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What's the Difference Between Sales and Marketing?</span>\r\nSales and Marketing: two terms we often hear together when working with mid-size companies. In some ways, this is logical because the two need to work together. But in fact, Sales and Marketing are two very different functions and require very different skills.\r\nBusiness leaders know what Operations are; they make stuff. They know what Accounting is; they record and control the money. And they know what Sales do; they sell stuff. So if you are not making stuff, selling stuff, or recording the money—what is marketing and why do you need it?\r\nWhat's the difference between Sales and Marketing? To answer this question, let's define what Sales and Marketing are separately and how they support one another.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is Marketing? Aligning with Customers, Now and for the Future</span></span>\r\nA key job of Marketing is to understand the marketplace from the perspective of the customer looking back towards the company and helping lead the company where it should be in the future. Marketing’s job is to direct the organization toward the segments, or groups of customers and channels where the company can profitably compete. It should help the organization see how it needs to modify its product offerings, pricing, and communication so that it meets the needs of the distribution channel or end customers.\r\nMarketing also needs to convert the market understanding into tools and tactics to attract the market, build (often digital) relationships, and develop leads. Without Sales, Marketing efforts run short. Marketing directs Sales as to where they should be hunting and what ammo to use. Note, however, that if Marketing becomes a sales support function focused only on the now, the future can become lost.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Without Marketing, Sales Suffers</span></span>\r\nNot even the best hunter can bring home dinner if they are shooting blanks at decoys. Markets are constantly changing. The job of marketing is to stay ahead of the changes and help the hunters see where they should be hunting and provide them with the right ammunition. If Marketing is only focused on delivering the ammunition for today, nobody will see where the industry is moving or where the company needs to hunt next. This limits growth not only for Sales and Marketing but also for your entire organization.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Can You be Both Sales and Marketing?</span></span>\r\nIn all my years, working for companies that ranged from Fortune 100 to mid-size companies I have never met anyone who was really good at both sales and marketing. I have held the title of VP of Sales and Marketing, managing a 500 person sales and merchandising force. I was really a marketing person with sales authority. The skills required to focus on the now and the push of sales are different. In many ways, they are contrary to the skills of looking to the future and the customer perspective of marketing.\r\nEvery Sales organization feels they have a good understanding of their customers. But every Sales conversation with a customer has a sales transaction lurking in the background. Therefore, customers can never be completely open about their needs and want when talking to a sales person.\r\nFor a company to really grow, someone must have the job of looking out the window towards where the company needs to go in the future. For many companies, this is the job of the CEO and Sales hires someone to do some sales support and gives them a marketing title. But as companies grow, the job of CEO starts to become a full-time job in itself and the strategic role of Marketing gets short-changed. A study of mid-size companies by the University of Texas showed that companies that separated the roles of Marketing and Sales were much more likely to grow faster than the industry average.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Sales and Marketing: Today and the Future</span></span>\r\nSales need to be focused on the now. You can’t run a company unless your sales team is focused on bringing in today’s business. But you can’t really ask your Sales leaders where the company should go next and to develop the 18-month plan to get there without losing focus on today’s revenue. Besides, if your sales executive was really good at developing future-focused business strategies and tying that strategy to the plans and tools of marketing to make it happen, they would be a marketing person and not a now-focused sales person.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Sales.png"},{"id":152,"title":"Contact Center","alias":"contact-center","description":"A contact center is a central point from where you can contact.\r\nThe contact center typically includes one or more call centers but may include other types of customer contact, as well. A contact center is generally part of an enterprise's overall customer relationship management (CRM) strategy.<br />Contact centers and call centers are both centers for customer service, and the two terms are often used interchangeably, but a contact center supports more services than a typical call center.\r\nContact centers offer omnichannel customer support, including email, chat, voice over IP (VoIP) and website support. A call center typically uses phones as the main channel of communication and can handle a mass volume of calls.<br />Contact centers are used for inbound communication, outbound communication or a hybrid of both. Contact center agents also interact with customers via web chat, phone, email or other communication channels.\r\nThe contact center infrastructure that is necessary to support communications may be located on the same premises as the contact center, or it can be located externally.\r\nIn an on-premises scenario, the company that owns the contact center also owns and manages its own hardware and software. This requires staffing and IT investments that some companies choose to forgo by outsourcing those tasks to cloud providers or hosting companies.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is a Call Center?</span>\r\nTraditionally, a call center is an office where a large number of call center agents provide customer service over the telephone. Inbound call centers receive calls for customer support and often serve as a knowledge base for tech support, billing questions, and other customer service issues. These call centers focus on quick call resolution times and agent productivity. In outbound call centers, agents make calls rather than receive them. These could be sales calls, marketing offers, surveys, fundraising requests, or debt collection, for example.\r\nThe term “call center” conjures an image for many people of waiting on perpetual hold or being routed through an endless IVR that never gives them what they need. Because so many consumers have had a dreadful customer service experience along these lines, call centers have developed a bad rap. But as legacy phone systems give way to newer digital technologies, call centers are evolving.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is a Contact Center?</span>\r\nThe term &quot;contact center&quot; (or “contact centre”) reflects the modern reality that there are many other ways to connect with a customer these days besides by telephone. The combined trends of increased customer expectations and newer technologies that allow for many channels of communication are creating a shift in the traditional call center model which has existed for decades. Consumers want more ways to reach businesses, and businesses are looking for new ways to improve customer experience.\r\nWhile call center agents generally focus on inbound and outbound calls, either on traditional phone lines or over VoIP, contact center agents handle a wide variety of communications. In a modern multichannel contact center, technical support might be delivered over in-app chat or video, while order status updates are delivered via SMS, event promotions are sent as push notifications, surveys are deployed over Facebook Messenger, and sales inquiries received by email are sent directly to an agent to connect by phone. Call centers handle voice communications, contact centers handle all communications.\r\nA company’s contact center is usually integrated with their customer relationship management (CRM) system, where all interactions between the organization and the public are tracked, coordinated, and managed. Depending on the infrastructure and ecosystem, it could be comprised of an alphabet soup of complex components. Many companies have purchased off-the-shelf systems or a highly customized network of technologies from multiple vendors. Some companies have adopted a cloud-based solution or two, but they remain siloed from the rest of their systems and can’t talk to each other.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/Contact_Center1.png"}],"characteristics":[],"concurentProducts":[],"jobRoles":[],"organizationalFeatures":[],"complementaryCategories":[],"solutions":[],"materials":[],"useCases":[],"best_practices":[],"values":[],"implementations":[]}],"countries":[],"startDate":"2012-04-01","endDate":"2012-04-23","dealDate":"0000-00-00","price":0,"status":"finished","statusLabel":"Finished","isImplementation":true,"isAgreement":false,"confirmed":1,"implementationDetails":{"businessObjectives":{"id":14,"title":"Business objectives","translationKey":"businessObjectives","options":[{"id":4,"title":"Reduce Costs"},{"id":5,"title":"Enhance Staff Productivity"},{"id":7,"title":"Improve Customer Service"},{"id":252,"title":"Increase Customer Base"}]},"businessProcesses":{"id":11,"title":"Business process","translationKey":"businessProcesses","options":[{"id":176,"title":"No unified address book"},{"id":174,"title":"No unified email system"},{"id":177,"title":"Decentralized IT systems"},{"id":340,"title":"Low quality of customer service"},{"id":356,"title":"High costs of routine operations"},{"id":371,"title":"No control over the state of communication channels"},{"id":375,"title":"No support for mobile and remote users"},{"id":390,"title":"Low quality of customer support"},{"id":389,"title":"Customer attrition"},{"id":388,"title":"Failure to attract new customers"}]}},"categories":[{"id":71,"title":"CRM - Customer Relationship Management","alias":"crm-customer-relationship-management","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Customer service</span> is the provision of service to customers before, during and after a purchase. The perception of success of such interactions is dependent on employees &quot;who can adjust themselves to the personality of the guest&quot;. Customer service concerns the priority an organization assigns to customer service relative to components such as product innovation and pricing. In this sense, an organization that values good customer service may spend more money in training employees than the average organization or may proactively interview customers for feedback.\r\nA <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">customer support</span> is a range of customer services to assist customers in making cost effective and correct use of a product. It includes assistance in planning, installation, training, trouble shooting, maintenance, upgrading, and disposal of a product. These services even may be done at customer's side where he/she uses the product or service. In this case it is called &quot;at home customer services&quot; or &quot;at home customer support.&quot;\r\nRegarding technology, products such as mobile phones, televisions, computers, software products or other electronic or mechanical goods, it is termed technical support. \r\nCustomer service may be provided by a person (e.g., sales and service representative), or by automated means, such as kiosks, Internet sites, and apps.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM </span>(Customer Relationship Management) is an approach to manage a company's interaction with current and potential customers. It uses data analysis about customers' history with a company to improve business relationships with customers, specifically focusing on customer retention and ultimately driving sales growth.\r\nOne important aspect of the CRM approach is the systems of CRM that compile data from a range of different communication channels, including a company's website, telephone, email, live chat, marketing materials and more recently, social media. Through the CRM approach and the systems used to facilitate it, businesses learn more about their target audiences and how to best cater to their needs.\r\nCRM helps users focus on their organization’s relationships with individual people including customers, service users, colleagues, or suppliers.\r\nWhen people talk about customer relationship management system, they might mean any of three things: \r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as Technology</span>: This is a technology product, often in the cloud, that teams use to record, report and analyse interactions between the company and users. This is also called a CRM system or solution.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as a Strategy</span>: This is a business’ philosophy about how relationships with customers and potential customers should be managed.&nbsp; </li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as a Process</span>: Think of this as a system a business adopts to nurture and manage those relationships.</li></ul>\r\n<br /><br /><br />","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">Why is CRM important?</span></h1>\r\nCRM management system enables a business to deepen its relationships with customers, service users, colleagues, partners and suppliers.\r\nForging good relationships and keeping track of prospects and customers is crucial for customer acquisition and retention, which is at the heart of a CRM’s function. You can see everything in one place — a simple, customizable dashboard that can tell you a customer’s previous history with you, the status of their orders, any outstanding customer service issues, and more.\r\nGartner predicts that by 2021, CRM technology will be the single largest revenue area of spending in enterprise software. If your business is going to last, you know that you need a strategy for the future. For forward-thinking businesses, CRM is the framework for that strategy.\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What are the benefits of CRM?</span></h1>\r\nBy collecting and organising data about customer interactions, making it accessible and actionable for all, and facilitating analysis of that data, CRM offers many benefits and advantages.<br />The benefits and advantages of CRM include:\r\n<ul><li>Enhanced contact management</li><li>Cross-team collaboration</li><li>Heightened productivity</li><li>Empowered sales management</li><li>Accurate sales forecasting</li><li>Reliable reporting</li><li>Improved sales metrics</li><li>Increased customer satisfaction and retention</li><li>Boosted marketing ROI</li><li>Enriched products and services</li></ul>\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What are the key features of most popular CRM software programs?</span></h1>\r\nWhile many CRM solutions differ in their specific value propositions — depending on your business size, priority function, or industry type — they usually share some core features. These, in fact, are the foundation of any top CRM software, without which you might end up using an inferior app or an over-rated address book. So, let’s discuss the key features you need to look for when figuring out the best CRM software for your business.\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Contact management</span>. The best CRM solutions aren’t just an address book that only organizes contact details. It manages customer data in a centralized place and gives you a 360-degree view of your customers. You should be able to organize customers’ personal information, demographics, interactions, and transactions in ways that are meaningful to your goals or processes. Moreover, a good contact management feature lets you personalize your outreach campaign. By collecting personal, social, and purchase data, it will help you to segment target audience groups in different ways.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Reporting and dashboards</span>. These features of customer relationship management allow you to use analytics to interpret customer data. Reporting is very useful if you want to consolidate disparate data and churn out insights in different visualizations. This lets you make better decisions or proactively deal with market trends and customer behavioral patterns. The more visual widgets a CRM software has, the better you can present reports. Furthermore, a best customer relationship management software will generate real-time data, making reporting more accurate and timely. Reporting also keeps you tab on sales opportunities like upsell, resell, and cross-sell, especially when integrated with e-commerce platforms.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Lead management</span>. These features let you manage leads all the way to win-loss stage. They pave a clear path to conversion, so you can quickly assess how the business is performing. One of the main three legs that comprises the best client relationship management software (the other two being contact management and reporting), lead management unburdens the sales team from follow-ups, tracking, and repetitive tasks.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Deals and tasks</span>. Deals and tasks are closely associated with leads. Deals are leads at the negotiation stage, so it’s critical to keep a close eye on their associated tasks for a higher chance of conversion.<br />CRM software tools should also let you track both deals and tasks in their respective windows or across the sales stages. Whether you’re viewing a contact or analyzing the sales pipeline, you should be able to immediately check the deal’s tasks and details. Deals and tasks should also have user permissions to protect leaks of sensitive data. Similarly, alerts are critical to tasks so deadlines are met. Notifications are usually sent via email or prominently displayed on the user’s dashboard.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Campaign management</span>. Solid CRM software will integrate this feature to enable marketing processes from outreach concept to A/B testing to deployment and to post analysis. This will allow you to sort campaigns to target segments in your contacts and define deployment strategies. You will also be able to define metrics for various channels, then plow back the insights generated by post-campaign analytics into planning more campaigns.<br />Recurring outreach efforts can also be automated. For instance, you can set to instantly appropriate content to contacts based on their interest or send tiered autoresponders based on campaign feedback.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Email management</span>. By integrating with popular email clients like Gmail and Outlook, CRM solutions can capture email messages and sort important details that can be saved in contacts or synced with leads. They can also track activities like opened emails, forwarded emails, clicked links, and downloaded files. Emails can also be qualified for prospecting.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Social media management. </span>Popular CRM systems feature an integrated social media management where you can view different social media pages from the CRM’s interface. This is a convenient way to post, reply on, and manage all your pages. Likewise, this feature gives you a better perspective on how customers are interacting with your brand. A glean of their likes and dislikes, interests, shares, and public conversations helps you to assess customer biases and preferences. Customers are also increasingly using social media to contact companies; hence, a good CRM should alert you for brand mentions.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Mobile access</span>. With more users accessing apps via mobile devices, many vendors have been prioritizing mobile-first platforms. Emergence Capital Partners study found over 300 mobile-first apps so far and CRM is definitely one their targets. Many CRM solutions have both Android and iOS apps. Mobile access works in two ways to be highly appreciated: accessing data and inputting data while on location. Field sales with the latest sales information on hand may be able to interest prospects better. Conversely, sales reps can quickly update deals across the pipeline even as they come off a client meeting.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/CRM_-_Customer_Relationship_Management.png"},{"id":341,"title":"Customer Service","alias":"customer-service","description":" Customer service is the process of ensuring customer satisfaction with a product or service. Often, customer service takes place while performing a transaction for the customer, such as making a sale or returning an item. Customer service can take the form of in-person interaction, a phone call, self-service systems, or by other means.\r\nCustomer service is an important part of maintaining ongoing client relationships, which is key to continuing revenue. For this reason, many companies have worked hard to increase their customer satisfaction levels.\r\nMost successful businesses recognize the importance of providing outstanding customer service. Courteous and empathetic interaction with a trained customer service representative can mean the difference between losing or retaining a customer.\r\nWhen problems arise, customers should receive timely attention to the issue. Prompt attention to emails and phone calls is critical to maintaining good relations. Requiring customers to stand in long lines or sit on hold can sour an interaction before it begins.\r\nIdeally, customer service should be a one-stop endeavor for the consumer. For example, if a customer calls a helpline regarding a problem with a product, the customer service representative should follow through with the customer until the issue is fully resolved.\r\nThis may entail scheduling appointments with in-person repair personnel if the problem cannot be resolved on the phone, or transferring a call to skilled technicians in another department. Proactively following up with the customer to ensure that he or she is fully satisfied is another smart move.","materialsDescription":" What are customer service standards?\r\nCustomer service standards are an internal corporate set of rules governing the company's customer service activities, an algorithm for communicating with customers, and general standards for responding to unusual situations. The standard of customer service is an integral part of the corporate standard of the company.\r\nFunctions of customer service standards:\r\n<ol><li>To order. The client does not encounter problems, does not see them, which means that he is confident that all the staff without exception are professionals who know their business.</li><li>To control. It is difficult to assess and monitor the work of each manager if there are no clear criteria for evaluation. At the same time, the implementation of the sales plan cannot be the only parameter of the assessment; you need to know whether the manager of customer service standards adopted in this company adheres.</li><li>To adapt. Among other things, the availability of customer service standards simplifies the procedure.</li></ol>\r\nCustomer service standards are effective if the customer does not see the difference between the work of two (or more) managers, and sees only “proprietary” service, always the same, regardless of any external factors or circumstances. The customer service standard, which has been tested in practice, backed up by experience (perhaps even someone else's), created on the basis of analytical studies and recognized methods, can be called &quot;gold&quot;. It allows you to increase profits, improve the image of the company, attract new customers.\r\nCustomer service standards are an important part of the company's brand. But, in addition, the standards are necessary and other units, in particular, the department to work with staff. Therefore, their development must take into account the needs of all interested services of the company.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What is the purpose of introducing customer service standards in the company?</span>\r\nThe objectives of implementing the standards are as follows:\r\n<ul><li>For employees with experience: minimize the number of erroneous and unnecessary actions. The result of this will be saving time of each employee (no errors - no need to spend time correcting them). And, as a result, increased productivity.</li><li>For novice employees: customer service standards allow you to transfer the necessary knowledge in the most concise manner and in a short time.</li><li>For the company: the abolition of dependence on the old-timers. Not all employees who have worked in the company for many years (or even since the day of foundation) are able to resist the so-called star disease. Having knowledge and experience, a person loses the ability to objectively evaluate his work, he begins to think that he is the best manager in the company. It can end very badly - in the event of dismissal, such an employee will take the base, and turn clients against the company. Standards for customer service are needed to ensure that all employees can be assessed on a single scale, based on the actual benefits they bring to the company, as well as the attitude of the employee to the company.</li><li>For the company: the uniformity of control activities of managers. Standards are unequivocal, exclude double interpretations, and therefore cannot cause controversy about the rightness of an employee or employer.</li><li>For managers: the standards of uniform customer service are the same for all managers, and this makes it possible to make the pay of each manager absolutely transparent and intelligible. Realizing that there will be no double interpretations, the manager may not be afraid that he will be paid less than expected - all his mistakes and achievements are immediately visible and understandable.</li></ul>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">The application of service standards allows you:</span>\r\n<ul><li>to develop a company style in dealing with clients;</li><li>to increase the effectiveness of the work of managers with new customers;</li><li>to bring the quality of communication with customers to a higher level;</li><li>to create a positive opinion of the company about the company, so that it can be recommended to its acquaintances, thus increasing the number of potential and then real customers;</li><li>to minimize conflicts between the manager and the customer;</li><li>to develop a technology for training newcomers;</li><li>to transfer the assessment of the work of the manager from the subjective to the objective, transparent and understandable to everyone;</li><li>to establish a procedure for controlling the work of personnel;</li><li>to increase the motivation of managers to work.</li></ul>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Benefits of applying service standards</span>\r\n<ul><li>The accumulation of experience: the entire base focuses on the company, and not on the hands of managers, &quot;old-timers.&quot; Thus, the departure of one or several “old” employees does not become a “natural disaster” for the company.</li><li>Motivation, analysis and control: customer service standards make it possible to develop a transparent scheme of managers' motivation based on a clear, almost mathematical analysis of their work. The sales process is optimized.</li><li>Setting goals. With the help of standards, the company has the ability to set clear, reasonable plans. This allows you to keep the atmosphere in the team friendly and stable, and the lack of &quot;muffled&quot; tasks - to increase the loyalty of managers to the company.</li><li>Standards of customer service is a fairly mobile system that allows you to immediately detect errors in working with clients and quickly eliminate them. In addition, at any stage of working with a client, the head of the sales department can intervene in the process, noticing an error in the work of the manager, and even be proactive in order to prevent an error to which the manager is heading.</li><li>Quick and easy start for beginners. Customer service standards are actually a knowledge base, collected, analyzed, and streamlined. Such information is easily transmitted and assimilated by beginners, which means that the beginner quickly gets to work and starts to make a profit. In addition, a newbie will not spoil relations with a client by awkward actions, since he already knows what to do in any conflict and problem situations.</li><li>Customer confidence. Customer service standards allow the latter to feel confident in the company - no matter where the customer is, he will always easily recognize “his” company by brand features and can be absolutely sure that in a small town they will be served as qualitatively as in a million-plus city, because that the company is well aware of their work. So, such a company can be trusted.</li></ul>","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Customer_Service.png"},{"id":339,"title":"Marketing","alias":"marketing","description":" Marketing is the study and management of exchange relationships. It is the business process of creating relationships with and satisfying customers. Because marketing is used to attract customers, it is one of the primary components of business management and commerce. Marketers can direct product to other businesses (B2B marketing) or directly to consumers (B2C marketing).\r\nRegardless of who is being marketed to, several factors, including the perspective the marketers will use. These market orientations determine how marketers will approach the planning stage of marketing. This leads into the marketing mix, which outlines the specifics of the product and how it will be sold. This can in turn, be affected by the environment surrounding the product, the results of marketing research and market research, and the characteristics of the product's target market.\r\nOnce these factors are determined, marketers must then decide what methods will be used to market the product. This decision is based on the factors analyzed in the planning stage as well as where the product is in the product life cycle.\r\nMarketing is defined by the American Marketing Association as &quot;the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large&quot;. The term developed from the original meaning which referred literally to going to market with goods for sale. From a sales process engineering perspective, marketing is &quot;a set of processes that are interconnected and interdependent with other functions of a business aimed at achieving customer interest and satisfaction&quot;.\r\nPhilip Kotler defined marketing as &quot;Satisfying needs and wants through an exchange process&quot;, and a decade later defines it as “a social and managerial process by which individuals and groups obtain what they want and need through creating, offering and exchanging products of value with others.”\r\nThe Chartered Institute of Marketing defines marketing as &quot;the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably&quot;. A similar concept is the value-based marketing which states the role of marketing to contribute to increasing shareholder value. In this context, marketing can be defined as &quot;the management process that seeks to maximise returns to shareholders by developing relationships with valued customers and creating a competitive advantage&quot;.\r\nIn the past, marketing practice tended to be seen as a creative industry, which included advertising, distribution and selling. However, because the academic study of marketing makes extensive use of social sciences, psychology, sociology, mathematics, economics, anthropology and neuroscience, the profession is now widely recognized as a science, allowing numerous universities to offer Master-of-Science (MSc) programs.\r\nThe process of marketing is that of bringing a product to market, which includes these steps: broad market research; market targeting and market segmentation; determining distribution, pricing and promotion strategies; developing a communications strategy; budgeting; and visioning long-term market development goals. Many parts of the marketing process (e.g. product design, art director, brand management, advertising, inbound marketing, copywriting etc.) involve use of the creative arts.","materialsDescription":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What the differences between B2B and B2C Marketing?</span>\r\nThe different goals of B2B and B2C marketing lead to differences in the B2B and B2C markets. The main differences in these markets are demand, purchasing volume, amount of customers, customer concentration, distribution, buying nature, buying influences, negotiations, reciprocity, leasing and promotional methods.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Demand:</span> B2B demand is derived because businesses buy products based on how much demand there is for the final consumer product. Businesses buy products based on customer's wants and needs. B2C demand is primarily because customers buy products based on their own wants and needs.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Purchasing Volume:</span> Businesses buy products in large volumes to distribute to consumers. Consumers buy products in smaller volumes suitable for personal use.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Amount of Customers:</span> There are relatively fewer businesses to market to than direct consumers.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Customer Concentration:</span> Businesses that specialize in a particular market tend to be geographically concentrated while customers that buy products from these businesses are not concentrated.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Distribution:</span> B2B products pass directly from the producer of the product to the business while B2C products must additionally go through a wholesaler or retailer.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Buying Nature:</span> B2B purchasing is a formal process done by professional buyers and sellers while B2C purchasing is informal.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Buying Influences:</span> B2B purchasing is influenced by multiple people in various departments such as quality control, accounting, and logistics while B2C marketing is only influenced by the person making the purchase and possibly a few others.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Negotiations:</span> In B2B marketing, negotiating for lower prices or added benefits is commonly accepted while in B2C marketing (particularly in Western cultures) prices are fixed.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Reciprocity:</span> Businesses tend to buy from businesses they sell to. For example, a business that sells printer ink is more likely to buy office chairs from a supplier that buys the business's printer ink. In B2C marketing, this does not occur because consumers are not also selling products.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Leasing:</span> Businesses tend to lease expensive items while consumers tend to save up to buy expensive items.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Promotional Methods:</span> In B2B marketing, the most common promotional method is personal selling. B2C marketing mostly uses sales promotion, public relations, advertising, and social media.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What are marketing orientations?</span>\r\nA marketing orientation has been defined as a &quot;philosophy of business management.&quot; or &quot;a corporate state of mind&quot; or as an &quot;organization[al] culture&quot;. Although scholars continue to debate the precise nature of specific orientations that inform marketing practice, the most commonly cited orientations are as follows:\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Product</span></span>\r\nA firm employing a product orientation is mainly concerned with the quality of its product. A product orientation is based on the assumption that all things being equal, consumers will purchase products of superior quality. The approach is most effective when the firm has deep insights into customer needs and desires as derived from research and/or intuition and understands consumer's quality expectations and price consumers are willing to pay. Although the product orientation has largely been supplanted by the marketing orientation, firms practicing a product orientation can still be found in haute couture and arts marketing.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Sales</span></span>\r\nA sales orientation focuses on the selling/promotion of the firm's existing products, rather than developing new products to satisfy unmet needs or wants. This orientation seeks to attain the highest possible sales through promotion and direct sales techniques. The sales orientation &quot;is typically practiced with unsought goods.&quot; One study found that industrial companies are more likely to hold a sales orientation than consumer goods companies. The approach may also suit scenarios in which a firm holds dead stock, or otherwise sells a product that is in high demand, with little likelihood of changes in consumer tastes diminishing demand.\r\nA 2011 meta-analyses found that the factors with the greatest impact on sales performance are a salesperson's sales-related knowledge (knowledge of market segments, sales presentation skills, conflict resolution, and products), degree of adaptiveness (changing behavior based on the aforementioned knowledge), role clarity (salesperson's role is to expressly to sell), cognitive aptitude (intelligence) and work engagement (motivation and interest in a sales role).\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Production</span></span>\r\nA firm focusing on a production orientation specializes in producing as much as possible of a given product or service in order to achieve economies of scale or economies of scope. A production orientation may be deployed when a high demand for a product or service exists, coupled with certainty that consumer tastes and preferences remain relatively constant (similar to the sales orientation). The so-called production era is thought to have dominated marketing practice from the 1860s to the 1930s, but other theorists argue that evidence of the production orientation can still be found in some companies or industries. Specifically, Kotler and Armstrong note that the production philosophy is &quot;one of the oldest philosophies that guides sellers... [and] is still useful in some situations.&quot;\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Marketing</span></span>\r\nThe marketing orientation is the most common orientation used in contemporary marketing. It is a customer-centric approach that involves a firm basing its marketing program around products that suit new consumer tastes. Firms adopting a marketing orientation typically engage in extensive market research to gauge consumer desires, use R&amp;D (Research &amp; Development) to develop a product attuned to the revealed information, and then utilize promotion techniques to ensure consumers are aware of the product's existence and the benefits it can deliver. Scales designed to measure a firm's overall market orientation have been developed and found to be robust in a variety of contexts.\r\nThe marketing orientation has three prime facets, which are:\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Customer orientation:</span> A firm in the market economy can survive by producing goods that people are willing and able to buy. Consequently, ascertaining consumer demand is vital for a firm's future viability and even existence as a going concern.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Organizational orientation:</span> The marketing department is of prime importance within the functional level of an organization. Information from the marketing department is used to guide the actions of a company's other departments.\r\nAs an example, a marketing department could ascertain (via marketing research) that consumers desired a new type of product or a new usage for an existing product. With this in mind, the marketing department would inform the R&amp;D department to create a prototype of a product/service based on consumers' new desires.\r\nThe production department would then start to manufacture the product, while the marketing department would focus on the promotion, distribution, pricing, etc. of the product. Additionally, a firm's finance department would be consulted, with respect to securing appropriate funding for the development, production, and promotion of the product. Finance may oppose the required capital expenditure since it could undermine a healthy cash flow for the organization.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Mutually beneficial exchange:</span> In a transaction in the market economy, a firm gains revenue, which thus leads to more profits, market shares, and/or sales. A consumer, on the other hand, gains the satisfaction of a need/want, utility, reliability and value for money from the purchase of a product or service.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Societal marketing</span></span>\r\nA number of scholars and practitioners have argued that marketers have a greater social responsibility than simply satisfying customers and providing them with superior value. Marketing organizations that have embraced the societal marketing concept typically identify key stakeholder groups such as employees, customers, and local communities. Companies that adopt a societal marketing perspective typically practice triple bottom line reporting whereby they publish social impact and environmental impact reports alongside financial performance reports. Sustainable marketing or green marketing is an extension of societal marketing.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Marketing.png"},{"id":337,"title":"Sales","alias":"sales","description":" Sales are activities related to selling or the number of goods or services sold in a given targeted time period.\r\nThe seller, or the provider of the goods or services, completes a sale in response to an acquisition, appropriation, requisition, or a direct interaction with the buyer at the point of sale. There is a passing of title (property or ownership) of the item, and the settlement of a price, in which agreement is reached on a price for which transfer of ownership of the item will occur. The seller, not the purchaser, typically executes the sale and it may be completed prior to the obligation of payment. In the case of indirect interaction, a person who sells goods or service on behalf of the owner is known as a salesman or saleswoman or salesperson, but this often refers to someone selling goods in a store/shop, in which case other terms are also common, including salesclerk, shop assistant, and retail clerk.\r\nIn common law countries, sales are governed generally by the common law and commercial codes. In the United States, the laws governing sales of goods are somewhat uniform to the extent that most jurisdictions have adopted Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code, albeit with some non-uniform variations.\r\nA person or organization expressing an interest in acquiring the offered item of value is referred to as a potential buyer, prospective customer, or prospect. Buying and selling are understood to be two sides of the same &quot;coin&quot; or transaction. Both seller and buyer engage in a process of negotiation to consummate the exchange of values. The exchange, or selling, process has implied rules and identifiable stages. It is implied that the selling process will proceed fairly and ethically so that the parties end up nearly equally rewarded. The stages of selling, and buying, involve getting acquainted, assessing each party's need for the other's item of value, and determining if the values to be exchanged are equivalent or nearly so, or, in buyer's terms, &quot;worth the price&quot;. Sometimes, sellers have to use their own experiences when selling products with appropriate discounts.\r\nAlthough the skills required are different, from a management viewpoint, sales is a part of marketing. Sales often form a separate grouping in a corporate structure, employing separate specialist operatives known as salespersons (singular: salesperson). Selling is considered by many to be a sort of persuading &quot;art&quot;. Contrary to popular belief, the methodological approach of selling refers to a systematic process of repetitive and measurable milestones, by which a salesman relates his or her offering of a product or service in return enabling the buyer to achieve their goal in an economic way.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What's the Difference Between Sales and Marketing?</span>\r\nSales and Marketing: two terms we often hear together when working with mid-size companies. In some ways, this is logical because the two need to work together. But in fact, Sales and Marketing are two very different functions and require very different skills.\r\nBusiness leaders know what Operations are; they make stuff. They know what Accounting is; they record and control the money. And they know what Sales do; they sell stuff. So if you are not making stuff, selling stuff, or recording the money—what is marketing and why do you need it?\r\nWhat's the difference between Sales and Marketing? To answer this question, let's define what Sales and Marketing are separately and how they support one another.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is Marketing? Aligning with Customers, Now and for the Future</span></span>\r\nA key job of Marketing is to understand the marketplace from the perspective of the customer looking back towards the company and helping lead the company where it should be in the future. Marketing’s job is to direct the organization toward the segments, or groups of customers and channels where the company can profitably compete. It should help the organization see how it needs to modify its product offerings, pricing, and communication so that it meets the needs of the distribution channel or end customers.\r\nMarketing also needs to convert the market understanding into tools and tactics to attract the market, build (often digital) relationships, and develop leads. Without Sales, Marketing efforts run short. Marketing directs Sales as to where they should be hunting and what ammo to use. Note, however, that if Marketing becomes a sales support function focused only on the now, the future can become lost.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Without Marketing, Sales Suffers</span></span>\r\nNot even the best hunter can bring home dinner if they are shooting blanks at decoys. Markets are constantly changing. The job of marketing is to stay ahead of the changes and help the hunters see where they should be hunting and provide them with the right ammunition. If Marketing is only focused on delivering the ammunition for today, nobody will see where the industry is moving or where the company needs to hunt next. This limits growth not only for Sales and Marketing but also for your entire organization.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Can You be Both Sales and Marketing?</span></span>\r\nIn all my years, working for companies that ranged from Fortune 100 to mid-size companies I have never met anyone who was really good at both sales and marketing. I have held the title of VP of Sales and Marketing, managing a 500 person sales and merchandising force. I was really a marketing person with sales authority. The skills required to focus on the now and the push of sales are different. In many ways, they are contrary to the skills of looking to the future and the customer perspective of marketing.\r\nEvery Sales organization feels they have a good understanding of their customers. But every Sales conversation with a customer has a sales transaction lurking in the background. Therefore, customers can never be completely open about their needs and want when talking to a sales person.\r\nFor a company to really grow, someone must have the job of looking out the window towards where the company needs to go in the future. For many companies, this is the job of the CEO and Sales hires someone to do some sales support and gives them a marketing title. But as companies grow, the job of CEO starts to become a full-time job in itself and the strategic role of Marketing gets short-changed. A study of mid-size companies by the University of Texas showed that companies that separated the roles of Marketing and Sales were much more likely to grow faster than the industry average.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Sales and Marketing: Today and the Future</span></span>\r\nSales need to be focused on the now. You can’t run a company unless your sales team is focused on bringing in today’s business. But you can’t really ask your Sales leaders where the company should go next and to develop the 18-month plan to get there without losing focus on today’s revenue. Besides, if your sales executive was really good at developing future-focused business strategies and tying that strategy to the plans and tools of marketing to make it happen, they would be a marketing person and not a now-focused sales person.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Sales.png"},{"id":152,"title":"Contact Center","alias":"contact-center","description":"A contact center is a central point from where you can contact.\r\nThe contact center typically includes one or more call centers but may include other types of customer contact, as well. A contact center is generally part of an enterprise's overall customer relationship management (CRM) strategy.<br />Contact centers and call centers are both centers for customer service, and the two terms are often used interchangeably, but a contact center supports more services than a typical call center.\r\nContact centers offer omnichannel customer support, including email, chat, voice over IP (VoIP) and website support. A call center typically uses phones as the main channel of communication and can handle a mass volume of calls.<br />Contact centers are used for inbound communication, outbound communication or a hybrid of both. Contact center agents also interact with customers via web chat, phone, email or other communication channels.\r\nThe contact center infrastructure that is necessary to support communications may be located on the same premises as the contact center, or it can be located externally.\r\nIn an on-premises scenario, the company that owns the contact center also owns and manages its own hardware and software. This requires staffing and IT investments that some companies choose to forgo by outsourcing those tasks to cloud providers or hosting companies.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is a Call Center?</span>\r\nTraditionally, a call center is an office where a large number of call center agents provide customer service over the telephone. Inbound call centers receive calls for customer support and often serve as a knowledge base for tech support, billing questions, and other customer service issues. These call centers focus on quick call resolution times and agent productivity. In outbound call centers, agents make calls rather than receive them. These could be sales calls, marketing offers, surveys, fundraising requests, or debt collection, for example.\r\nThe term “call center” conjures an image for many people of waiting on perpetual hold or being routed through an endless IVR that never gives them what they need. Because so many consumers have had a dreadful customer service experience along these lines, call centers have developed a bad rap. But as legacy phone systems give way to newer digital technologies, call centers are evolving.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is a Contact Center?</span>\r\nThe term &quot;contact center&quot; (or “contact centre”) reflects the modern reality that there are many other ways to connect with a customer these days besides by telephone. The combined trends of increased customer expectations and newer technologies that allow for many channels of communication are creating a shift in the traditional call center model which has existed for decades. Consumers want more ways to reach businesses, and businesses are looking for new ways to improve customer experience.\r\nWhile call center agents generally focus on inbound and outbound calls, either on traditional phone lines or over VoIP, contact center agents handle a wide variety of communications. In a modern multichannel contact center, technical support might be delivered over in-app chat or video, while order status updates are delivered via SMS, event promotions are sent as push notifications, surveys are deployed over Facebook Messenger, and sales inquiries received by email are sent directly to an agent to connect by phone. Call centers handle voice communications, contact centers handle all communications.\r\nA company’s contact center is usually integrated with their customer relationship management (CRM) system, where all interactions between the organization and the public are tracked, coordinated, and managed. Depending on the infrastructure and ecosystem, it could be comprised of an alphabet soup of complex components. Many companies have purchased off-the-shelf systems or a highly customized network of technologies from multiple vendors. Some companies have adopted a cloud-based solution or two, but they remain siloed from the rest of their systems and can’t talk to each other.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/Contact_Center1.png"}],"additionalInfo":{"budgetNotExceeded":"","functionallyTaskAssignment":"","projectWasPut":"","price":0,"source":{"url":"https://www.workbooks.com/sites/default/files/2017-05/Amstore-Workbooks-Case-Study.pdf","title":"Web-site of vendor"}},"comments":[],"referencesCount":0}],"vendorImplementations":[{"id":331,"title":"Workbooks.com for creative agency","description":"INDUSTRY: Retail &amp; Distribution\r\nNUMBER OF EMPLOYEES: 11-50\r\nIMPLEMENTATION DATE: April 2012\r\nTECHNOLOGY: Workbooks Business, Multi Currency\r\nAmstore is a leading Digital Media production company, servicing the corporate and entertainment markets. Amstore has evolved from a commodity manufacturer to a creative production agency with clients, re-sellers and suppliers around the world. Amstore is also a versatile company with the ability to add new products to its product range which empowers them to continue to grow in their market sector.\r\n\r\nAMSTORE BENEFITS FROM A REDUCTION OF 45 HOURS A MONTH IN ADMIN TIME\r\nWorkbooks CRM manages every single part of the business\r\nWith ambitious growth plans, Amstore quickly realised that they would need a new CRM system. They were previously using Sage SalesLogix and with no easy way to change or adapt the system, Amstore were looking for a CRM that could help them to\r\ngrow.\r\nMarcelo Bustamante, Director at Amstore, said: “Sage served us well for the time that we used the system. The pain areas were linked to the fact that it couldn’t be adjusted to meet our needs in a cost effective or time efficient way, so we made the decision to look for a new vendor. Amstore also faced difficulty reporting. Marcelo explained, “Reporting was difficult in Crystal Reports. It is key for any business to have clear visibility of how the company is performing and it was very time-consuming and challenging for us to pull this kind of information.”\r\nDue to the nature of Amstore’s business, the company needed a CRM system to manage every single part of their business, from the sales team to the accounts department, to the artwork department through to the finance department.\r\nIt needed the full spectrum of CRM and SOP functionality, as well as being effective and easy to use.\r\nAmstore found Workbooks through a Google search and they were immediately&nbsp; impressed with the offering.\r\n\r\nAmstore could immediately feel tangible benefits. For instance, they have many different websites offering a wide range of products and services. The web-to-lead functionality in Workbooks has enabled Amstore to set up an enquiry form that sends contact details directly to their Workbooks CRM system, saving the Amstore employees the manual hardship of having to enter these details into the system every time they receive an enquiry.\r\nMarcelo explained, “The web-to-lead functionality is a real benefit for us. It saves at least 10-15 minutes of admin time, several times a day, spread over several people. That is quite a lot of saved minutes per day / week / month / year, and certainly frees up my sales team to spend more time selling and speaking to customers.”\r\nTHE WORKBOOKS REPORTING ENGINE\r\nAnother feature that has saved the Amstore team a lot of man-hours is the Workbooks reporting engine. Marcelo commented,“It is hard to imagine a day without it. It is so easy to run a report and have visibility of any area of your business.”\r\n","alias":"workbookscom-for-creative-agency","roi":0,"seo":{"title":"Workbooks.com for creative agency","keywords":"Amstore, Workbooks, that, system, business, time, were, they","description":"INDUSTRY: Retail &amp; Distribution\r\nNUMBER OF EMPLOYEES: 11-50\r\nIMPLEMENTATION DATE: April 2012\r\nTECHNOLOGY: Workbooks Business, Multi Currency\r\nAmstore is a leading Digital Media production company, servicing the corporate and entertainment markets. Amstore ","og:title":"Workbooks.com for creative agency","og:description":"INDUSTRY: Retail &amp; Distribution\r\nNUMBER OF EMPLOYEES: 11-50\r\nIMPLEMENTATION DATE: April 2012\r\nTECHNOLOGY: Workbooks Business, Multi Currency\r\nAmstore is a leading Digital Media production company, servicing the corporate and entertainment markets. 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It provides a single 360° view of customers and the information is accessible anytime, anywhere.\r\n\r\nProductivity is increased, operations are streamlined, insightful decisions are made and the business is better equipped to differentiate against the competition.\r\n\r\nToday 1400 customers in over 50 countries trust Workbooks to run their business.","companyTypes":[],"products":{},"vendoredProductsCount":1,"suppliedProductsCount":1,"supplierImplementations":[],"vendorImplementations":[],"userImplementations":[],"userImplementationsCount":0,"supplierImplementationsCount":1,"vendorImplementationsCount":1,"vendorPartnersCount":0,"supplierPartnersCount":0,"b4r":0,"categories":{},"companyUrl":"https://www.workbooks.com/","countryCodes":[],"certifications":[],"isSeller":false,"isSupplier":false,"isVendor":false,"presenterCodeLng":"","seo":{"title":"Workbooks","keywords":"Workbooks, business, price, management, customers, view, 360°, single","description":"<div>Headquartered in Reading, United Kingdom, Workbooks delivers cloud-based CRM and business applications to growing and mid-market organisations, at an affordable price.</div>\r\n<div></div>\r\n<div>Workbooks extends beyond sales, marketing and customer support","og:title":"Workbooks","og:description":"<div>Headquartered in Reading, United Kingdom, Workbooks delivers cloud-based CRM and business applications to growing and mid-market organisations, at an affordable price.</div>\r\n<div></div>\r\n<div>Workbooks extends beyond sales, marketing and customer support","og:image":"https://old.roi4cio.com/uploads/roi/company/Workbooks.png"},"eventUrl":""},"vendors":[{"id":4036,"title":"Workbooks","logoURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/uploads/roi/company/Workbooks.png","alias":"workbooks","address":"","roles":[],"description":"Headquartered in Reading, United Kingdom, Workbooks delivers cloud-based CRM and business applications to growing and mid-market organisations, at an affordable price.\r\n\r\nWorkbooks extends beyond sales, marketing and customer support to include order management and fulfilment, invoicing and supplier management, at a price which is typically 50-70% less than solutions such as Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics.\r\n\r\nWorkbooks joins up the entire organisation around data and processes, promoting teamwork and collaboration. It provides a single 360° view of customers and the information is accessible anytime, anywhere.\r\n\r\nProductivity is increased, operations are streamlined, insightful decisions are made and the business is better equipped to differentiate against the competition.\r\n\r\nToday 1400 customers in over 50 countries trust Workbooks to run their business.","companyTypes":[],"products":{},"vendoredProductsCount":1,"suppliedProductsCount":1,"supplierImplementations":[],"vendorImplementations":[],"userImplementations":[],"userImplementationsCount":0,"supplierImplementationsCount":1,"vendorImplementationsCount":1,"vendorPartnersCount":0,"supplierPartnersCount":0,"b4r":0,"categories":{},"companyUrl":"https://www.workbooks.com/","countryCodes":[],"certifications":[],"isSeller":false,"isSupplier":false,"isVendor":false,"presenterCodeLng":"","seo":{"title":"Workbooks","keywords":"Workbooks, business, price, management, customers, view, 360°, single","description":"<div>Headquartered in Reading, United Kingdom, Workbooks delivers cloud-based CRM and business applications to growing and mid-market organisations, at an affordable price.</div>\r\n<div></div>\r\n<div>Workbooks extends beyond sales, marketing and customer support","og:title":"Workbooks","og:description":"<div>Headquartered in Reading, United Kingdom, Workbooks delivers cloud-based CRM and business applications to growing and mid-market organisations, at an affordable price.</div>\r\n<div></div>\r\n<div>Workbooks extends beyond sales, marketing and customer support","og:image":"https://old.roi4cio.com/uploads/roi/company/Workbooks.png"},"eventUrl":""}],"products":[{"id":1135,"logo":false,"scheme":false,"title":"Workbooks.com","vendorVerified":0,"rating":"1.00","implementationsCount":1,"suppliersCount":0,"alias":"workbookscom","companyTypes":[],"description":"<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Workbooks CRM helps you run campaigns and generate more quality leads.&nbsp;</span>\r\nWe give you the tools you need to execute your marketing strategy and measure ROI.\r\nFeatures to support Marketing Success\r\nData Management, Profiling &amp; Targeting\r\nGather business intelligence on your target accounts/market. Manage all your accounts/contacts within your CRM. Target your ‘ideal’ customer, based on their profile.&nbsp;\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Email Campaigns</span>\r\nSegment your database. Use templates to send targeted email messages or integrate directly with leading email marketing providers such as MailChimp or dotmailer. Gain visibility of all prospect/customer interaction and track key metrics (such as open and click rates) against relevant marketing campaigns.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Event Management</span>\r\nPlan, organise and promote live events, webinars or training courses from within Workbooks CRM. Allow delegates to self-register and automatically manage scheduled communication to contacts.&nbsp;\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Lead Scoring</span>\r\nAllocate criteria to help sales and marketing prioritise their time. Distribute leads to the right teams for follow-up. Use scoring to ensure sales spend their time following-up on the deals most likely to convert.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Website Analytics</span>\r\nTurn anonymous traffic into sales by discovering who was on your website and what pages they viewed. Knowing visitor interests prior to a call will help sales conversion rates and marketing can nurture more effectively by sending the most relevant information.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Supplier Management</span>\r\nTypically you will have a multitude of partners who provide you with marketing services such as lead purchase, email marketing, lead nurturing, event management, design &amp; print contractors etc. Track and manage these suppliers in Workbooks so the relevant information is stored in one place.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Track Marketing Activities</span>\r\nManage your/your team's day-to-day workload and keep on top of outstanding actions to ensure project milestones are hit and campaigns are delivered on time. Tasks and Meetings can be associated with specific marketing campaigns to provide full visibility.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Telemarketing Campaigns</span>\r\nData can be segmented and added to Marketing Campaigns to enable Telemarketing teams to focus on delivering targeted messaging. Track progress and review performance easily and effectively.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Lead Management</span>\r\nIdentify your most profitable lead channels by tracking the source of your leads. Automatically assign leads to Marketing Campaigns. Categorise your leads and harvest relevant contact information in one place to help you convert more prospects into sales.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Website Lead Capture</span>\r\nAutomatically capture leads from your website, assign them to queues/campaigns and notify your sales team members.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Marketing Metrics</span>\r\nCapture key information such as campaign ROI, lead volumes by source, lead conversion. Use Dashboards and Reports to ensure you have real-time information at your fingertips rather than spending time manually updating outdated spreadsheets.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">POs Management</span>\r\nManage your marketing expenditure more effectively. Raise Purchase Orders and track marketing expenditure for goods or services you are purchasing. Easily identify the current status of Supplier Orders and whether they have been approved/paid/delivered.\r\nWorkbooks CRM enables you to work more effectively, to better identify opportunities, close more deals and grow revenue.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Features to support Sales Success</span>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Contact Management &amp; Prospect Profiling</span>\r\nUse every interaction with a prospect to further your business intelligence. Capture knowledge, map relationships and segment your data to improve sales prospecting. Sync everything with Outlook, Microsoft Exchange/Office 365 or Google Apps.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Opportunity Management</span>\r\nManage sales opportunities, improve conversation rates, drive best practice across your sales team and grow revenue. With a CRM system undermining your sales execution, you can ensure that your Sales people share a common methodology, understand where their prospects are in the sales process and address their needs effectively - ultimately increasing closure rates.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Sales Performance Metrics</span>\r\nGenerate Reports and Dashboards that give you insight into your sales pipeline and performance. By understanding your sales performance you can improve execution, increase conversion rates and grow your revenues.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Quotations</span>\r\nBuild professional looking quotations in a matter of minutes. Standardise terms and conditions, control discounting and ensure quotations are followed-up effectively.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Tracking Sales Activities</span>\r\nRecord Sales Activities to ensure that Opportunities are progressed effectively and no calls are overlooked. Analyse which activities are the most productive and replicate these as best-practice examples for the whole team.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Sales Forecasting</span>\r\nEnable your sales people to forecast effectively. Identify your ‘best case’ and ‘commit’. Determine how likely those deals are to close and if your team is likely to hit target. Generate Reports and Dashboards to provide real-time visibility to sales teams and managers.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Existing Account Management</span>\r\nManage your customers more effectively by using the data held in your CRM. Understand your customer landscape, improve retention rates, up-sell within an account. Improve your customer service.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Order Creation &amp; Processing</span>\r\nCreate and manage orders within your CRM. Turn quotes into orders with a single click and track the status of orders as they are fulfilled and invoiced.","shortDescription":"Workbooks.com CRM brings your Sales, Marketing and Customer Service teams together.","type":null,"isRoiCalculatorAvaliable":false,"isConfiguratorAvaliable":false,"bonus":100,"usingCount":15,"sellingCount":12,"discontinued":0,"rebateForPoc":0,"rebate":0,"seo":{"title":"Workbooks.com","keywords":"your, sales, marketing, effectively, Management, more, with, ensure","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Workbooks CRM helps you run campaigns and generate more quality leads.&nbsp;</span>\r\nWe give you the tools you need to execute your marketing strategy and measure ROI.\r\nFeatures to support Marketing Success\r\nData Management, Pr","og:title":"Workbooks.com","og:description":"<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Workbooks CRM helps you run campaigns and generate more quality leads.&nbsp;</span>\r\nWe give you the tools you need to execute your marketing strategy and measure ROI.\r\nFeatures to support Marketing Success\r\nData Management, Pr"},"eventUrl":"","translationId":1136,"dealDetails":null,"roi":null,"price":null,"bonusForReference":null,"templateData":[],"testingArea":"","categories":[{"id":71,"title":"CRM - Customer Relationship Management","alias":"crm-customer-relationship-management","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Customer service</span> is the provision of service to customers before, during and after a purchase. The perception of success of such interactions is dependent on employees &quot;who can adjust themselves to the personality of the guest&quot;. Customer service concerns the priority an organization assigns to customer service relative to components such as product innovation and pricing. In this sense, an organization that values good customer service may spend more money in training employees than the average organization or may proactively interview customers for feedback.\r\nA <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">customer support</span> is a range of customer services to assist customers in making cost effective and correct use of a product. It includes assistance in planning, installation, training, trouble shooting, maintenance, upgrading, and disposal of a product. These services even may be done at customer's side where he/she uses the product or service. In this case it is called &quot;at home customer services&quot; or &quot;at home customer support.&quot;\r\nRegarding technology, products such as mobile phones, televisions, computers, software products or other electronic or mechanical goods, it is termed technical support. \r\nCustomer service may be provided by a person (e.g., sales and service representative), or by automated means, such as kiosks, Internet sites, and apps.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM </span>(Customer Relationship Management) is an approach to manage a company's interaction with current and potential customers. It uses data analysis about customers' history with a company to improve business relationships with customers, specifically focusing on customer retention and ultimately driving sales growth.\r\nOne important aspect of the CRM approach is the systems of CRM that compile data from a range of different communication channels, including a company's website, telephone, email, live chat, marketing materials and more recently, social media. Through the CRM approach and the systems used to facilitate it, businesses learn more about their target audiences and how to best cater to their needs.\r\nCRM helps users focus on their organization’s relationships with individual people including customers, service users, colleagues, or suppliers.\r\nWhen people talk about customer relationship management system, they might mean any of three things: \r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as Technology</span>: This is a technology product, often in the cloud, that teams use to record, report and analyse interactions between the company and users. This is also called a CRM system or solution.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as a Strategy</span>: This is a business’ philosophy about how relationships with customers and potential customers should be managed.&nbsp; </li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as a Process</span>: Think of this as a system a business adopts to nurture and manage those relationships.</li></ul>\r\n<br /><br /><br />","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">Why is CRM important?</span></h1>\r\nCRM management system enables a business to deepen its relationships with customers, service users, colleagues, partners and suppliers.\r\nForging good relationships and keeping track of prospects and customers is crucial for customer acquisition and retention, which is at the heart of a CRM’s function. You can see everything in one place — a simple, customizable dashboard that can tell you a customer’s previous history with you, the status of their orders, any outstanding customer service issues, and more.\r\nGartner predicts that by 2021, CRM technology will be the single largest revenue area of spending in enterprise software. If your business is going to last, you know that you need a strategy for the future. For forward-thinking businesses, CRM is the framework for that strategy.\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What are the benefits of CRM?</span></h1>\r\nBy collecting and organising data about customer interactions, making it accessible and actionable for all, and facilitating analysis of that data, CRM offers many benefits and advantages.<br />The benefits and advantages of CRM include:\r\n<ul><li>Enhanced contact management</li><li>Cross-team collaboration</li><li>Heightened productivity</li><li>Empowered sales management</li><li>Accurate sales forecasting</li><li>Reliable reporting</li><li>Improved sales metrics</li><li>Increased customer satisfaction and retention</li><li>Boosted marketing ROI</li><li>Enriched products and services</li></ul>\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What are the key features of most popular CRM software programs?</span></h1>\r\nWhile many CRM solutions differ in their specific value propositions — depending on your business size, priority function, or industry type — they usually share some core features. These, in fact, are the foundation of any top CRM software, without which you might end up using an inferior app or an over-rated address book. So, let’s discuss the key features you need to look for when figuring out the best CRM software for your business.\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Contact management</span>. The best CRM solutions aren’t just an address book that only organizes contact details. It manages customer data in a centralized place and gives you a 360-degree view of your customers. You should be able to organize customers’ personal information, demographics, interactions, and transactions in ways that are meaningful to your goals or processes. Moreover, a good contact management feature lets you personalize your outreach campaign. By collecting personal, social, and purchase data, it will help you to segment target audience groups in different ways.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Reporting and dashboards</span>. These features of customer relationship management allow you to use analytics to interpret customer data. Reporting is very useful if you want to consolidate disparate data and churn out insights in different visualizations. This lets you make better decisions or proactively deal with market trends and customer behavioral patterns. The more visual widgets a CRM software has, the better you can present reports. Furthermore, a best customer relationship management software will generate real-time data, making reporting more accurate and timely. Reporting also keeps you tab on sales opportunities like upsell, resell, and cross-sell, especially when integrated with e-commerce platforms.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Lead management</span>. These features let you manage leads all the way to win-loss stage. They pave a clear path to conversion, so you can quickly assess how the business is performing. One of the main three legs that comprises the best client relationship management software (the other two being contact management and reporting), lead management unburdens the sales team from follow-ups, tracking, and repetitive tasks.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Deals and tasks</span>. Deals and tasks are closely associated with leads. Deals are leads at the negotiation stage, so it’s critical to keep a close eye on their associated tasks for a higher chance of conversion.<br />CRM software tools should also let you track both deals and tasks in their respective windows or across the sales stages. Whether you’re viewing a contact or analyzing the sales pipeline, you should be able to immediately check the deal’s tasks and details. Deals and tasks should also have user permissions to protect leaks of sensitive data. Similarly, alerts are critical to tasks so deadlines are met. Notifications are usually sent via email or prominently displayed on the user’s dashboard.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Campaign management</span>. Solid CRM software will integrate this feature to enable marketing processes from outreach concept to A/B testing to deployment and to post analysis. This will allow you to sort campaigns to target segments in your contacts and define deployment strategies. You will also be able to define metrics for various channels, then plow back the insights generated by post-campaign analytics into planning more campaigns.<br />Recurring outreach efforts can also be automated. For instance, you can set to instantly appropriate content to contacts based on their interest or send tiered autoresponders based on campaign feedback.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Email management</span>. By integrating with popular email clients like Gmail and Outlook, CRM solutions can capture email messages and sort important details that can be saved in contacts or synced with leads. They can also track activities like opened emails, forwarded emails, clicked links, and downloaded files. Emails can also be qualified for prospecting.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Social media management. </span>Popular CRM systems feature an integrated social media management where you can view different social media pages from the CRM’s interface. This is a convenient way to post, reply on, and manage all your pages. Likewise, this feature gives you a better perspective on how customers are interacting with your brand. A glean of their likes and dislikes, interests, shares, and public conversations helps you to assess customer biases and preferences. Customers are also increasingly using social media to contact companies; hence, a good CRM should alert you for brand mentions.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Mobile access</span>. With more users accessing apps via mobile devices, many vendors have been prioritizing mobile-first platforms. Emergence Capital Partners study found over 300 mobile-first apps so far and CRM is definitely one their targets. Many CRM solutions have both Android and iOS apps. Mobile access works in two ways to be highly appreciated: accessing data and inputting data while on location. Field sales with the latest sales information on hand may be able to interest prospects better. Conversely, sales reps can quickly update deals across the pipeline even as they come off a client meeting.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/CRM_-_Customer_Relationship_Management.png"},{"id":341,"title":"Customer Service","alias":"customer-service","description":" Customer service is the process of ensuring customer satisfaction with a product or service. Often, customer service takes place while performing a transaction for the customer, such as making a sale or returning an item. Customer service can take the form of in-person interaction, a phone call, self-service systems, or by other means.\r\nCustomer service is an important part of maintaining ongoing client relationships, which is key to continuing revenue. For this reason, many companies have worked hard to increase their customer satisfaction levels.\r\nMost successful businesses recognize the importance of providing outstanding customer service. Courteous and empathetic interaction with a trained customer service representative can mean the difference between losing or retaining a customer.\r\nWhen problems arise, customers should receive timely attention to the issue. Prompt attention to emails and phone calls is critical to maintaining good relations. Requiring customers to stand in long lines or sit on hold can sour an interaction before it begins.\r\nIdeally, customer service should be a one-stop endeavor for the consumer. For example, if a customer calls a helpline regarding a problem with a product, the customer service representative should follow through with the customer until the issue is fully resolved.\r\nThis may entail scheduling appointments with in-person repair personnel if the problem cannot be resolved on the phone, or transferring a call to skilled technicians in another department. Proactively following up with the customer to ensure that he or she is fully satisfied is another smart move.","materialsDescription":" What are customer service standards?\r\nCustomer service standards are an internal corporate set of rules governing the company's customer service activities, an algorithm for communicating with customers, and general standards for responding to unusual situations. The standard of customer service is an integral part of the corporate standard of the company.\r\nFunctions of customer service standards:\r\n<ol><li>To order. The client does not encounter problems, does not see them, which means that he is confident that all the staff without exception are professionals who know their business.</li><li>To control. It is difficult to assess and monitor the work of each manager if there are no clear criteria for evaluation. At the same time, the implementation of the sales plan cannot be the only parameter of the assessment; you need to know whether the manager of customer service standards adopted in this company adheres.</li><li>To adapt. Among other things, the availability of customer service standards simplifies the procedure.</li></ol>\r\nCustomer service standards are effective if the customer does not see the difference between the work of two (or more) managers, and sees only “proprietary” service, always the same, regardless of any external factors or circumstances. The customer service standard, which has been tested in practice, backed up by experience (perhaps even someone else's), created on the basis of analytical studies and recognized methods, can be called &quot;gold&quot;. It allows you to increase profits, improve the image of the company, attract new customers.\r\nCustomer service standards are an important part of the company's brand. But, in addition, the standards are necessary and other units, in particular, the department to work with staff. Therefore, their development must take into account the needs of all interested services of the company.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What is the purpose of introducing customer service standards in the company?</span>\r\nThe objectives of implementing the standards are as follows:\r\n<ul><li>For employees with experience: minimize the number of erroneous and unnecessary actions. The result of this will be saving time of each employee (no errors - no need to spend time correcting them). And, as a result, increased productivity.</li><li>For novice employees: customer service standards allow you to transfer the necessary knowledge in the most concise manner and in a short time.</li><li>For the company: the abolition of dependence on the old-timers. Not all employees who have worked in the company for many years (or even since the day of foundation) are able to resist the so-called star disease. Having knowledge and experience, a person loses the ability to objectively evaluate his work, he begins to think that he is the best manager in the company. It can end very badly - in the event of dismissal, such an employee will take the base, and turn clients against the company. Standards for customer service are needed to ensure that all employees can be assessed on a single scale, based on the actual benefits they bring to the company, as well as the attitude of the employee to the company.</li><li>For the company: the uniformity of control activities of managers. Standards are unequivocal, exclude double interpretations, and therefore cannot cause controversy about the rightness of an employee or employer.</li><li>For managers: the standards of uniform customer service are the same for all managers, and this makes it possible to make the pay of each manager absolutely transparent and intelligible. Realizing that there will be no double interpretations, the manager may not be afraid that he will be paid less than expected - all his mistakes and achievements are immediately visible and understandable.</li></ul>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">The application of service standards allows you:</span>\r\n<ul><li>to develop a company style in dealing with clients;</li><li>to increase the effectiveness of the work of managers with new customers;</li><li>to bring the quality of communication with customers to a higher level;</li><li>to create a positive opinion of the company about the company, so that it can be recommended to its acquaintances, thus increasing the number of potential and then real customers;</li><li>to minimize conflicts between the manager and the customer;</li><li>to develop a technology for training newcomers;</li><li>to transfer the assessment of the work of the manager from the subjective to the objective, transparent and understandable to everyone;</li><li>to establish a procedure for controlling the work of personnel;</li><li>to increase the motivation of managers to work.</li></ul>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Benefits of applying service standards</span>\r\n<ul><li>The accumulation of experience: the entire base focuses on the company, and not on the hands of managers, &quot;old-timers.&quot; Thus, the departure of one or several “old” employees does not become a “natural disaster” for the company.</li><li>Motivation, analysis and control: customer service standards make it possible to develop a transparent scheme of managers' motivation based on a clear, almost mathematical analysis of their work. The sales process is optimized.</li><li>Setting goals. With the help of standards, the company has the ability to set clear, reasonable plans. This allows you to keep the atmosphere in the team friendly and stable, and the lack of &quot;muffled&quot; tasks - to increase the loyalty of managers to the company.</li><li>Standards of customer service is a fairly mobile system that allows you to immediately detect errors in working with clients and quickly eliminate them. In addition, at any stage of working with a client, the head of the sales department can intervene in the process, noticing an error in the work of the manager, and even be proactive in order to prevent an error to which the manager is heading.</li><li>Quick and easy start for beginners. Customer service standards are actually a knowledge base, collected, analyzed, and streamlined. Such information is easily transmitted and assimilated by beginners, which means that the beginner quickly gets to work and starts to make a profit. In addition, a newbie will not spoil relations with a client by awkward actions, since he already knows what to do in any conflict and problem situations.</li><li>Customer confidence. Customer service standards allow the latter to feel confident in the company - no matter where the customer is, he will always easily recognize “his” company by brand features and can be absolutely sure that in a small town they will be served as qualitatively as in a million-plus city, because that the company is well aware of their work. So, such a company can be trusted.</li></ul>","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Customer_Service.png"},{"id":339,"title":"Marketing","alias":"marketing","description":" Marketing is the study and management of exchange relationships. It is the business process of creating relationships with and satisfying customers. Because marketing is used to attract customers, it is one of the primary components of business management and commerce. Marketers can direct product to other businesses (B2B marketing) or directly to consumers (B2C marketing).\r\nRegardless of who is being marketed to, several factors, including the perspective the marketers will use. These market orientations determine how marketers will approach the planning stage of marketing. This leads into the marketing mix, which outlines the specifics of the product and how it will be sold. This can in turn, be affected by the environment surrounding the product, the results of marketing research and market research, and the characteristics of the product's target market.\r\nOnce these factors are determined, marketers must then decide what methods will be used to market the product. This decision is based on the factors analyzed in the planning stage as well as where the product is in the product life cycle.\r\nMarketing is defined by the American Marketing Association as &quot;the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large&quot;. The term developed from the original meaning which referred literally to going to market with goods for sale. From a sales process engineering perspective, marketing is &quot;a set of processes that are interconnected and interdependent with other functions of a business aimed at achieving customer interest and satisfaction&quot;.\r\nPhilip Kotler defined marketing as &quot;Satisfying needs and wants through an exchange process&quot;, and a decade later defines it as “a social and managerial process by which individuals and groups obtain what they want and need through creating, offering and exchanging products of value with others.”\r\nThe Chartered Institute of Marketing defines marketing as &quot;the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably&quot;. A similar concept is the value-based marketing which states the role of marketing to contribute to increasing shareholder value. In this context, marketing can be defined as &quot;the management process that seeks to maximise returns to shareholders by developing relationships with valued customers and creating a competitive advantage&quot;.\r\nIn the past, marketing practice tended to be seen as a creative industry, which included advertising, distribution and selling. However, because the academic study of marketing makes extensive use of social sciences, psychology, sociology, mathematics, economics, anthropology and neuroscience, the profession is now widely recognized as a science, allowing numerous universities to offer Master-of-Science (MSc) programs.\r\nThe process of marketing is that of bringing a product to market, which includes these steps: broad market research; market targeting and market segmentation; determining distribution, pricing and promotion strategies; developing a communications strategy; budgeting; and visioning long-term market development goals. Many parts of the marketing process (e.g. product design, art director, brand management, advertising, inbound marketing, copywriting etc.) involve use of the creative arts.","materialsDescription":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What the differences between B2B and B2C Marketing?</span>\r\nThe different goals of B2B and B2C marketing lead to differences in the B2B and B2C markets. The main differences in these markets are demand, purchasing volume, amount of customers, customer concentration, distribution, buying nature, buying influences, negotiations, reciprocity, leasing and promotional methods.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Demand:</span> B2B demand is derived because businesses buy products based on how much demand there is for the final consumer product. Businesses buy products based on customer's wants and needs. B2C demand is primarily because customers buy products based on their own wants and needs.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Purchasing Volume:</span> Businesses buy products in large volumes to distribute to consumers. Consumers buy products in smaller volumes suitable for personal use.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Amount of Customers:</span> There are relatively fewer businesses to market to than direct consumers.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Customer Concentration:</span> Businesses that specialize in a particular market tend to be geographically concentrated while customers that buy products from these businesses are not concentrated.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Distribution:</span> B2B products pass directly from the producer of the product to the business while B2C products must additionally go through a wholesaler or retailer.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Buying Nature:</span> B2B purchasing is a formal process done by professional buyers and sellers while B2C purchasing is informal.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Buying Influences:</span> B2B purchasing is influenced by multiple people in various departments such as quality control, accounting, and logistics while B2C marketing is only influenced by the person making the purchase and possibly a few others.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Negotiations:</span> In B2B marketing, negotiating for lower prices or added benefits is commonly accepted while in B2C marketing (particularly in Western cultures) prices are fixed.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Reciprocity:</span> Businesses tend to buy from businesses they sell to. For example, a business that sells printer ink is more likely to buy office chairs from a supplier that buys the business's printer ink. In B2C marketing, this does not occur because consumers are not also selling products.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Leasing:</span> Businesses tend to lease expensive items while consumers tend to save up to buy expensive items.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Promotional Methods:</span> In B2B marketing, the most common promotional method is personal selling. B2C marketing mostly uses sales promotion, public relations, advertising, and social media.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What are marketing orientations?</span>\r\nA marketing orientation has been defined as a &quot;philosophy of business management.&quot; or &quot;a corporate state of mind&quot; or as an &quot;organization[al] culture&quot;. Although scholars continue to debate the precise nature of specific orientations that inform marketing practice, the most commonly cited orientations are as follows:\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Product</span></span>\r\nA firm employing a product orientation is mainly concerned with the quality of its product. A product orientation is based on the assumption that all things being equal, consumers will purchase products of superior quality. The approach is most effective when the firm has deep insights into customer needs and desires as derived from research and/or intuition and understands consumer's quality expectations and price consumers are willing to pay. Although the product orientation has largely been supplanted by the marketing orientation, firms practicing a product orientation can still be found in haute couture and arts marketing.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Sales</span></span>\r\nA sales orientation focuses on the selling/promotion of the firm's existing products, rather than developing new products to satisfy unmet needs or wants. This orientation seeks to attain the highest possible sales through promotion and direct sales techniques. The sales orientation &quot;is typically practiced with unsought goods.&quot; One study found that industrial companies are more likely to hold a sales orientation than consumer goods companies. The approach may also suit scenarios in which a firm holds dead stock, or otherwise sells a product that is in high demand, with little likelihood of changes in consumer tastes diminishing demand.\r\nA 2011 meta-analyses found that the factors with the greatest impact on sales performance are a salesperson's sales-related knowledge (knowledge of market segments, sales presentation skills, conflict resolution, and products), degree of adaptiveness (changing behavior based on the aforementioned knowledge), role clarity (salesperson's role is to expressly to sell), cognitive aptitude (intelligence) and work engagement (motivation and interest in a sales role).\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Production</span></span>\r\nA firm focusing on a production orientation specializes in producing as much as possible of a given product or service in order to achieve economies of scale or economies of scope. A production orientation may be deployed when a high demand for a product or service exists, coupled with certainty that consumer tastes and preferences remain relatively constant (similar to the sales orientation). The so-called production era is thought to have dominated marketing practice from the 1860s to the 1930s, but other theorists argue that evidence of the production orientation can still be found in some companies or industries. Specifically, Kotler and Armstrong note that the production philosophy is &quot;one of the oldest philosophies that guides sellers... [and] is still useful in some situations.&quot;\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Marketing</span></span>\r\nThe marketing orientation is the most common orientation used in contemporary marketing. It is a customer-centric approach that involves a firm basing its marketing program around products that suit new consumer tastes. Firms adopting a marketing orientation typically engage in extensive market research to gauge consumer desires, use R&amp;D (Research &amp; Development) to develop a product attuned to the revealed information, and then utilize promotion techniques to ensure consumers are aware of the product's existence and the benefits it can deliver. Scales designed to measure a firm's overall market orientation have been developed and found to be robust in a variety of contexts.\r\nThe marketing orientation has three prime facets, which are:\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Customer orientation:</span> A firm in the market economy can survive by producing goods that people are willing and able to buy. Consequently, ascertaining consumer demand is vital for a firm's future viability and even existence as a going concern.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Organizational orientation:</span> The marketing department is of prime importance within the functional level of an organization. Information from the marketing department is used to guide the actions of a company's other departments.\r\nAs an example, a marketing department could ascertain (via marketing research) that consumers desired a new type of product or a new usage for an existing product. With this in mind, the marketing department would inform the R&amp;D department to create a prototype of a product/service based on consumers' new desires.\r\nThe production department would then start to manufacture the product, while the marketing department would focus on the promotion, distribution, pricing, etc. of the product. Additionally, a firm's finance department would be consulted, with respect to securing appropriate funding for the development, production, and promotion of the product. Finance may oppose the required capital expenditure since it could undermine a healthy cash flow for the organization.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Mutually beneficial exchange:</span> In a transaction in the market economy, a firm gains revenue, which thus leads to more profits, market shares, and/or sales. A consumer, on the other hand, gains the satisfaction of a need/want, utility, reliability and value for money from the purchase of a product or service.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Societal marketing</span></span>\r\nA number of scholars and practitioners have argued that marketers have a greater social responsibility than simply satisfying customers and providing them with superior value. Marketing organizations that have embraced the societal marketing concept typically identify key stakeholder groups such as employees, customers, and local communities. Companies that adopt a societal marketing perspective typically practice triple bottom line reporting whereby they publish social impact and environmental impact reports alongside financial performance reports. Sustainable marketing or green marketing is an extension of societal marketing.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Marketing.png"},{"id":337,"title":"Sales","alias":"sales","description":" Sales are activities related to selling or the number of goods or services sold in a given targeted time period.\r\nThe seller, or the provider of the goods or services, completes a sale in response to an acquisition, appropriation, requisition, or a direct interaction with the buyer at the point of sale. There is a passing of title (property or ownership) of the item, and the settlement of a price, in which agreement is reached on a price for which transfer of ownership of the item will occur. The seller, not the purchaser, typically executes the sale and it may be completed prior to the obligation of payment. In the case of indirect interaction, a person who sells goods or service on behalf of the owner is known as a salesman or saleswoman or salesperson, but this often refers to someone selling goods in a store/shop, in which case other terms are also common, including salesclerk, shop assistant, and retail clerk.\r\nIn common law countries, sales are governed generally by the common law and commercial codes. In the United States, the laws governing sales of goods are somewhat uniform to the extent that most jurisdictions have adopted Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code, albeit with some non-uniform variations.\r\nA person or organization expressing an interest in acquiring the offered item of value is referred to as a potential buyer, prospective customer, or prospect. Buying and selling are understood to be two sides of the same &quot;coin&quot; or transaction. Both seller and buyer engage in a process of negotiation to consummate the exchange of values. The exchange, or selling, process has implied rules and identifiable stages. It is implied that the selling process will proceed fairly and ethically so that the parties end up nearly equally rewarded. The stages of selling, and buying, involve getting acquainted, assessing each party's need for the other's item of value, and determining if the values to be exchanged are equivalent or nearly so, or, in buyer's terms, &quot;worth the price&quot;. Sometimes, sellers have to use their own experiences when selling products with appropriate discounts.\r\nAlthough the skills required are different, from a management viewpoint, sales is a part of marketing. Sales often form a separate grouping in a corporate structure, employing separate specialist operatives known as salespersons (singular: salesperson). Selling is considered by many to be a sort of persuading &quot;art&quot;. Contrary to popular belief, the methodological approach of selling refers to a systematic process of repetitive and measurable milestones, by which a salesman relates his or her offering of a product or service in return enabling the buyer to achieve their goal in an economic way.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What's the Difference Between Sales and Marketing?</span>\r\nSales and Marketing: two terms we often hear together when working with mid-size companies. In some ways, this is logical because the two need to work together. But in fact, Sales and Marketing are two very different functions and require very different skills.\r\nBusiness leaders know what Operations are; they make stuff. They know what Accounting is; they record and control the money. And they know what Sales do; they sell stuff. So if you are not making stuff, selling stuff, or recording the money—what is marketing and why do you need it?\r\nWhat's the difference between Sales and Marketing? To answer this question, let's define what Sales and Marketing are separately and how they support one another.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is Marketing? Aligning with Customers, Now and for the Future</span></span>\r\nA key job of Marketing is to understand the marketplace from the perspective of the customer looking back towards the company and helping lead the company where it should be in the future. Marketing’s job is to direct the organization toward the segments, or groups of customers and channels where the company can profitably compete. It should help the organization see how it needs to modify its product offerings, pricing, and communication so that it meets the needs of the distribution channel or end customers.\r\nMarketing also needs to convert the market understanding into tools and tactics to attract the market, build (often digital) relationships, and develop leads. Without Sales, Marketing efforts run short. Marketing directs Sales as to where they should be hunting and what ammo to use. Note, however, that if Marketing becomes a sales support function focused only on the now, the future can become lost.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Without Marketing, Sales Suffers</span></span>\r\nNot even the best hunter can bring home dinner if they are shooting blanks at decoys. Markets are constantly changing. The job of marketing is to stay ahead of the changes and help the hunters see where they should be hunting and provide them with the right ammunition. If Marketing is only focused on delivering the ammunition for today, nobody will see where the industry is moving or where the company needs to hunt next. This limits growth not only for Sales and Marketing but also for your entire organization.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Can You be Both Sales and Marketing?</span></span>\r\nIn all my years, working for companies that ranged from Fortune 100 to mid-size companies I have never met anyone who was really good at both sales and marketing. I have held the title of VP of Sales and Marketing, managing a 500 person sales and merchandising force. I was really a marketing person with sales authority. The skills required to focus on the now and the push of sales are different. In many ways, they are contrary to the skills of looking to the future and the customer perspective of marketing.\r\nEvery Sales organization feels they have a good understanding of their customers. But every Sales conversation with a customer has a sales transaction lurking in the background. Therefore, customers can never be completely open about their needs and want when talking to a sales person.\r\nFor a company to really grow, someone must have the job of looking out the window towards where the company needs to go in the future. For many companies, this is the job of the CEO and Sales hires someone to do some sales support and gives them a marketing title. But as companies grow, the job of CEO starts to become a full-time job in itself and the strategic role of Marketing gets short-changed. A study of mid-size companies by the University of Texas showed that companies that separated the roles of Marketing and Sales were much more likely to grow faster than the industry average.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Sales and Marketing: Today and the Future</span></span>\r\nSales need to be focused on the now. You can’t run a company unless your sales team is focused on bringing in today’s business. But you can’t really ask your Sales leaders where the company should go next and to develop the 18-month plan to get there without losing focus on today’s revenue. Besides, if your sales executive was really good at developing future-focused business strategies and tying that strategy to the plans and tools of marketing to make it happen, they would be a marketing person and not a now-focused sales person.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Sales.png"},{"id":152,"title":"Contact Center","alias":"contact-center","description":"A contact center is a central point from where you can contact.\r\nThe contact center typically includes one or more call centers but may include other types of customer contact, as well. A contact center is generally part of an enterprise's overall customer relationship management (CRM) strategy.<br />Contact centers and call centers are both centers for customer service, and the two terms are often used interchangeably, but a contact center supports more services than a typical call center.\r\nContact centers offer omnichannel customer support, including email, chat, voice over IP (VoIP) and website support. A call center typically uses phones as the main channel of communication and can handle a mass volume of calls.<br />Contact centers are used for inbound communication, outbound communication or a hybrid of both. Contact center agents also interact with customers via web chat, phone, email or other communication channels.\r\nThe contact center infrastructure that is necessary to support communications may be located on the same premises as the contact center, or it can be located externally.\r\nIn an on-premises scenario, the company that owns the contact center also owns and manages its own hardware and software. This requires staffing and IT investments that some companies choose to forgo by outsourcing those tasks to cloud providers or hosting companies.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is a Call Center?</span>\r\nTraditionally, a call center is an office where a large number of call center agents provide customer service over the telephone. Inbound call centers receive calls for customer support and often serve as a knowledge base for tech support, billing questions, and other customer service issues. These call centers focus on quick call resolution times and agent productivity. In outbound call centers, agents make calls rather than receive them. These could be sales calls, marketing offers, surveys, fundraising requests, or debt collection, for example.\r\nThe term “call center” conjures an image for many people of waiting on perpetual hold or being routed through an endless IVR that never gives them what they need. Because so many consumers have had a dreadful customer service experience along these lines, call centers have developed a bad rap. But as legacy phone systems give way to newer digital technologies, call centers are evolving.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is a Contact Center?</span>\r\nThe term &quot;contact center&quot; (or “contact centre”) reflects the modern reality that there are many other ways to connect with a customer these days besides by telephone. The combined trends of increased customer expectations and newer technologies that allow for many channels of communication are creating a shift in the traditional call center model which has existed for decades. Consumers want more ways to reach businesses, and businesses are looking for new ways to improve customer experience.\r\nWhile call center agents generally focus on inbound and outbound calls, either on traditional phone lines or over VoIP, contact center agents handle a wide variety of communications. In a modern multichannel contact center, technical support might be delivered over in-app chat or video, while order status updates are delivered via SMS, event promotions are sent as push notifications, surveys are deployed over Facebook Messenger, and sales inquiries received by email are sent directly to an agent to connect by phone. Call centers handle voice communications, contact centers handle all communications.\r\nA company’s contact center is usually integrated with their customer relationship management (CRM) system, where all interactions between the organization and the public are tracked, coordinated, and managed. Depending on the infrastructure and ecosystem, it could be comprised of an alphabet soup of complex components. Many companies have purchased off-the-shelf systems or a highly customized network of technologies from multiple vendors. Some companies have adopted a cloud-based solution or two, but they remain siloed from the rest of their systems and can’t talk to each other.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/Contact_Center1.png"}],"characteristics":[],"concurentProducts":[],"jobRoles":[],"organizationalFeatures":[],"complementaryCategories":[],"solutions":[],"materials":[],"useCases":[],"best_practices":[],"values":[],"implementations":[]}],"countries":[],"startDate":"2012-04-01","endDate":"2012-04-23","dealDate":"0000-00-00","price":0,"status":"finished","statusLabel":"Finished","isImplementation":true,"isAgreement":false,"confirmed":1,"implementationDetails":{"businessObjectives":{"id":14,"title":"Business objectives","translationKey":"businessObjectives","options":[{"id":4,"title":"Reduce Costs"},{"id":5,"title":"Enhance Staff Productivity"},{"id":7,"title":"Improve Customer Service"},{"id":252,"title":"Increase Customer Base"}]},"businessProcesses":{"id":11,"title":"Business process","translationKey":"businessProcesses","options":[{"id":176,"title":"No unified address book"},{"id":174,"title":"No unified email system"},{"id":177,"title":"Decentralized IT systems"},{"id":340,"title":"Low quality of customer service"},{"id":356,"title":"High costs of routine operations"},{"id":371,"title":"No control over the state of communication channels"},{"id":375,"title":"No support for mobile and remote users"},{"id":390,"title":"Low quality of customer support"},{"id":389,"title":"Customer attrition"},{"id":388,"title":"Failure to attract new customers"}]}},"categories":[{"id":71,"title":"CRM - Customer Relationship Management","alias":"crm-customer-relationship-management","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Customer service</span> is the provision of service to customers before, during and after a purchase. The perception of success of such interactions is dependent on employees &quot;who can adjust themselves to the personality of the guest&quot;. Customer service concerns the priority an organization assigns to customer service relative to components such as product innovation and pricing. In this sense, an organization that values good customer service may spend more money in training employees than the average organization or may proactively interview customers for feedback.\r\nA <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">customer support</span> is a range of customer services to assist customers in making cost effective and correct use of a product. It includes assistance in planning, installation, training, trouble shooting, maintenance, upgrading, and disposal of a product. These services even may be done at customer's side where he/she uses the product or service. In this case it is called &quot;at home customer services&quot; or &quot;at home customer support.&quot;\r\nRegarding technology, products such as mobile phones, televisions, computers, software products or other electronic or mechanical goods, it is termed technical support. \r\nCustomer service may be provided by a person (e.g., sales and service representative), or by automated means, such as kiosks, Internet sites, and apps.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM </span>(Customer Relationship Management) is an approach to manage a company's interaction with current and potential customers. It uses data analysis about customers' history with a company to improve business relationships with customers, specifically focusing on customer retention and ultimately driving sales growth.\r\nOne important aspect of the CRM approach is the systems of CRM that compile data from a range of different communication channels, including a company's website, telephone, email, live chat, marketing materials and more recently, social media. Through the CRM approach and the systems used to facilitate it, businesses learn more about their target audiences and how to best cater to their needs.\r\nCRM helps users focus on their organization’s relationships with individual people including customers, service users, colleagues, or suppliers.\r\nWhen people talk about customer relationship management system, they might mean any of three things: \r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as Technology</span>: This is a technology product, often in the cloud, that teams use to record, report and analyse interactions between the company and users. This is also called a CRM system or solution.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as a Strategy</span>: This is a business’ philosophy about how relationships with customers and potential customers should be managed.&nbsp; </li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as a Process</span>: Think of this as a system a business adopts to nurture and manage those relationships.</li></ul>\r\n<br /><br /><br />","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">Why is CRM important?</span></h1>\r\nCRM management system enables a business to deepen its relationships with customers, service users, colleagues, partners and suppliers.\r\nForging good relationships and keeping track of prospects and customers is crucial for customer acquisition and retention, which is at the heart of a CRM’s function. You can see everything in one place — a simple, customizable dashboard that can tell you a customer’s previous history with you, the status of their orders, any outstanding customer service issues, and more.\r\nGartner predicts that by 2021, CRM technology will be the single largest revenue area of spending in enterprise software. If your business is going to last, you know that you need a strategy for the future. For forward-thinking businesses, CRM is the framework for that strategy.\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What are the benefits of CRM?</span></h1>\r\nBy collecting and organising data about customer interactions, making it accessible and actionable for all, and facilitating analysis of that data, CRM offers many benefits and advantages.<br />The benefits and advantages of CRM include:\r\n<ul><li>Enhanced contact management</li><li>Cross-team collaboration</li><li>Heightened productivity</li><li>Empowered sales management</li><li>Accurate sales forecasting</li><li>Reliable reporting</li><li>Improved sales metrics</li><li>Increased customer satisfaction and retention</li><li>Boosted marketing ROI</li><li>Enriched products and services</li></ul>\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What are the key features of most popular CRM software programs?</span></h1>\r\nWhile many CRM solutions differ in their specific value propositions — depending on your business size, priority function, or industry type — they usually share some core features. These, in fact, are the foundation of any top CRM software, without which you might end up using an inferior app or an over-rated address book. So, let’s discuss the key features you need to look for when figuring out the best CRM software for your business.\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Contact management</span>. The best CRM solutions aren’t just an address book that only organizes contact details. It manages customer data in a centralized place and gives you a 360-degree view of your customers. You should be able to organize customers’ personal information, demographics, interactions, and transactions in ways that are meaningful to your goals or processes. Moreover, a good contact management feature lets you personalize your outreach campaign. By collecting personal, social, and purchase data, it will help you to segment target audience groups in different ways.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Reporting and dashboards</span>. These features of customer relationship management allow you to use analytics to interpret customer data. Reporting is very useful if you want to consolidate disparate data and churn out insights in different visualizations. This lets you make better decisions or proactively deal with market trends and customer behavioral patterns. The more visual widgets a CRM software has, the better you can present reports. Furthermore, a best customer relationship management software will generate real-time data, making reporting more accurate and timely. Reporting also keeps you tab on sales opportunities like upsell, resell, and cross-sell, especially when integrated with e-commerce platforms.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Lead management</span>. These features let you manage leads all the way to win-loss stage. They pave a clear path to conversion, so you can quickly assess how the business is performing. One of the main three legs that comprises the best client relationship management software (the other two being contact management and reporting), lead management unburdens the sales team from follow-ups, tracking, and repetitive tasks.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Deals and tasks</span>. Deals and tasks are closely associated with leads. Deals are leads at the negotiation stage, so it’s critical to keep a close eye on their associated tasks for a higher chance of conversion.<br />CRM software tools should also let you track both deals and tasks in their respective windows or across the sales stages. Whether you’re viewing a contact or analyzing the sales pipeline, you should be able to immediately check the deal’s tasks and details. Deals and tasks should also have user permissions to protect leaks of sensitive data. Similarly, alerts are critical to tasks so deadlines are met. Notifications are usually sent via email or prominently displayed on the user’s dashboard.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Campaign management</span>. Solid CRM software will integrate this feature to enable marketing processes from outreach concept to A/B testing to deployment and to post analysis. This will allow you to sort campaigns to target segments in your contacts and define deployment strategies. You will also be able to define metrics for various channels, then plow back the insights generated by post-campaign analytics into planning more campaigns.<br />Recurring outreach efforts can also be automated. For instance, you can set to instantly appropriate content to contacts based on their interest or send tiered autoresponders based on campaign feedback.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Email management</span>. By integrating with popular email clients like Gmail and Outlook, CRM solutions can capture email messages and sort important details that can be saved in contacts or synced with leads. They can also track activities like opened emails, forwarded emails, clicked links, and downloaded files. Emails can also be qualified for prospecting.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Social media management. </span>Popular CRM systems feature an integrated social media management where you can view different social media pages from the CRM’s interface. This is a convenient way to post, reply on, and manage all your pages. Likewise, this feature gives you a better perspective on how customers are interacting with your brand. A glean of their likes and dislikes, interests, shares, and public conversations helps you to assess customer biases and preferences. Customers are also increasingly using social media to contact companies; hence, a good CRM should alert you for brand mentions.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Mobile access</span>. With more users accessing apps via mobile devices, many vendors have been prioritizing mobile-first platforms. Emergence Capital Partners study found over 300 mobile-first apps so far and CRM is definitely one their targets. Many CRM solutions have both Android and iOS apps. Mobile access works in two ways to be highly appreciated: accessing data and inputting data while on location. Field sales with the latest sales information on hand may be able to interest prospects better. Conversely, sales reps can quickly update deals across the pipeline even as they come off a client meeting.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/CRM_-_Customer_Relationship_Management.png"},{"id":341,"title":"Customer Service","alias":"customer-service","description":" Customer service is the process of ensuring customer satisfaction with a product or service. Often, customer service takes place while performing a transaction for the customer, such as making a sale or returning an item. Customer service can take the form of in-person interaction, a phone call, self-service systems, or by other means.\r\nCustomer service is an important part of maintaining ongoing client relationships, which is key to continuing revenue. For this reason, many companies have worked hard to increase their customer satisfaction levels.\r\nMost successful businesses recognize the importance of providing outstanding customer service. Courteous and empathetic interaction with a trained customer service representative can mean the difference between losing or retaining a customer.\r\nWhen problems arise, customers should receive timely attention to the issue. Prompt attention to emails and phone calls is critical to maintaining good relations. Requiring customers to stand in long lines or sit on hold can sour an interaction before it begins.\r\nIdeally, customer service should be a one-stop endeavor for the consumer. For example, if a customer calls a helpline regarding a problem with a product, the customer service representative should follow through with the customer until the issue is fully resolved.\r\nThis may entail scheduling appointments with in-person repair personnel if the problem cannot be resolved on the phone, or transferring a call to skilled technicians in another department. Proactively following up with the customer to ensure that he or she is fully satisfied is another smart move.","materialsDescription":" What are customer service standards?\r\nCustomer service standards are an internal corporate set of rules governing the company's customer service activities, an algorithm for communicating with customers, and general standards for responding to unusual situations. The standard of customer service is an integral part of the corporate standard of the company.\r\nFunctions of customer service standards:\r\n<ol><li>To order. The client does not encounter problems, does not see them, which means that he is confident that all the staff without exception are professionals who know their business.</li><li>To control. It is difficult to assess and monitor the work of each manager if there are no clear criteria for evaluation. At the same time, the implementation of the sales plan cannot be the only parameter of the assessment; you need to know whether the manager of customer service standards adopted in this company adheres.</li><li>To adapt. Among other things, the availability of customer service standards simplifies the procedure.</li></ol>\r\nCustomer service standards are effective if the customer does not see the difference between the work of two (or more) managers, and sees only “proprietary” service, always the same, regardless of any external factors or circumstances. The customer service standard, which has been tested in practice, backed up by experience (perhaps even someone else's), created on the basis of analytical studies and recognized methods, can be called &quot;gold&quot;. It allows you to increase profits, improve the image of the company, attract new customers.\r\nCustomer service standards are an important part of the company's brand. But, in addition, the standards are necessary and other units, in particular, the department to work with staff. Therefore, their development must take into account the needs of all interested services of the company.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What is the purpose of introducing customer service standards in the company?</span>\r\nThe objectives of implementing the standards are as follows:\r\n<ul><li>For employees with experience: minimize the number of erroneous and unnecessary actions. The result of this will be saving time of each employee (no errors - no need to spend time correcting them). And, as a result, increased productivity.</li><li>For novice employees: customer service standards allow you to transfer the necessary knowledge in the most concise manner and in a short time.</li><li>For the company: the abolition of dependence on the old-timers. Not all employees who have worked in the company for many years (or even since the day of foundation) are able to resist the so-called star disease. Having knowledge and experience, a person loses the ability to objectively evaluate his work, he begins to think that he is the best manager in the company. It can end very badly - in the event of dismissal, such an employee will take the base, and turn clients against the company. Standards for customer service are needed to ensure that all employees can be assessed on a single scale, based on the actual benefits they bring to the company, as well as the attitude of the employee to the company.</li><li>For the company: the uniformity of control activities of managers. Standards are unequivocal, exclude double interpretations, and therefore cannot cause controversy about the rightness of an employee or employer.</li><li>For managers: the standards of uniform customer service are the same for all managers, and this makes it possible to make the pay of each manager absolutely transparent and intelligible. Realizing that there will be no double interpretations, the manager may not be afraid that he will be paid less than expected - all his mistakes and achievements are immediately visible and understandable.</li></ul>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">The application of service standards allows you:</span>\r\n<ul><li>to develop a company style in dealing with clients;</li><li>to increase the effectiveness of the work of managers with new customers;</li><li>to bring the quality of communication with customers to a higher level;</li><li>to create a positive opinion of the company about the company, so that it can be recommended to its acquaintances, thus increasing the number of potential and then real customers;</li><li>to minimize conflicts between the manager and the customer;</li><li>to develop a technology for training newcomers;</li><li>to transfer the assessment of the work of the manager from the subjective to the objective, transparent and understandable to everyone;</li><li>to establish a procedure for controlling the work of personnel;</li><li>to increase the motivation of managers to work.</li></ul>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Benefits of applying service standards</span>\r\n<ul><li>The accumulation of experience: the entire base focuses on the company, and not on the hands of managers, &quot;old-timers.&quot; Thus, the departure of one or several “old” employees does not become a “natural disaster” for the company.</li><li>Motivation, analysis and control: customer service standards make it possible to develop a transparent scheme of managers' motivation based on a clear, almost mathematical analysis of their work. The sales process is optimized.</li><li>Setting goals. With the help of standards, the company has the ability to set clear, reasonable plans. This allows you to keep the atmosphere in the team friendly and stable, and the lack of &quot;muffled&quot; tasks - to increase the loyalty of managers to the company.</li><li>Standards of customer service is a fairly mobile system that allows you to immediately detect errors in working with clients and quickly eliminate them. In addition, at any stage of working with a client, the head of the sales department can intervene in the process, noticing an error in the work of the manager, and even be proactive in order to prevent an error to which the manager is heading.</li><li>Quick and easy start for beginners. Customer service standards are actually a knowledge base, collected, analyzed, and streamlined. Such information is easily transmitted and assimilated by beginners, which means that the beginner quickly gets to work and starts to make a profit. In addition, a newbie will not spoil relations with a client by awkward actions, since he already knows what to do in any conflict and problem situations.</li><li>Customer confidence. Customer service standards allow the latter to feel confident in the company - no matter where the customer is, he will always easily recognize “his” company by brand features and can be absolutely sure that in a small town they will be served as qualitatively as in a million-plus city, because that the company is well aware of their work. So, such a company can be trusted.</li></ul>","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Customer_Service.png"},{"id":339,"title":"Marketing","alias":"marketing","description":" Marketing is the study and management of exchange relationships. It is the business process of creating relationships with and satisfying customers. Because marketing is used to attract customers, it is one of the primary components of business management and commerce. Marketers can direct product to other businesses (B2B marketing) or directly to consumers (B2C marketing).\r\nRegardless of who is being marketed to, several factors, including the perspective the marketers will use. These market orientations determine how marketers will approach the planning stage of marketing. This leads into the marketing mix, which outlines the specifics of the product and how it will be sold. This can in turn, be affected by the environment surrounding the product, the results of marketing research and market research, and the characteristics of the product's target market.\r\nOnce these factors are determined, marketers must then decide what methods will be used to market the product. This decision is based on the factors analyzed in the planning stage as well as where the product is in the product life cycle.\r\nMarketing is defined by the American Marketing Association as &quot;the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large&quot;. The term developed from the original meaning which referred literally to going to market with goods for sale. From a sales process engineering perspective, marketing is &quot;a set of processes that are interconnected and interdependent with other functions of a business aimed at achieving customer interest and satisfaction&quot;.\r\nPhilip Kotler defined marketing as &quot;Satisfying needs and wants through an exchange process&quot;, and a decade later defines it as “a social and managerial process by which individuals and groups obtain what they want and need through creating, offering and exchanging products of value with others.”\r\nThe Chartered Institute of Marketing defines marketing as &quot;the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably&quot;. A similar concept is the value-based marketing which states the role of marketing to contribute to increasing shareholder value. In this context, marketing can be defined as &quot;the management process that seeks to maximise returns to shareholders by developing relationships with valued customers and creating a competitive advantage&quot;.\r\nIn the past, marketing practice tended to be seen as a creative industry, which included advertising, distribution and selling. However, because the academic study of marketing makes extensive use of social sciences, psychology, sociology, mathematics, economics, anthropology and neuroscience, the profession is now widely recognized as a science, allowing numerous universities to offer Master-of-Science (MSc) programs.\r\nThe process of marketing is that of bringing a product to market, which includes these steps: broad market research; market targeting and market segmentation; determining distribution, pricing and promotion strategies; developing a communications strategy; budgeting; and visioning long-term market development goals. Many parts of the marketing process (e.g. product design, art director, brand management, advertising, inbound marketing, copywriting etc.) involve use of the creative arts.","materialsDescription":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What the differences between B2B and B2C Marketing?</span>\r\nThe different goals of B2B and B2C marketing lead to differences in the B2B and B2C markets. The main differences in these markets are demand, purchasing volume, amount of customers, customer concentration, distribution, buying nature, buying influences, negotiations, reciprocity, leasing and promotional methods.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Demand:</span> B2B demand is derived because businesses buy products based on how much demand there is for the final consumer product. Businesses buy products based on customer's wants and needs. B2C demand is primarily because customers buy products based on their own wants and needs.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Purchasing Volume:</span> Businesses buy products in large volumes to distribute to consumers. Consumers buy products in smaller volumes suitable for personal use.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Amount of Customers:</span> There are relatively fewer businesses to market to than direct consumers.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Customer Concentration:</span> Businesses that specialize in a particular market tend to be geographically concentrated while customers that buy products from these businesses are not concentrated.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Distribution:</span> B2B products pass directly from the producer of the product to the business while B2C products must additionally go through a wholesaler or retailer.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Buying Nature:</span> B2B purchasing is a formal process done by professional buyers and sellers while B2C purchasing is informal.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Buying Influences:</span> B2B purchasing is influenced by multiple people in various departments such as quality control, accounting, and logistics while B2C marketing is only influenced by the person making the purchase and possibly a few others.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Negotiations:</span> In B2B marketing, negotiating for lower prices or added benefits is commonly accepted while in B2C marketing (particularly in Western cultures) prices are fixed.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Reciprocity:</span> Businesses tend to buy from businesses they sell to. For example, a business that sells printer ink is more likely to buy office chairs from a supplier that buys the business's printer ink. In B2C marketing, this does not occur because consumers are not also selling products.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Leasing:</span> Businesses tend to lease expensive items while consumers tend to save up to buy expensive items.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Promotional Methods:</span> In B2B marketing, the most common promotional method is personal selling. B2C marketing mostly uses sales promotion, public relations, advertising, and social media.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What are marketing orientations?</span>\r\nA marketing orientation has been defined as a &quot;philosophy of business management.&quot; or &quot;a corporate state of mind&quot; or as an &quot;organization[al] culture&quot;. Although scholars continue to debate the precise nature of specific orientations that inform marketing practice, the most commonly cited orientations are as follows:\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Product</span></span>\r\nA firm employing a product orientation is mainly concerned with the quality of its product. A product orientation is based on the assumption that all things being equal, consumers will purchase products of superior quality. The approach is most effective when the firm has deep insights into customer needs and desires as derived from research and/or intuition and understands consumer's quality expectations and price consumers are willing to pay. Although the product orientation has largely been supplanted by the marketing orientation, firms practicing a product orientation can still be found in haute couture and arts marketing.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Sales</span></span>\r\nA sales orientation focuses on the selling/promotion of the firm's existing products, rather than developing new products to satisfy unmet needs or wants. This orientation seeks to attain the highest possible sales through promotion and direct sales techniques. The sales orientation &quot;is typically practiced with unsought goods.&quot; One study found that industrial companies are more likely to hold a sales orientation than consumer goods companies. The approach may also suit scenarios in which a firm holds dead stock, or otherwise sells a product that is in high demand, with little likelihood of changes in consumer tastes diminishing demand.\r\nA 2011 meta-analyses found that the factors with the greatest impact on sales performance are a salesperson's sales-related knowledge (knowledge of market segments, sales presentation skills, conflict resolution, and products), degree of adaptiveness (changing behavior based on the aforementioned knowledge), role clarity (salesperson's role is to expressly to sell), cognitive aptitude (intelligence) and work engagement (motivation and interest in a sales role).\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Production</span></span>\r\nA firm focusing on a production orientation specializes in producing as much as possible of a given product or service in order to achieve economies of scale or economies of scope. A production orientation may be deployed when a high demand for a product or service exists, coupled with certainty that consumer tastes and preferences remain relatively constant (similar to the sales orientation). The so-called production era is thought to have dominated marketing practice from the 1860s to the 1930s, but other theorists argue that evidence of the production orientation can still be found in some companies or industries. Specifically, Kotler and Armstrong note that the production philosophy is &quot;one of the oldest philosophies that guides sellers... [and] is still useful in some situations.&quot;\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Marketing</span></span>\r\nThe marketing orientation is the most common orientation used in contemporary marketing. It is a customer-centric approach that involves a firm basing its marketing program around products that suit new consumer tastes. Firms adopting a marketing orientation typically engage in extensive market research to gauge consumer desires, use R&amp;D (Research &amp; Development) to develop a product attuned to the revealed information, and then utilize promotion techniques to ensure consumers are aware of the product's existence and the benefits it can deliver. Scales designed to measure a firm's overall market orientation have been developed and found to be robust in a variety of contexts.\r\nThe marketing orientation has three prime facets, which are:\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Customer orientation:</span> A firm in the market economy can survive by producing goods that people are willing and able to buy. Consequently, ascertaining consumer demand is vital for a firm's future viability and even existence as a going concern.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Organizational orientation:</span> The marketing department is of prime importance within the functional level of an organization. Information from the marketing department is used to guide the actions of a company's other departments.\r\nAs an example, a marketing department could ascertain (via marketing research) that consumers desired a new type of product or a new usage for an existing product. With this in mind, the marketing department would inform the R&amp;D department to create a prototype of a product/service based on consumers' new desires.\r\nThe production department would then start to manufacture the product, while the marketing department would focus on the promotion, distribution, pricing, etc. of the product. Additionally, a firm's finance department would be consulted, with respect to securing appropriate funding for the development, production, and promotion of the product. Finance may oppose the required capital expenditure since it could undermine a healthy cash flow for the organization.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Mutually beneficial exchange:</span> In a transaction in the market economy, a firm gains revenue, which thus leads to more profits, market shares, and/or sales. A consumer, on the other hand, gains the satisfaction of a need/want, utility, reliability and value for money from the purchase of a product or service.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Societal marketing</span></span>\r\nA number of scholars and practitioners have argued that marketers have a greater social responsibility than simply satisfying customers and providing them with superior value. Marketing organizations that have embraced the societal marketing concept typically identify key stakeholder groups such as employees, customers, and local communities. Companies that adopt a societal marketing perspective typically practice triple bottom line reporting whereby they publish social impact and environmental impact reports alongside financial performance reports. Sustainable marketing or green marketing is an extension of societal marketing.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Marketing.png"},{"id":337,"title":"Sales","alias":"sales","description":" Sales are activities related to selling or the number of goods or services sold in a given targeted time period.\r\nThe seller, or the provider of the goods or services, completes a sale in response to an acquisition, appropriation, requisition, or a direct interaction with the buyer at the point of sale. There is a passing of title (property or ownership) of the item, and the settlement of a price, in which agreement is reached on a price for which transfer of ownership of the item will occur. The seller, not the purchaser, typically executes the sale and it may be completed prior to the obligation of payment. In the case of indirect interaction, a person who sells goods or service on behalf of the owner is known as a salesman or saleswoman or salesperson, but this often refers to someone selling goods in a store/shop, in which case other terms are also common, including salesclerk, shop assistant, and retail clerk.\r\nIn common law countries, sales are governed generally by the common law and commercial codes. In the United States, the laws governing sales of goods are somewhat uniform to the extent that most jurisdictions have adopted Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code, albeit with some non-uniform variations.\r\nA person or organization expressing an interest in acquiring the offered item of value is referred to as a potential buyer, prospective customer, or prospect. Buying and selling are understood to be two sides of the same &quot;coin&quot; or transaction. Both seller and buyer engage in a process of negotiation to consummate the exchange of values. The exchange, or selling, process has implied rules and identifiable stages. It is implied that the selling process will proceed fairly and ethically so that the parties end up nearly equally rewarded. The stages of selling, and buying, involve getting acquainted, assessing each party's need for the other's item of value, and determining if the values to be exchanged are equivalent or nearly so, or, in buyer's terms, &quot;worth the price&quot;. Sometimes, sellers have to use their own experiences when selling products with appropriate discounts.\r\nAlthough the skills required are different, from a management viewpoint, sales is a part of marketing. Sales often form a separate grouping in a corporate structure, employing separate specialist operatives known as salespersons (singular: salesperson). Selling is considered by many to be a sort of persuading &quot;art&quot;. Contrary to popular belief, the methodological approach of selling refers to a systematic process of repetitive and measurable milestones, by which a salesman relates his or her offering of a product or service in return enabling the buyer to achieve their goal in an economic way.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What's the Difference Between Sales and Marketing?</span>\r\nSales and Marketing: two terms we often hear together when working with mid-size companies. In some ways, this is logical because the two need to work together. But in fact, Sales and Marketing are two very different functions and require very different skills.\r\nBusiness leaders know what Operations are; they make stuff. They know what Accounting is; they record and control the money. And they know what Sales do; they sell stuff. So if you are not making stuff, selling stuff, or recording the money—what is marketing and why do you need it?\r\nWhat's the difference between Sales and Marketing? To answer this question, let's define what Sales and Marketing are separately and how they support one another.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is Marketing? Aligning with Customers, Now and for the Future</span></span>\r\nA key job of Marketing is to understand the marketplace from the perspective of the customer looking back towards the company and helping lead the company where it should be in the future. Marketing’s job is to direct the organization toward the segments, or groups of customers and channels where the company can profitably compete. It should help the organization see how it needs to modify its product offerings, pricing, and communication so that it meets the needs of the distribution channel or end customers.\r\nMarketing also needs to convert the market understanding into tools and tactics to attract the market, build (often digital) relationships, and develop leads. Without Sales, Marketing efforts run short. Marketing directs Sales as to where they should be hunting and what ammo to use. Note, however, that if Marketing becomes a sales support function focused only on the now, the future can become lost.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Without Marketing, Sales Suffers</span></span>\r\nNot even the best hunter can bring home dinner if they are shooting blanks at decoys. Markets are constantly changing. The job of marketing is to stay ahead of the changes and help the hunters see where they should be hunting and provide them with the right ammunition. If Marketing is only focused on delivering the ammunition for today, nobody will see where the industry is moving or where the company needs to hunt next. This limits growth not only for Sales and Marketing but also for your entire organization.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Can You be Both Sales and Marketing?</span></span>\r\nIn all my years, working for companies that ranged from Fortune 100 to mid-size companies I have never met anyone who was really good at both sales and marketing. I have held the title of VP of Sales and Marketing, managing a 500 person sales and merchandising force. I was really a marketing person with sales authority. The skills required to focus on the now and the push of sales are different. In many ways, they are contrary to the skills of looking to the future and the customer perspective of marketing.\r\nEvery Sales organization feels they have a good understanding of their customers. But every Sales conversation with a customer has a sales transaction lurking in the background. Therefore, customers can never be completely open about their needs and want when talking to a sales person.\r\nFor a company to really grow, someone must have the job of looking out the window towards where the company needs to go in the future. For many companies, this is the job of the CEO and Sales hires someone to do some sales support and gives them a marketing title. But as companies grow, the job of CEO starts to become a full-time job in itself and the strategic role of Marketing gets short-changed. A study of mid-size companies by the University of Texas showed that companies that separated the roles of Marketing and Sales were much more likely to grow faster than the industry average.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Sales and Marketing: Today and the Future</span></span>\r\nSales need to be focused on the now. You can’t run a company unless your sales team is focused on bringing in today’s business. But you can’t really ask your Sales leaders where the company should go next and to develop the 18-month plan to get there without losing focus on today’s revenue. Besides, if your sales executive was really good at developing future-focused business strategies and tying that strategy to the plans and tools of marketing to make it happen, they would be a marketing person and not a now-focused sales person.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Sales.png"},{"id":152,"title":"Contact Center","alias":"contact-center","description":"A contact center is a central point from where you can contact.\r\nThe contact center typically includes one or more call centers but may include other types of customer contact, as well. A contact center is generally part of an enterprise's overall customer relationship management (CRM) strategy.<br />Contact centers and call centers are both centers for customer service, and the two terms are often used interchangeably, but a contact center supports more services than a typical call center.\r\nContact centers offer omnichannel customer support, including email, chat, voice over IP (VoIP) and website support. A call center typically uses phones as the main channel of communication and can handle a mass volume of calls.<br />Contact centers are used for inbound communication, outbound communication or a hybrid of both. Contact center agents also interact with customers via web chat, phone, email or other communication channels.\r\nThe contact center infrastructure that is necessary to support communications may be located on the same premises as the contact center, or it can be located externally.\r\nIn an on-premises scenario, the company that owns the contact center also owns and manages its own hardware and software. This requires staffing and IT investments that some companies choose to forgo by outsourcing those tasks to cloud providers or hosting companies.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is a Call Center?</span>\r\nTraditionally, a call center is an office where a large number of call center agents provide customer service over the telephone. Inbound call centers receive calls for customer support and often serve as a knowledge base for tech support, billing questions, and other customer service issues. These call centers focus on quick call resolution times and agent productivity. In outbound call centers, agents make calls rather than receive them. These could be sales calls, marketing offers, surveys, fundraising requests, or debt collection, for example.\r\nThe term “call center” conjures an image for many people of waiting on perpetual hold or being routed through an endless IVR that never gives them what they need. Because so many consumers have had a dreadful customer service experience along these lines, call centers have developed a bad rap. But as legacy phone systems give way to newer digital technologies, call centers are evolving.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is a Contact Center?</span>\r\nThe term &quot;contact center&quot; (or “contact centre”) reflects the modern reality that there are many other ways to connect with a customer these days besides by telephone. The combined trends of increased customer expectations and newer technologies that allow for many channels of communication are creating a shift in the traditional call center model which has existed for decades. Consumers want more ways to reach businesses, and businesses are looking for new ways to improve customer experience.\r\nWhile call center agents generally focus on inbound and outbound calls, either on traditional phone lines or over VoIP, contact center agents handle a wide variety of communications. In a modern multichannel contact center, technical support might be delivered over in-app chat or video, while order status updates are delivered via SMS, event promotions are sent as push notifications, surveys are deployed over Facebook Messenger, and sales inquiries received by email are sent directly to an agent to connect by phone. Call centers handle voice communications, contact centers handle all communications.\r\nA company’s contact center is usually integrated with their customer relationship management (CRM) system, where all interactions between the organization and the public are tracked, coordinated, and managed. Depending on the infrastructure and ecosystem, it could be comprised of an alphabet soup of complex components. Many companies have purchased off-the-shelf systems or a highly customized network of technologies from multiple vendors. Some companies have adopted a cloud-based solution or two, but they remain siloed from the rest of their systems and can’t talk to each other.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/Contact_Center1.png"}],"additionalInfo":{"budgetNotExceeded":"","functionallyTaskAssignment":"","projectWasPut":"","price":0,"source":{"url":"https://www.workbooks.com/sites/default/files/2017-05/Amstore-Workbooks-Case-Study.pdf","title":"Web-site of vendor"}},"comments":[],"referencesCount":0}],"userImplementations":[],"userImplementationsCount":0,"supplierImplementationsCount":1,"vendorImplementationsCount":1,"vendorPartnersCount":0,"supplierPartnersCount":0,"b4r":0,"categories":{"71":{"id":71,"title":"CRM - Customer Relationship Management","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Customer service</span> is the provision of service to customers before, during and after a purchase. The perception of success of such interactions is dependent on employees &quot;who can adjust themselves to the personality of the guest&quot;. Customer service concerns the priority an organization assigns to customer service relative to components such as product innovation and pricing. In this sense, an organization that values good customer service may spend more money in training employees than the average organization or may proactively interview customers for feedback.\r\nA <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">customer support</span> is a range of customer services to assist customers in making cost effective and correct use of a product. It includes assistance in planning, installation, training, trouble shooting, maintenance, upgrading, and disposal of a product. These services even may be done at customer's side where he/she uses the product or service. In this case it is called &quot;at home customer services&quot; or &quot;at home customer support.&quot;\r\nRegarding technology, products such as mobile phones, televisions, computers, software products or other electronic or mechanical goods, it is termed technical support. \r\nCustomer service may be provided by a person (e.g., sales and service representative), or by automated means, such as kiosks, Internet sites, and apps.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM </span>(Customer Relationship Management) is an approach to manage a company's interaction with current and potential customers. It uses data analysis about customers' history with a company to improve business relationships with customers, specifically focusing on customer retention and ultimately driving sales growth.\r\nOne important aspect of the CRM approach is the systems of CRM that compile data from a range of different communication channels, including a company's website, telephone, email, live chat, marketing materials and more recently, social media. Through the CRM approach and the systems used to facilitate it, businesses learn more about their target audiences and how to best cater to their needs.\r\nCRM helps users focus on their organization’s relationships with individual people including customers, service users, colleagues, or suppliers.\r\nWhen people talk about customer relationship management system, they might mean any of three things: \r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as Technology</span>: This is a technology product, often in the cloud, that teams use to record, report and analyse interactions between the company and users. This is also called a CRM system or solution.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as a Strategy</span>: This is a business’ philosophy about how relationships with customers and potential customers should be managed.&nbsp; </li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as a Process</span>: Think of this as a system a business adopts to nurture and manage those relationships.</li></ul>\r\n<br /><br /><br />","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">Why is CRM important?</span></h1>\r\nCRM management system enables a business to deepen its relationships with customers, service users, colleagues, partners and suppliers.\r\nForging good relationships and keeping track of prospects and customers is crucial for customer acquisition and retention, which is at the heart of a CRM’s function. You can see everything in one place — a simple, customizable dashboard that can tell you a customer’s previous history with you, the status of their orders, any outstanding customer service issues, and more.\r\nGartner predicts that by 2021, CRM technology will be the single largest revenue area of spending in enterprise software. If your business is going to last, you know that you need a strategy for the future. For forward-thinking businesses, CRM is the framework for that strategy.\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What are the benefits of CRM?</span></h1>\r\nBy collecting and organising data about customer interactions, making it accessible and actionable for all, and facilitating analysis of that data, CRM offers many benefits and advantages.<br />The benefits and advantages of CRM include:\r\n<ul><li>Enhanced contact management</li><li>Cross-team collaboration</li><li>Heightened productivity</li><li>Empowered sales management</li><li>Accurate sales forecasting</li><li>Reliable reporting</li><li>Improved sales metrics</li><li>Increased customer satisfaction and retention</li><li>Boosted marketing ROI</li><li>Enriched products and services</li></ul>\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What are the key features of most popular CRM software programs?</span></h1>\r\nWhile many CRM solutions differ in their specific value propositions — depending on your business size, priority function, or industry type — they usually share some core features. These, in fact, are the foundation of any top CRM software, without which you might end up using an inferior app or an over-rated address book. So, let’s discuss the key features you need to look for when figuring out the best CRM software for your business.\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Contact management</span>. The best CRM solutions aren’t just an address book that only organizes contact details. It manages customer data in a centralized place and gives you a 360-degree view of your customers. You should be able to organize customers’ personal information, demographics, interactions, and transactions in ways that are meaningful to your goals or processes. Moreover, a good contact management feature lets you personalize your outreach campaign. By collecting personal, social, and purchase data, it will help you to segment target audience groups in different ways.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Reporting and dashboards</span>. These features of customer relationship management allow you to use analytics to interpret customer data. Reporting is very useful if you want to consolidate disparate data and churn out insights in different visualizations. This lets you make better decisions or proactively deal with market trends and customer behavioral patterns. The more visual widgets a CRM software has, the better you can present reports. Furthermore, a best customer relationship management software will generate real-time data, making reporting more accurate and timely. Reporting also keeps you tab on sales opportunities like upsell, resell, and cross-sell, especially when integrated with e-commerce platforms.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Lead management</span>. These features let you manage leads all the way to win-loss stage. They pave a clear path to conversion, so you can quickly assess how the business is performing. One of the main three legs that comprises the best client relationship management software (the other two being contact management and reporting), lead management unburdens the sales team from follow-ups, tracking, and repetitive tasks.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Deals and tasks</span>. Deals and tasks are closely associated with leads. Deals are leads at the negotiation stage, so it’s critical to keep a close eye on their associated tasks for a higher chance of conversion.<br />CRM software tools should also let you track both deals and tasks in their respective windows or across the sales stages. Whether you’re viewing a contact or analyzing the sales pipeline, you should be able to immediately check the deal’s tasks and details. Deals and tasks should also have user permissions to protect leaks of sensitive data. Similarly, alerts are critical to tasks so deadlines are met. Notifications are usually sent via email or prominently displayed on the user’s dashboard.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Campaign management</span>. Solid CRM software will integrate this feature to enable marketing processes from outreach concept to A/B testing to deployment and to post analysis. This will allow you to sort campaigns to target segments in your contacts and define deployment strategies. You will also be able to define metrics for various channels, then plow back the insights generated by post-campaign analytics into planning more campaigns.<br />Recurring outreach efforts can also be automated. For instance, you can set to instantly appropriate content to contacts based on their interest or send tiered autoresponders based on campaign feedback.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Email management</span>. By integrating with popular email clients like Gmail and Outlook, CRM solutions can capture email messages and sort important details that can be saved in contacts or synced with leads. They can also track activities like opened emails, forwarded emails, clicked links, and downloaded files. Emails can also be qualified for prospecting.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Social media management. </span>Popular CRM systems feature an integrated social media management where you can view different social media pages from the CRM’s interface. This is a convenient way to post, reply on, and manage all your pages. Likewise, this feature gives you a better perspective on how customers are interacting with your brand. A glean of their likes and dislikes, interests, shares, and public conversations helps you to assess customer biases and preferences. Customers are also increasingly using social media to contact companies; hence, a good CRM should alert you for brand mentions.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Mobile access</span>. With more users accessing apps via mobile devices, many vendors have been prioritizing mobile-first platforms. Emergence Capital Partners study found over 300 mobile-first apps so far and CRM is definitely one their targets. Many CRM solutions have both Android and iOS apps. Mobile access works in two ways to be highly appreciated: accessing data and inputting data while on location. Field sales with the latest sales information on hand may be able to interest prospects better. Conversely, sales reps can quickly update deals across the pipeline even as they come off a client meeting.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/CRM_-_Customer_Relationship_Management.png","alias":"crm-customer-relationship-management"}},"branches":"Information Technology","companyUrl":"https://www.workbooks.com/","countryCodes":[],"certifications":[],"isSeller":true,"isSupplier":true,"isVendor":true,"presenterCodeLng":"","seo":{"title":"Workbooks","keywords":"Workbooks, business, price, management, customers, view, 360°, single","description":"<div>Headquartered in Reading, United Kingdom, Workbooks delivers cloud-based CRM and business applications to growing and mid-market organisations, at an affordable price.</div>\r\n<div></div>\r\n<div>Workbooks extends beyond sales, marketing and customer support","og:title":"Workbooks","og:description":"<div>Headquartered in Reading, United Kingdom, Workbooks delivers cloud-based CRM and business applications to growing and mid-market organisations, at an affordable price.</div>\r\n<div></div>\r\n<div>Workbooks extends beyond sales, marketing and customer support","og:image":"https://old.roi4cio.com/uploads/roi/company/Workbooks.png"},"eventUrl":"","vendorPartners":[],"supplierPartners":[],"vendoredProducts":[{"id":1135,"logoURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/Workbooks.png","logo":true,"scheme":false,"title":"Workbooks.com","vendorVerified":0,"rating":"1.00","implementationsCount":1,"suppliersCount":0,"supplierPartnersCount":0,"alias":"workbookscom","companyTitle":"Workbooks","companyTypes":["supplier","vendor"],"companyId":4036,"companyAlias":"workbooks","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Workbooks CRM helps you run campaigns and generate more quality leads.&nbsp;</span>\r\nWe give you the tools you need to execute your marketing strategy and measure ROI.\r\nFeatures to support Marketing Success\r\nData Management, Profiling &amp; Targeting\r\nGather business intelligence on your target accounts/market. Manage all your accounts/contacts within your CRM. Target your ‘ideal’ customer, based on their profile.&nbsp;\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Email Campaigns</span>\r\nSegment your database. Use templates to send targeted email messages or integrate directly with leading email marketing providers such as MailChimp or dotmailer. Gain visibility of all prospect/customer interaction and track key metrics (such as open and click rates) against relevant marketing campaigns.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Event Management</span>\r\nPlan, organise and promote live events, webinars or training courses from within Workbooks CRM. Allow delegates to self-register and automatically manage scheduled communication to contacts.&nbsp;\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Lead Scoring</span>\r\nAllocate criteria to help sales and marketing prioritise their time. Distribute leads to the right teams for follow-up. Use scoring to ensure sales spend their time following-up on the deals most likely to convert.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Website Analytics</span>\r\nTurn anonymous traffic into sales by discovering who was on your website and what pages they viewed. Knowing visitor interests prior to a call will help sales conversion rates and marketing can nurture more effectively by sending the most relevant information.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Supplier Management</span>\r\nTypically you will have a multitude of partners who provide you with marketing services such as lead purchase, email marketing, lead nurturing, event management, design &amp; print contractors etc. Track and manage these suppliers in Workbooks so the relevant information is stored in one place.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Track Marketing Activities</span>\r\nManage your/your team's day-to-day workload and keep on top of outstanding actions to ensure project milestones are hit and campaigns are delivered on time. Tasks and Meetings can be associated with specific marketing campaigns to provide full visibility.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Telemarketing Campaigns</span>\r\nData can be segmented and added to Marketing Campaigns to enable Telemarketing teams to focus on delivering targeted messaging. Track progress and review performance easily and effectively.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Lead Management</span>\r\nIdentify your most profitable lead channels by tracking the source of your leads. Automatically assign leads to Marketing Campaigns. Categorise your leads and harvest relevant contact information in one place to help you convert more prospects into sales.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Website Lead Capture</span>\r\nAutomatically capture leads from your website, assign them to queues/campaigns and notify your sales team members.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Marketing Metrics</span>\r\nCapture key information such as campaign ROI, lead volumes by source, lead conversion. Use Dashboards and Reports to ensure you have real-time information at your fingertips rather than spending time manually updating outdated spreadsheets.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">POs Management</span>\r\nManage your marketing expenditure more effectively. Raise Purchase Orders and track marketing expenditure for goods or services you are purchasing. Easily identify the current status of Supplier Orders and whether they have been approved/paid/delivered.\r\nWorkbooks CRM enables you to work more effectively, to better identify opportunities, close more deals and grow revenue.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Features to support Sales Success</span>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Contact Management &amp; Prospect Profiling</span>\r\nUse every interaction with a prospect to further your business intelligence. Capture knowledge, map relationships and segment your data to improve sales prospecting. Sync everything with Outlook, Microsoft Exchange/Office 365 or Google Apps.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Opportunity Management</span>\r\nManage sales opportunities, improve conversation rates, drive best practice across your sales team and grow revenue. With a CRM system undermining your sales execution, you can ensure that your Sales people share a common methodology, understand where their prospects are in the sales process and address their needs effectively - ultimately increasing closure rates.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Sales Performance Metrics</span>\r\nGenerate Reports and Dashboards that give you insight into your sales pipeline and performance. By understanding your sales performance you can improve execution, increase conversion rates and grow your revenues.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Quotations</span>\r\nBuild professional looking quotations in a matter of minutes. Standardise terms and conditions, control discounting and ensure quotations are followed-up effectively.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Tracking Sales Activities</span>\r\nRecord Sales Activities to ensure that Opportunities are progressed effectively and no calls are overlooked. Analyse which activities are the most productive and replicate these as best-practice examples for the whole team.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Sales Forecasting</span>\r\nEnable your sales people to forecast effectively. Identify your ‘best case’ and ‘commit’. Determine how likely those deals are to close and if your team is likely to hit target. Generate Reports and Dashboards to provide real-time visibility to sales teams and managers.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Existing Account Management</span>\r\nManage your customers more effectively by using the data held in your CRM. Understand your customer landscape, improve retention rates, up-sell within an account. Improve your customer service.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Order Creation &amp; Processing</span>\r\nCreate and manage orders within your CRM. Turn quotes into orders with a single click and track the status of orders as they are fulfilled and invoiced.","shortDescription":"Workbooks.com CRM brings your Sales, Marketing and Customer Service teams together.","type":null,"isRoiCalculatorAvaliable":false,"isConfiguratorAvaliable":false,"bonus":100,"usingCount":15,"sellingCount":12,"discontinued":0,"rebateForPoc":0,"rebate":0,"seo":{"title":"Workbooks.com","keywords":"your, sales, marketing, effectively, Management, more, with, ensure","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Workbooks CRM helps you run campaigns and generate more quality leads.&nbsp;</span>\r\nWe give you the tools you need to execute your marketing strategy and measure ROI.\r\nFeatures to support Marketing Success\r\nData Management, Pr","og:title":"Workbooks.com","og:description":"<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Workbooks CRM helps you run campaigns and generate more quality leads.&nbsp;</span>\r\nWe give you the tools you need to execute your marketing strategy and measure ROI.\r\nFeatures to support Marketing Success\r\nData Management, Pr","og:image":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/Workbooks.png"},"eventUrl":"","translationId":1136,"dealDetails":null,"roi":null,"price":null,"bonusForReference":null,"templateData":[],"testingArea":"","categories":[{"id":71,"title":"CRM - Customer Relationship Management","alias":"crm-customer-relationship-management","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Customer service</span> is the provision of service to customers before, during and after a purchase. The perception of success of such interactions is dependent on employees &quot;who can adjust themselves to the personality of the guest&quot;. Customer service concerns the priority an organization assigns to customer service relative to components such as product innovation and pricing. In this sense, an organization that values good customer service may spend more money in training employees than the average organization or may proactively interview customers for feedback.\r\nA <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">customer support</span> is a range of customer services to assist customers in making cost effective and correct use of a product. It includes assistance in planning, installation, training, trouble shooting, maintenance, upgrading, and disposal of a product. These services even may be done at customer's side where he/she uses the product or service. In this case it is called &quot;at home customer services&quot; or &quot;at home customer support.&quot;\r\nRegarding technology, products such as mobile phones, televisions, computers, software products or other electronic or mechanical goods, it is termed technical support. \r\nCustomer service may be provided by a person (e.g., sales and service representative), or by automated means, such as kiosks, Internet sites, and apps.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM </span>(Customer Relationship Management) is an approach to manage a company's interaction with current and potential customers. It uses data analysis about customers' history with a company to improve business relationships with customers, specifically focusing on customer retention and ultimately driving sales growth.\r\nOne important aspect of the CRM approach is the systems of CRM that compile data from a range of different communication channels, including a company's website, telephone, email, live chat, marketing materials and more recently, social media. Through the CRM approach and the systems used to facilitate it, businesses learn more about their target audiences and how to best cater to their needs.\r\nCRM helps users focus on their organization’s relationships with individual people including customers, service users, colleagues, or suppliers.\r\nWhen people talk about customer relationship management system, they might mean any of three things: \r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as Technology</span>: This is a technology product, often in the cloud, that teams use to record, report and analyse interactions between the company and users. This is also called a CRM system or solution.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as a Strategy</span>: This is a business’ philosophy about how relationships with customers and potential customers should be managed.&nbsp; </li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as a Process</span>: Think of this as a system a business adopts to nurture and manage those relationships.</li></ul>\r\n<br /><br /><br />","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">Why is CRM important?</span></h1>\r\nCRM management system enables a business to deepen its relationships with customers, service users, colleagues, partners and suppliers.\r\nForging good relationships and keeping track of prospects and customers is crucial for customer acquisition and retention, which is at the heart of a CRM’s function. You can see everything in one place — a simple, customizable dashboard that can tell you a customer’s previous history with you, the status of their orders, any outstanding customer service issues, and more.\r\nGartner predicts that by 2021, CRM technology will be the single largest revenue area of spending in enterprise software. If your business is going to last, you know that you need a strategy for the future. For forward-thinking businesses, CRM is the framework for that strategy.\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What are the benefits of CRM?</span></h1>\r\nBy collecting and organising data about customer interactions, making it accessible and actionable for all, and facilitating analysis of that data, CRM offers many benefits and advantages.<br />The benefits and advantages of CRM include:\r\n<ul><li>Enhanced contact management</li><li>Cross-team collaboration</li><li>Heightened productivity</li><li>Empowered sales management</li><li>Accurate sales forecasting</li><li>Reliable reporting</li><li>Improved sales metrics</li><li>Increased customer satisfaction and retention</li><li>Boosted marketing ROI</li><li>Enriched products and services</li></ul>\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What are the key features of most popular CRM software programs?</span></h1>\r\nWhile many CRM solutions differ in their specific value propositions — depending on your business size, priority function, or industry type — they usually share some core features. These, in fact, are the foundation of any top CRM software, without which you might end up using an inferior app or an over-rated address book. So, let’s discuss the key features you need to look for when figuring out the best CRM software for your business.\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Contact management</span>. The best CRM solutions aren’t just an address book that only organizes contact details. It manages customer data in a centralized place and gives you a 360-degree view of your customers. You should be able to organize customers’ personal information, demographics, interactions, and transactions in ways that are meaningful to your goals or processes. Moreover, a good contact management feature lets you personalize your outreach campaign. By collecting personal, social, and purchase data, it will help you to segment target audience groups in different ways.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Reporting and dashboards</span>. These features of customer relationship management allow you to use analytics to interpret customer data. Reporting is very useful if you want to consolidate disparate data and churn out insights in different visualizations. This lets you make better decisions or proactively deal with market trends and customer behavioral patterns. The more visual widgets a CRM software has, the better you can present reports. Furthermore, a best customer relationship management software will generate real-time data, making reporting more accurate and timely. Reporting also keeps you tab on sales opportunities like upsell, resell, and cross-sell, especially when integrated with e-commerce platforms.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Lead management</span>. These features let you manage leads all the way to win-loss stage. They pave a clear path to conversion, so you can quickly assess how the business is performing. One of the main three legs that comprises the best client relationship management software (the other two being contact management and reporting), lead management unburdens the sales team from follow-ups, tracking, and repetitive tasks.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Deals and tasks</span>. Deals and tasks are closely associated with leads. Deals are leads at the negotiation stage, so it’s critical to keep a close eye on their associated tasks for a higher chance of conversion.<br />CRM software tools should also let you track both deals and tasks in their respective windows or across the sales stages. Whether you’re viewing a contact or analyzing the sales pipeline, you should be able to immediately check the deal’s tasks and details. Deals and tasks should also have user permissions to protect leaks of sensitive data. Similarly, alerts are critical to tasks so deadlines are met. Notifications are usually sent via email or prominently displayed on the user’s dashboard.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Campaign management</span>. Solid CRM software will integrate this feature to enable marketing processes from outreach concept to A/B testing to deployment and to post analysis. This will allow you to sort campaigns to target segments in your contacts and define deployment strategies. You will also be able to define metrics for various channels, then plow back the insights generated by post-campaign analytics into planning more campaigns.<br />Recurring outreach efforts can also be automated. For instance, you can set to instantly appropriate content to contacts based on their interest or send tiered autoresponders based on campaign feedback.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Email management</span>. By integrating with popular email clients like Gmail and Outlook, CRM solutions can capture email messages and sort important details that can be saved in contacts or synced with leads. They can also track activities like opened emails, forwarded emails, clicked links, and downloaded files. Emails can also be qualified for prospecting.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Social media management. </span>Popular CRM systems feature an integrated social media management where you can view different social media pages from the CRM’s interface. This is a convenient way to post, reply on, and manage all your pages. Likewise, this feature gives you a better perspective on how customers are interacting with your brand. A glean of their likes and dislikes, interests, shares, and public conversations helps you to assess customer biases and preferences. Customers are also increasingly using social media to contact companies; hence, a good CRM should alert you for brand mentions.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Mobile access</span>. With more users accessing apps via mobile devices, many vendors have been prioritizing mobile-first platforms. Emergence Capital Partners study found over 300 mobile-first apps so far and CRM is definitely one their targets. Many CRM solutions have both Android and iOS apps. Mobile access works in two ways to be highly appreciated: accessing data and inputting data while on location. Field sales with the latest sales information on hand may be able to interest prospects better. Conversely, sales reps can quickly update deals across the pipeline even as they come off a client meeting.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/CRM_-_Customer_Relationship_Management.png"},{"id":341,"title":"Customer Service","alias":"customer-service","description":" Customer service is the process of ensuring customer satisfaction with a product or service. Often, customer service takes place while performing a transaction for the customer, such as making a sale or returning an item. Customer service can take the form of in-person interaction, a phone call, self-service systems, or by other means.\r\nCustomer service is an important part of maintaining ongoing client relationships, which is key to continuing revenue. For this reason, many companies have worked hard to increase their customer satisfaction levels.\r\nMost successful businesses recognize the importance of providing outstanding customer service. Courteous and empathetic interaction with a trained customer service representative can mean the difference between losing or retaining a customer.\r\nWhen problems arise, customers should receive timely attention to the issue. Prompt attention to emails and phone calls is critical to maintaining good relations. Requiring customers to stand in long lines or sit on hold can sour an interaction before it begins.\r\nIdeally, customer service should be a one-stop endeavor for the consumer. For example, if a customer calls a helpline regarding a problem with a product, the customer service representative should follow through with the customer until the issue is fully resolved.\r\nThis may entail scheduling appointments with in-person repair personnel if the problem cannot be resolved on the phone, or transferring a call to skilled technicians in another department. Proactively following up with the customer to ensure that he or she is fully satisfied is another smart move.","materialsDescription":" What are customer service standards?\r\nCustomer service standards are an internal corporate set of rules governing the company's customer service activities, an algorithm for communicating with customers, and general standards for responding to unusual situations. The standard of customer service is an integral part of the corporate standard of the company.\r\nFunctions of customer service standards:\r\n<ol><li>To order. The client does not encounter problems, does not see them, which means that he is confident that all the staff without exception are professionals who know their business.</li><li>To control. It is difficult to assess and monitor the work of each manager if there are no clear criteria for evaluation. At the same time, the implementation of the sales plan cannot be the only parameter of the assessment; you need to know whether the manager of customer service standards adopted in this company adheres.</li><li>To adapt. Among other things, the availability of customer service standards simplifies the procedure.</li></ol>\r\nCustomer service standards are effective if the customer does not see the difference between the work of two (or more) managers, and sees only “proprietary” service, always the same, regardless of any external factors or circumstances. The customer service standard, which has been tested in practice, backed up by experience (perhaps even someone else's), created on the basis of analytical studies and recognized methods, can be called &quot;gold&quot;. It allows you to increase profits, improve the image of the company, attract new customers.\r\nCustomer service standards are an important part of the company's brand. But, in addition, the standards are necessary and other units, in particular, the department to work with staff. Therefore, their development must take into account the needs of all interested services of the company.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What is the purpose of introducing customer service standards in the company?</span>\r\nThe objectives of implementing the standards are as follows:\r\n<ul><li>For employees with experience: minimize the number of erroneous and unnecessary actions. The result of this will be saving time of each employee (no errors - no need to spend time correcting them). And, as a result, increased productivity.</li><li>For novice employees: customer service standards allow you to transfer the necessary knowledge in the most concise manner and in a short time.</li><li>For the company: the abolition of dependence on the old-timers. Not all employees who have worked in the company for many years (or even since the day of foundation) are able to resist the so-called star disease. Having knowledge and experience, a person loses the ability to objectively evaluate his work, he begins to think that he is the best manager in the company. It can end very badly - in the event of dismissal, such an employee will take the base, and turn clients against the company. Standards for customer service are needed to ensure that all employees can be assessed on a single scale, based on the actual benefits they bring to the company, as well as the attitude of the employee to the company.</li><li>For the company: the uniformity of control activities of managers. Standards are unequivocal, exclude double interpretations, and therefore cannot cause controversy about the rightness of an employee or employer.</li><li>For managers: the standards of uniform customer service are the same for all managers, and this makes it possible to make the pay of each manager absolutely transparent and intelligible. Realizing that there will be no double interpretations, the manager may not be afraid that he will be paid less than expected - all his mistakes and achievements are immediately visible and understandable.</li></ul>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">The application of service standards allows you:</span>\r\n<ul><li>to develop a company style in dealing with clients;</li><li>to increase the effectiveness of the work of managers with new customers;</li><li>to bring the quality of communication with customers to a higher level;</li><li>to create a positive opinion of the company about the company, so that it can be recommended to its acquaintances, thus increasing the number of potential and then real customers;</li><li>to minimize conflicts between the manager and the customer;</li><li>to develop a technology for training newcomers;</li><li>to transfer the assessment of the work of the manager from the subjective to the objective, transparent and understandable to everyone;</li><li>to establish a procedure for controlling the work of personnel;</li><li>to increase the motivation of managers to work.</li></ul>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Benefits of applying service standards</span>\r\n<ul><li>The accumulation of experience: the entire base focuses on the company, and not on the hands of managers, &quot;old-timers.&quot; Thus, the departure of one or several “old” employees does not become a “natural disaster” for the company.</li><li>Motivation, analysis and control: customer service standards make it possible to develop a transparent scheme of managers' motivation based on a clear, almost mathematical analysis of their work. The sales process is optimized.</li><li>Setting goals. With the help of standards, the company has the ability to set clear, reasonable plans. This allows you to keep the atmosphere in the team friendly and stable, and the lack of &quot;muffled&quot; tasks - to increase the loyalty of managers to the company.</li><li>Standards of customer service is a fairly mobile system that allows you to immediately detect errors in working with clients and quickly eliminate them. In addition, at any stage of working with a client, the head of the sales department can intervene in the process, noticing an error in the work of the manager, and even be proactive in order to prevent an error to which the manager is heading.</li><li>Quick and easy start for beginners. Customer service standards are actually a knowledge base, collected, analyzed, and streamlined. Such information is easily transmitted and assimilated by beginners, which means that the beginner quickly gets to work and starts to make a profit. In addition, a newbie will not spoil relations with a client by awkward actions, since he already knows what to do in any conflict and problem situations.</li><li>Customer confidence. Customer service standards allow the latter to feel confident in the company - no matter where the customer is, he will always easily recognize “his” company by brand features and can be absolutely sure that in a small town they will be served as qualitatively as in a million-plus city, because that the company is well aware of their work. So, such a company can be trusted.</li></ul>","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Customer_Service.png"},{"id":339,"title":"Marketing","alias":"marketing","description":" Marketing is the study and management of exchange relationships. It is the business process of creating relationships with and satisfying customers. Because marketing is used to attract customers, it is one of the primary components of business management and commerce. Marketers can direct product to other businesses (B2B marketing) or directly to consumers (B2C marketing).\r\nRegardless of who is being marketed to, several factors, including the perspective the marketers will use. These market orientations determine how marketers will approach the planning stage of marketing. This leads into the marketing mix, which outlines the specifics of the product and how it will be sold. This can in turn, be affected by the environment surrounding the product, the results of marketing research and market research, and the characteristics of the product's target market.\r\nOnce these factors are determined, marketers must then decide what methods will be used to market the product. This decision is based on the factors analyzed in the planning stage as well as where the product is in the product life cycle.\r\nMarketing is defined by the American Marketing Association as &quot;the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large&quot;. The term developed from the original meaning which referred literally to going to market with goods for sale. From a sales process engineering perspective, marketing is &quot;a set of processes that are interconnected and interdependent with other functions of a business aimed at achieving customer interest and satisfaction&quot;.\r\nPhilip Kotler defined marketing as &quot;Satisfying needs and wants through an exchange process&quot;, and a decade later defines it as “a social and managerial process by which individuals and groups obtain what they want and need through creating, offering and exchanging products of value with others.”\r\nThe Chartered Institute of Marketing defines marketing as &quot;the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably&quot;. A similar concept is the value-based marketing which states the role of marketing to contribute to increasing shareholder value. In this context, marketing can be defined as &quot;the management process that seeks to maximise returns to shareholders by developing relationships with valued customers and creating a competitive advantage&quot;.\r\nIn the past, marketing practice tended to be seen as a creative industry, which included advertising, distribution and selling. However, because the academic study of marketing makes extensive use of social sciences, psychology, sociology, mathematics, economics, anthropology and neuroscience, the profession is now widely recognized as a science, allowing numerous universities to offer Master-of-Science (MSc) programs.\r\nThe process of marketing is that of bringing a product to market, which includes these steps: broad market research; market targeting and market segmentation; determining distribution, pricing and promotion strategies; developing a communications strategy; budgeting; and visioning long-term market development goals. Many parts of the marketing process (e.g. product design, art director, brand management, advertising, inbound marketing, copywriting etc.) involve use of the creative arts.","materialsDescription":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What the differences between B2B and B2C Marketing?</span>\r\nThe different goals of B2B and B2C marketing lead to differences in the B2B and B2C markets. The main differences in these markets are demand, purchasing volume, amount of customers, customer concentration, distribution, buying nature, buying influences, negotiations, reciprocity, leasing and promotional methods.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Demand:</span> B2B demand is derived because businesses buy products based on how much demand there is for the final consumer product. Businesses buy products based on customer's wants and needs. B2C demand is primarily because customers buy products based on their own wants and needs.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Purchasing Volume:</span> Businesses buy products in large volumes to distribute to consumers. Consumers buy products in smaller volumes suitable for personal use.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Amount of Customers:</span> There are relatively fewer businesses to market to than direct consumers.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Customer Concentration:</span> Businesses that specialize in a particular market tend to be geographically concentrated while customers that buy products from these businesses are not concentrated.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Distribution:</span> B2B products pass directly from the producer of the product to the business while B2C products must additionally go through a wholesaler or retailer.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Buying Nature:</span> B2B purchasing is a formal process done by professional buyers and sellers while B2C purchasing is informal.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Buying Influences:</span> B2B purchasing is influenced by multiple people in various departments such as quality control, accounting, and logistics while B2C marketing is only influenced by the person making the purchase and possibly a few others.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Negotiations:</span> In B2B marketing, negotiating for lower prices or added benefits is commonly accepted while in B2C marketing (particularly in Western cultures) prices are fixed.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Reciprocity:</span> Businesses tend to buy from businesses they sell to. For example, a business that sells printer ink is more likely to buy office chairs from a supplier that buys the business's printer ink. In B2C marketing, this does not occur because consumers are not also selling products.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Leasing:</span> Businesses tend to lease expensive items while consumers tend to save up to buy expensive items.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Promotional Methods:</span> In B2B marketing, the most common promotional method is personal selling. B2C marketing mostly uses sales promotion, public relations, advertising, and social media.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What are marketing orientations?</span>\r\nA marketing orientation has been defined as a &quot;philosophy of business management.&quot; or &quot;a corporate state of mind&quot; or as an &quot;organization[al] culture&quot;. Although scholars continue to debate the precise nature of specific orientations that inform marketing practice, the most commonly cited orientations are as follows:\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Product</span></span>\r\nA firm employing a product orientation is mainly concerned with the quality of its product. A product orientation is based on the assumption that all things being equal, consumers will purchase products of superior quality. The approach is most effective when the firm has deep insights into customer needs and desires as derived from research and/or intuition and understands consumer's quality expectations and price consumers are willing to pay. Although the product orientation has largely been supplanted by the marketing orientation, firms practicing a product orientation can still be found in haute couture and arts marketing.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Sales</span></span>\r\nA sales orientation focuses on the selling/promotion of the firm's existing products, rather than developing new products to satisfy unmet needs or wants. This orientation seeks to attain the highest possible sales through promotion and direct sales techniques. The sales orientation &quot;is typically practiced with unsought goods.&quot; One study found that industrial companies are more likely to hold a sales orientation than consumer goods companies. The approach may also suit scenarios in which a firm holds dead stock, or otherwise sells a product that is in high demand, with little likelihood of changes in consumer tastes diminishing demand.\r\nA 2011 meta-analyses found that the factors with the greatest impact on sales performance are a salesperson's sales-related knowledge (knowledge of market segments, sales presentation skills, conflict resolution, and products), degree of adaptiveness (changing behavior based on the aforementioned knowledge), role clarity (salesperson's role is to expressly to sell), cognitive aptitude (intelligence) and work engagement (motivation and interest in a sales role).\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Production</span></span>\r\nA firm focusing on a production orientation specializes in producing as much as possible of a given product or service in order to achieve economies of scale or economies of scope. A production orientation may be deployed when a high demand for a product or service exists, coupled with certainty that consumer tastes and preferences remain relatively constant (similar to the sales orientation). The so-called production era is thought to have dominated marketing practice from the 1860s to the 1930s, but other theorists argue that evidence of the production orientation can still be found in some companies or industries. Specifically, Kotler and Armstrong note that the production philosophy is &quot;one of the oldest philosophies that guides sellers... [and] is still useful in some situations.&quot;\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Marketing</span></span>\r\nThe marketing orientation is the most common orientation used in contemporary marketing. It is a customer-centric approach that involves a firm basing its marketing program around products that suit new consumer tastes. Firms adopting a marketing orientation typically engage in extensive market research to gauge consumer desires, use R&amp;D (Research &amp; Development) to develop a product attuned to the revealed information, and then utilize promotion techniques to ensure consumers are aware of the product's existence and the benefits it can deliver. Scales designed to measure a firm's overall market orientation have been developed and found to be robust in a variety of contexts.\r\nThe marketing orientation has three prime facets, which are:\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Customer orientation:</span> A firm in the market economy can survive by producing goods that people are willing and able to buy. Consequently, ascertaining consumer demand is vital for a firm's future viability and even existence as a going concern.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Organizational orientation:</span> The marketing department is of prime importance within the functional level of an organization. Information from the marketing department is used to guide the actions of a company's other departments.\r\nAs an example, a marketing department could ascertain (via marketing research) that consumers desired a new type of product or a new usage for an existing product. With this in mind, the marketing department would inform the R&amp;D department to create a prototype of a product/service based on consumers' new desires.\r\nThe production department would then start to manufacture the product, while the marketing department would focus on the promotion, distribution, pricing, etc. of the product. Additionally, a firm's finance department would be consulted, with respect to securing appropriate funding for the development, production, and promotion of the product. Finance may oppose the required capital expenditure since it could undermine a healthy cash flow for the organization.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Mutually beneficial exchange:</span> In a transaction in the market economy, a firm gains revenue, which thus leads to more profits, market shares, and/or sales. A consumer, on the other hand, gains the satisfaction of a need/want, utility, reliability and value for money from the purchase of a product or service.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Societal marketing</span></span>\r\nA number of scholars and practitioners have argued that marketers have a greater social responsibility than simply satisfying customers and providing them with superior value. Marketing organizations that have embraced the societal marketing concept typically identify key stakeholder groups such as employees, customers, and local communities. Companies that adopt a societal marketing perspective typically practice triple bottom line reporting whereby they publish social impact and environmental impact reports alongside financial performance reports. Sustainable marketing or green marketing is an extension of societal marketing.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Marketing.png"},{"id":337,"title":"Sales","alias":"sales","description":" Sales are activities related to selling or the number of goods or services sold in a given targeted time period.\r\nThe seller, or the provider of the goods or services, completes a sale in response to an acquisition, appropriation, requisition, or a direct interaction with the buyer at the point of sale. There is a passing of title (property or ownership) of the item, and the settlement of a price, in which agreement is reached on a price for which transfer of ownership of the item will occur. The seller, not the purchaser, typically executes the sale and it may be completed prior to the obligation of payment. In the case of indirect interaction, a person who sells goods or service on behalf of the owner is known as a salesman or saleswoman or salesperson, but this often refers to someone selling goods in a store/shop, in which case other terms are also common, including salesclerk, shop assistant, and retail clerk.\r\nIn common law countries, sales are governed generally by the common law and commercial codes. In the United States, the laws governing sales of goods are somewhat uniform to the extent that most jurisdictions have adopted Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code, albeit with some non-uniform variations.\r\nA person or organization expressing an interest in acquiring the offered item of value is referred to as a potential buyer, prospective customer, or prospect. Buying and selling are understood to be two sides of the same &quot;coin&quot; or transaction. Both seller and buyer engage in a process of negotiation to consummate the exchange of values. The exchange, or selling, process has implied rules and identifiable stages. It is implied that the selling process will proceed fairly and ethically so that the parties end up nearly equally rewarded. The stages of selling, and buying, involve getting acquainted, assessing each party's need for the other's item of value, and determining if the values to be exchanged are equivalent or nearly so, or, in buyer's terms, &quot;worth the price&quot;. Sometimes, sellers have to use their own experiences when selling products with appropriate discounts.\r\nAlthough the skills required are different, from a management viewpoint, sales is a part of marketing. Sales often form a separate grouping in a corporate structure, employing separate specialist operatives known as salespersons (singular: salesperson). Selling is considered by many to be a sort of persuading &quot;art&quot;. Contrary to popular belief, the methodological approach of selling refers to a systematic process of repetitive and measurable milestones, by which a salesman relates his or her offering of a product or service in return enabling the buyer to achieve their goal in an economic way.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What's the Difference Between Sales and Marketing?</span>\r\nSales and Marketing: two terms we often hear together when working with mid-size companies. In some ways, this is logical because the two need to work together. But in fact, Sales and Marketing are two very different functions and require very different skills.\r\nBusiness leaders know what Operations are; they make stuff. They know what Accounting is; they record and control the money. And they know what Sales do; they sell stuff. So if you are not making stuff, selling stuff, or recording the money—what is marketing and why do you need it?\r\nWhat's the difference between Sales and Marketing? To answer this question, let's define what Sales and Marketing are separately and how they support one another.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is Marketing? Aligning with Customers, Now and for the Future</span></span>\r\nA key job of Marketing is to understand the marketplace from the perspective of the customer looking back towards the company and helping lead the company where it should be in the future. Marketing’s job is to direct the organization toward the segments, or groups of customers and channels where the company can profitably compete. It should help the organization see how it needs to modify its product offerings, pricing, and communication so that it meets the needs of the distribution channel or end customers.\r\nMarketing also needs to convert the market understanding into tools and tactics to attract the market, build (often digital) relationships, and develop leads. Without Sales, Marketing efforts run short. Marketing directs Sales as to where they should be hunting and what ammo to use. Note, however, that if Marketing becomes a sales support function focused only on the now, the future can become lost.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Without Marketing, Sales Suffers</span></span>\r\nNot even the best hunter can bring home dinner if they are shooting blanks at decoys. Markets are constantly changing. The job of marketing is to stay ahead of the changes and help the hunters see where they should be hunting and provide them with the right ammunition. If Marketing is only focused on delivering the ammunition for today, nobody will see where the industry is moving or where the company needs to hunt next. This limits growth not only for Sales and Marketing but also for your entire organization.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Can You be Both Sales and Marketing?</span></span>\r\nIn all my years, working for companies that ranged from Fortune 100 to mid-size companies I have never met anyone who was really good at both sales and marketing. I have held the title of VP of Sales and Marketing, managing a 500 person sales and merchandising force. I was really a marketing person with sales authority. The skills required to focus on the now and the push of sales are different. In many ways, they are contrary to the skills of looking to the future and the customer perspective of marketing.\r\nEvery Sales organization feels they have a good understanding of their customers. But every Sales conversation with a customer has a sales transaction lurking in the background. Therefore, customers can never be completely open about their needs and want when talking to a sales person.\r\nFor a company to really grow, someone must have the job of looking out the window towards where the company needs to go in the future. For many companies, this is the job of the CEO and Sales hires someone to do some sales support and gives them a marketing title. But as companies grow, the job of CEO starts to become a full-time job in itself and the strategic role of Marketing gets short-changed. A study of mid-size companies by the University of Texas showed that companies that separated the roles of Marketing and Sales were much more likely to grow faster than the industry average.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Sales and Marketing: Today and the Future</span></span>\r\nSales need to be focused on the now. You can’t run a company unless your sales team is focused on bringing in today’s business. But you can’t really ask your Sales leaders where the company should go next and to develop the 18-month plan to get there without losing focus on today’s revenue. Besides, if your sales executive was really good at developing future-focused business strategies and tying that strategy to the plans and tools of marketing to make it happen, they would be a marketing person and not a now-focused sales person.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Sales.png"},{"id":152,"title":"Contact Center","alias":"contact-center","description":"A contact center is a central point from where you can contact.\r\nThe contact center typically includes one or more call centers but may include other types of customer contact, as well. A contact center is generally part of an enterprise's overall customer relationship management (CRM) strategy.<br />Contact centers and call centers are both centers for customer service, and the two terms are often used interchangeably, but a contact center supports more services than a typical call center.\r\nContact centers offer omnichannel customer support, including email, chat, voice over IP (VoIP) and website support. A call center typically uses phones as the main channel of communication and can handle a mass volume of calls.<br />Contact centers are used for inbound communication, outbound communication or a hybrid of both. Contact center agents also interact with customers via web chat, phone, email or other communication channels.\r\nThe contact center infrastructure that is necessary to support communications may be located on the same premises as the contact center, or it can be located externally.\r\nIn an on-premises scenario, the company that owns the contact center also owns and manages its own hardware and software. This requires staffing and IT investments that some companies choose to forgo by outsourcing those tasks to cloud providers or hosting companies.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is a Call Center?</span>\r\nTraditionally, a call center is an office where a large number of call center agents provide customer service over the telephone. Inbound call centers receive calls for customer support and often serve as a knowledge base for tech support, billing questions, and other customer service issues. These call centers focus on quick call resolution times and agent productivity. In outbound call centers, agents make calls rather than receive them. These could be sales calls, marketing offers, surveys, fundraising requests, or debt collection, for example.\r\nThe term “call center” conjures an image for many people of waiting on perpetual hold or being routed through an endless IVR that never gives them what they need. Because so many consumers have had a dreadful customer service experience along these lines, call centers have developed a bad rap. But as legacy phone systems give way to newer digital technologies, call centers are evolving.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is a Contact Center?</span>\r\nThe term &quot;contact center&quot; (or “contact centre”) reflects the modern reality that there are many other ways to connect with a customer these days besides by telephone. The combined trends of increased customer expectations and newer technologies that allow for many channels of communication are creating a shift in the traditional call center model which has existed for decades. Consumers want more ways to reach businesses, and businesses are looking for new ways to improve customer experience.\r\nWhile call center agents generally focus on inbound and outbound calls, either on traditional phone lines or over VoIP, contact center agents handle a wide variety of communications. In a modern multichannel contact center, technical support might be delivered over in-app chat or video, while order status updates are delivered via SMS, event promotions are sent as push notifications, surveys are deployed over Facebook Messenger, and sales inquiries received by email are sent directly to an agent to connect by phone. Call centers handle voice communications, contact centers handle all communications.\r\nA company’s contact center is usually integrated with their customer relationship management (CRM) system, where all interactions between the organization and the public are tracked, coordinated, and managed. Depending on the infrastructure and ecosystem, it could be comprised of an alphabet soup of complex components. Many companies have purchased off-the-shelf systems or a highly customized network of technologies from multiple vendors. Some companies have adopted a cloud-based solution or two, but they remain siloed from the rest of their systems and can’t talk to each other.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/Contact_Center1.png"}],"characteristics":[],"concurentProducts":[],"jobRoles":[],"organizationalFeatures":[],"complementaryCategories":[],"solutions":[],"materials":[],"useCases":[],"best_practices":[],"values":[],"implementations":[]}],"suppliedProducts":[{"id":1135,"logoURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/Workbooks.png","logo":true,"scheme":false,"title":"Workbooks.com","vendorVerified":0,"rating":"1.00","implementationsCount":1,"suppliersCount":0,"supplierPartnersCount":0,"alias":"workbookscom","companyTitle":"Workbooks","companyTypes":["supplier","vendor"],"companyId":4036,"companyAlias":"workbooks","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Workbooks CRM helps you run campaigns and generate more quality leads.&nbsp;</span>\r\nWe give you the tools you need to execute your marketing strategy and measure ROI.\r\nFeatures to support Marketing Success\r\nData Management, Profiling &amp; Targeting\r\nGather business intelligence on your target accounts/market. Manage all your accounts/contacts within your CRM. Target your ‘ideal’ customer, based on their profile.&nbsp;\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Email Campaigns</span>\r\nSegment your database. Use templates to send targeted email messages or integrate directly with leading email marketing providers such as MailChimp or dotmailer. Gain visibility of all prospect/customer interaction and track key metrics (such as open and click rates) against relevant marketing campaigns.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Event Management</span>\r\nPlan, organise and promote live events, webinars or training courses from within Workbooks CRM. Allow delegates to self-register and automatically manage scheduled communication to contacts.&nbsp;\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Lead Scoring</span>\r\nAllocate criteria to help sales and marketing prioritise their time. Distribute leads to the right teams for follow-up. Use scoring to ensure sales spend their time following-up on the deals most likely to convert.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Website Analytics</span>\r\nTurn anonymous traffic into sales by discovering who was on your website and what pages they viewed. Knowing visitor interests prior to a call will help sales conversion rates and marketing can nurture more effectively by sending the most relevant information.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Supplier Management</span>\r\nTypically you will have a multitude of partners who provide you with marketing services such as lead purchase, email marketing, lead nurturing, event management, design &amp; print contractors etc. Track and manage these suppliers in Workbooks so the relevant information is stored in one place.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Track Marketing Activities</span>\r\nManage your/your team's day-to-day workload and keep on top of outstanding actions to ensure project milestones are hit and campaigns are delivered on time. Tasks and Meetings can be associated with specific marketing campaigns to provide full visibility.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Telemarketing Campaigns</span>\r\nData can be segmented and added to Marketing Campaigns to enable Telemarketing teams to focus on delivering targeted messaging. Track progress and review performance easily and effectively.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Lead Management</span>\r\nIdentify your most profitable lead channels by tracking the source of your leads. Automatically assign leads to Marketing Campaigns. Categorise your leads and harvest relevant contact information in one place to help you convert more prospects into sales.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Website Lead Capture</span>\r\nAutomatically capture leads from your website, assign them to queues/campaigns and notify your sales team members.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Marketing Metrics</span>\r\nCapture key information such as campaign ROI, lead volumes by source, lead conversion. Use Dashboards and Reports to ensure you have real-time information at your fingertips rather than spending time manually updating outdated spreadsheets.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">POs Management</span>\r\nManage your marketing expenditure more effectively. Raise Purchase Orders and track marketing expenditure for goods or services you are purchasing. Easily identify the current status of Supplier Orders and whether they have been approved/paid/delivered.\r\nWorkbooks CRM enables you to work more effectively, to better identify opportunities, close more deals and grow revenue.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Features to support Sales Success</span>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Contact Management &amp; Prospect Profiling</span>\r\nUse every interaction with a prospect to further your business intelligence. Capture knowledge, map relationships and segment your data to improve sales prospecting. Sync everything with Outlook, Microsoft Exchange/Office 365 or Google Apps.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Opportunity Management</span>\r\nManage sales opportunities, improve conversation rates, drive best practice across your sales team and grow revenue. With a CRM system undermining your sales execution, you can ensure that your Sales people share a common methodology, understand where their prospects are in the sales process and address their needs effectively - ultimately increasing closure rates.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Sales Performance Metrics</span>\r\nGenerate Reports and Dashboards that give you insight into your sales pipeline and performance. By understanding your sales performance you can improve execution, increase conversion rates and grow your revenues.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Quotations</span>\r\nBuild professional looking quotations in a matter of minutes. Standardise terms and conditions, control discounting and ensure quotations are followed-up effectively.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Tracking Sales Activities</span>\r\nRecord Sales Activities to ensure that Opportunities are progressed effectively and no calls are overlooked. Analyse which activities are the most productive and replicate these as best-practice examples for the whole team.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Sales Forecasting</span>\r\nEnable your sales people to forecast effectively. Identify your ‘best case’ and ‘commit’. Determine how likely those deals are to close and if your team is likely to hit target. Generate Reports and Dashboards to provide real-time visibility to sales teams and managers.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Existing Account Management</span>\r\nManage your customers more effectively by using the data held in your CRM. Understand your customer landscape, improve retention rates, up-sell within an account. Improve your customer service.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Order Creation &amp; Processing</span>\r\nCreate and manage orders within your CRM. Turn quotes into orders with a single click and track the status of orders as they are fulfilled and invoiced.","shortDescription":"Workbooks.com CRM brings your Sales, Marketing and Customer Service teams together.","type":null,"isRoiCalculatorAvaliable":false,"isConfiguratorAvaliable":false,"bonus":100,"usingCount":15,"sellingCount":12,"discontinued":0,"rebateForPoc":0,"rebate":0,"seo":{"title":"Workbooks.com","keywords":"your, sales, marketing, effectively, Management, more, with, ensure","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Workbooks CRM helps you run campaigns and generate more quality leads.&nbsp;</span>\r\nWe give you the tools you need to execute your marketing strategy and measure ROI.\r\nFeatures to support Marketing Success\r\nData Management, Pr","og:title":"Workbooks.com","og:description":"<span style=\"font-weight: 700; \">Workbooks CRM helps you run campaigns and generate more quality leads.&nbsp;</span>\r\nWe give you the tools you need to execute your marketing strategy and measure ROI.\r\nFeatures to support Marketing Success\r\nData Management, Pr","og:image":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/Workbooks.png"},"eventUrl":"","translationId":1136,"dealDetails":null,"roi":null,"price":null,"bonusForReference":null,"templateData":[],"testingArea":"","categories":[{"id":71,"title":"CRM - Customer Relationship Management","alias":"crm-customer-relationship-management","description":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Customer service</span> is the provision of service to customers before, during and after a purchase. The perception of success of such interactions is dependent on employees &quot;who can adjust themselves to the personality of the guest&quot;. Customer service concerns the priority an organization assigns to customer service relative to components such as product innovation and pricing. In this sense, an organization that values good customer service may spend more money in training employees than the average organization or may proactively interview customers for feedback.\r\nA <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">customer support</span> is a range of customer services to assist customers in making cost effective and correct use of a product. It includes assistance in planning, installation, training, trouble shooting, maintenance, upgrading, and disposal of a product. These services even may be done at customer's side where he/she uses the product or service. In this case it is called &quot;at home customer services&quot; or &quot;at home customer support.&quot;\r\nRegarding technology, products such as mobile phones, televisions, computers, software products or other electronic or mechanical goods, it is termed technical support. \r\nCustomer service may be provided by a person (e.g., sales and service representative), or by automated means, such as kiosks, Internet sites, and apps.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM </span>(Customer Relationship Management) is an approach to manage a company's interaction with current and potential customers. It uses data analysis about customers' history with a company to improve business relationships with customers, specifically focusing on customer retention and ultimately driving sales growth.\r\nOne important aspect of the CRM approach is the systems of CRM that compile data from a range of different communication channels, including a company's website, telephone, email, live chat, marketing materials and more recently, social media. Through the CRM approach and the systems used to facilitate it, businesses learn more about their target audiences and how to best cater to their needs.\r\nCRM helps users focus on their organization’s relationships with individual people including customers, service users, colleagues, or suppliers.\r\nWhen people talk about customer relationship management system, they might mean any of three things: \r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as Technology</span>: This is a technology product, often in the cloud, that teams use to record, report and analyse interactions between the company and users. This is also called a CRM system or solution.</li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as a Strategy</span>: This is a business’ philosophy about how relationships with customers and potential customers should be managed.&nbsp; </li><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">CRM as a Process</span>: Think of this as a system a business adopts to nurture and manage those relationships.</li></ul>\r\n<br /><br /><br />","materialsDescription":"<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">Why is CRM important?</span></h1>\r\nCRM management system enables a business to deepen its relationships with customers, service users, colleagues, partners and suppliers.\r\nForging good relationships and keeping track of prospects and customers is crucial for customer acquisition and retention, which is at the heart of a CRM’s function. You can see everything in one place — a simple, customizable dashboard that can tell you a customer’s previous history with you, the status of their orders, any outstanding customer service issues, and more.\r\nGartner predicts that by 2021, CRM technology will be the single largest revenue area of spending in enterprise software. If your business is going to last, you know that you need a strategy for the future. For forward-thinking businesses, CRM is the framework for that strategy.\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What are the benefits of CRM?</span></h1>\r\nBy collecting and organising data about customer interactions, making it accessible and actionable for all, and facilitating analysis of that data, CRM offers many benefits and advantages.<br />The benefits and advantages of CRM include:\r\n<ul><li>Enhanced contact management</li><li>Cross-team collaboration</li><li>Heightened productivity</li><li>Empowered sales management</li><li>Accurate sales forecasting</li><li>Reliable reporting</li><li>Improved sales metrics</li><li>Increased customer satisfaction and retention</li><li>Boosted marketing ROI</li><li>Enriched products and services</li></ul>\r\n<h1 class=\"align-center\"><span style=\"font-weight: normal;\">What are the key features of most popular CRM software programs?</span></h1>\r\nWhile many CRM solutions differ in their specific value propositions — depending on your business size, priority function, or industry type — they usually share some core features. These, in fact, are the foundation of any top CRM software, without which you might end up using an inferior app or an over-rated address book. So, let’s discuss the key features you need to look for when figuring out the best CRM software for your business.\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Contact management</span>. The best CRM solutions aren’t just an address book that only organizes contact details. It manages customer data in a centralized place and gives you a 360-degree view of your customers. You should be able to organize customers’ personal information, demographics, interactions, and transactions in ways that are meaningful to your goals or processes. Moreover, a good contact management feature lets you personalize your outreach campaign. By collecting personal, social, and purchase data, it will help you to segment target audience groups in different ways.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Reporting and dashboards</span>. These features of customer relationship management allow you to use analytics to interpret customer data. Reporting is very useful if you want to consolidate disparate data and churn out insights in different visualizations. This lets you make better decisions or proactively deal with market trends and customer behavioral patterns. The more visual widgets a CRM software has, the better you can present reports. Furthermore, a best customer relationship management software will generate real-time data, making reporting more accurate and timely. Reporting also keeps you tab on sales opportunities like upsell, resell, and cross-sell, especially when integrated with e-commerce platforms.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Lead management</span>. These features let you manage leads all the way to win-loss stage. They pave a clear path to conversion, so you can quickly assess how the business is performing. One of the main three legs that comprises the best client relationship management software (the other two being contact management and reporting), lead management unburdens the sales team from follow-ups, tracking, and repetitive tasks.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Deals and tasks</span>. Deals and tasks are closely associated with leads. Deals are leads at the negotiation stage, so it’s critical to keep a close eye on their associated tasks for a higher chance of conversion.<br />CRM software tools should also let you track both deals and tasks in their respective windows or across the sales stages. Whether you’re viewing a contact or analyzing the sales pipeline, you should be able to immediately check the deal’s tasks and details. Deals and tasks should also have user permissions to protect leaks of sensitive data. Similarly, alerts are critical to tasks so deadlines are met. Notifications are usually sent via email or prominently displayed on the user’s dashboard.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Campaign management</span>. Solid CRM software will integrate this feature to enable marketing processes from outreach concept to A/B testing to deployment and to post analysis. This will allow you to sort campaigns to target segments in your contacts and define deployment strategies. You will also be able to define metrics for various channels, then plow back the insights generated by post-campaign analytics into planning more campaigns.<br />Recurring outreach efforts can also be automated. For instance, you can set to instantly appropriate content to contacts based on their interest or send tiered autoresponders based on campaign feedback.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Email management</span>. By integrating with popular email clients like Gmail and Outlook, CRM solutions can capture email messages and sort important details that can be saved in contacts or synced with leads. They can also track activities like opened emails, forwarded emails, clicked links, and downloaded files. Emails can also be qualified for prospecting.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Social media management. </span>Popular CRM systems feature an integrated social media management where you can view different social media pages from the CRM’s interface. This is a convenient way to post, reply on, and manage all your pages. Likewise, this feature gives you a better perspective on how customers are interacting with your brand. A glean of their likes and dislikes, interests, shares, and public conversations helps you to assess customer biases and preferences. Customers are also increasingly using social media to contact companies; hence, a good CRM should alert you for brand mentions.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n<ul><li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Mobile access</span>. With more users accessing apps via mobile devices, many vendors have been prioritizing mobile-first platforms. Emergence Capital Partners study found over 300 mobile-first apps so far and CRM is definitely one their targets. Many CRM solutions have both Android and iOS apps. Mobile access works in two ways to be highly appreciated: accessing data and inputting data while on location. Field sales with the latest sales information on hand may be able to interest prospects better. Conversely, sales reps can quickly update deals across the pipeline even as they come off a client meeting.</li></ul>\r\n\r\n","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/CRM_-_Customer_Relationship_Management.png"},{"id":341,"title":"Customer Service","alias":"customer-service","description":" Customer service is the process of ensuring customer satisfaction with a product or service. Often, customer service takes place while performing a transaction for the customer, such as making a sale or returning an item. Customer service can take the form of in-person interaction, a phone call, self-service systems, or by other means.\r\nCustomer service is an important part of maintaining ongoing client relationships, which is key to continuing revenue. For this reason, many companies have worked hard to increase their customer satisfaction levels.\r\nMost successful businesses recognize the importance of providing outstanding customer service. Courteous and empathetic interaction with a trained customer service representative can mean the difference between losing or retaining a customer.\r\nWhen problems arise, customers should receive timely attention to the issue. Prompt attention to emails and phone calls is critical to maintaining good relations. Requiring customers to stand in long lines or sit on hold can sour an interaction before it begins.\r\nIdeally, customer service should be a one-stop endeavor for the consumer. For example, if a customer calls a helpline regarding a problem with a product, the customer service representative should follow through with the customer until the issue is fully resolved.\r\nThis may entail scheduling appointments with in-person repair personnel if the problem cannot be resolved on the phone, or transferring a call to skilled technicians in another department. Proactively following up with the customer to ensure that he or she is fully satisfied is another smart move.","materialsDescription":" What are customer service standards?\r\nCustomer service standards are an internal corporate set of rules governing the company's customer service activities, an algorithm for communicating with customers, and general standards for responding to unusual situations. The standard of customer service is an integral part of the corporate standard of the company.\r\nFunctions of customer service standards:\r\n<ol><li>To order. The client does not encounter problems, does not see them, which means that he is confident that all the staff without exception are professionals who know their business.</li><li>To control. It is difficult to assess and monitor the work of each manager if there are no clear criteria for evaluation. At the same time, the implementation of the sales plan cannot be the only parameter of the assessment; you need to know whether the manager of customer service standards adopted in this company adheres.</li><li>To adapt. Among other things, the availability of customer service standards simplifies the procedure.</li></ol>\r\nCustomer service standards are effective if the customer does not see the difference between the work of two (or more) managers, and sees only “proprietary” service, always the same, regardless of any external factors or circumstances. The customer service standard, which has been tested in practice, backed up by experience (perhaps even someone else's), created on the basis of analytical studies and recognized methods, can be called &quot;gold&quot;. It allows you to increase profits, improve the image of the company, attract new customers.\r\nCustomer service standards are an important part of the company's brand. But, in addition, the standards are necessary and other units, in particular, the department to work with staff. Therefore, their development must take into account the needs of all interested services of the company.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What is the purpose of introducing customer service standards in the company?</span>\r\nThe objectives of implementing the standards are as follows:\r\n<ul><li>For employees with experience: minimize the number of erroneous and unnecessary actions. The result of this will be saving time of each employee (no errors - no need to spend time correcting them). And, as a result, increased productivity.</li><li>For novice employees: customer service standards allow you to transfer the necessary knowledge in the most concise manner and in a short time.</li><li>For the company: the abolition of dependence on the old-timers. Not all employees who have worked in the company for many years (or even since the day of foundation) are able to resist the so-called star disease. Having knowledge and experience, a person loses the ability to objectively evaluate his work, he begins to think that he is the best manager in the company. It can end very badly - in the event of dismissal, such an employee will take the base, and turn clients against the company. Standards for customer service are needed to ensure that all employees can be assessed on a single scale, based on the actual benefits they bring to the company, as well as the attitude of the employee to the company.</li><li>For the company: the uniformity of control activities of managers. Standards are unequivocal, exclude double interpretations, and therefore cannot cause controversy about the rightness of an employee or employer.</li><li>For managers: the standards of uniform customer service are the same for all managers, and this makes it possible to make the pay of each manager absolutely transparent and intelligible. Realizing that there will be no double interpretations, the manager may not be afraid that he will be paid less than expected - all his mistakes and achievements are immediately visible and understandable.</li></ul>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">The application of service standards allows you:</span>\r\n<ul><li>to develop a company style in dealing with clients;</li><li>to increase the effectiveness of the work of managers with new customers;</li><li>to bring the quality of communication with customers to a higher level;</li><li>to create a positive opinion of the company about the company, so that it can be recommended to its acquaintances, thus increasing the number of potential and then real customers;</li><li>to minimize conflicts between the manager and the customer;</li><li>to develop a technology for training newcomers;</li><li>to transfer the assessment of the work of the manager from the subjective to the objective, transparent and understandable to everyone;</li><li>to establish a procedure for controlling the work of personnel;</li><li>to increase the motivation of managers to work.</li></ul>\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Benefits of applying service standards</span>\r\n<ul><li>The accumulation of experience: the entire base focuses on the company, and not on the hands of managers, &quot;old-timers.&quot; Thus, the departure of one or several “old” employees does not become a “natural disaster” for the company.</li><li>Motivation, analysis and control: customer service standards make it possible to develop a transparent scheme of managers' motivation based on a clear, almost mathematical analysis of their work. The sales process is optimized.</li><li>Setting goals. With the help of standards, the company has the ability to set clear, reasonable plans. This allows you to keep the atmosphere in the team friendly and stable, and the lack of &quot;muffled&quot; tasks - to increase the loyalty of managers to the company.</li><li>Standards of customer service is a fairly mobile system that allows you to immediately detect errors in working with clients and quickly eliminate them. In addition, at any stage of working with a client, the head of the sales department can intervene in the process, noticing an error in the work of the manager, and even be proactive in order to prevent an error to which the manager is heading.</li><li>Quick and easy start for beginners. Customer service standards are actually a knowledge base, collected, analyzed, and streamlined. Such information is easily transmitted and assimilated by beginners, which means that the beginner quickly gets to work and starts to make a profit. In addition, a newbie will not spoil relations with a client by awkward actions, since he already knows what to do in any conflict and problem situations.</li><li>Customer confidence. Customer service standards allow the latter to feel confident in the company - no matter where the customer is, he will always easily recognize “his” company by brand features and can be absolutely sure that in a small town they will be served as qualitatively as in a million-plus city, because that the company is well aware of their work. So, such a company can be trusted.</li></ul>","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Customer_Service.png"},{"id":339,"title":"Marketing","alias":"marketing","description":" Marketing is the study and management of exchange relationships. It is the business process of creating relationships with and satisfying customers. Because marketing is used to attract customers, it is one of the primary components of business management and commerce. Marketers can direct product to other businesses (B2B marketing) or directly to consumers (B2C marketing).\r\nRegardless of who is being marketed to, several factors, including the perspective the marketers will use. These market orientations determine how marketers will approach the planning stage of marketing. This leads into the marketing mix, which outlines the specifics of the product and how it will be sold. This can in turn, be affected by the environment surrounding the product, the results of marketing research and market research, and the characteristics of the product's target market.\r\nOnce these factors are determined, marketers must then decide what methods will be used to market the product. This decision is based on the factors analyzed in the planning stage as well as where the product is in the product life cycle.\r\nMarketing is defined by the American Marketing Association as &quot;the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large&quot;. The term developed from the original meaning which referred literally to going to market with goods for sale. From a sales process engineering perspective, marketing is &quot;a set of processes that are interconnected and interdependent with other functions of a business aimed at achieving customer interest and satisfaction&quot;.\r\nPhilip Kotler defined marketing as &quot;Satisfying needs and wants through an exchange process&quot;, and a decade later defines it as “a social and managerial process by which individuals and groups obtain what they want and need through creating, offering and exchanging products of value with others.”\r\nThe Chartered Institute of Marketing defines marketing as &quot;the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably&quot;. A similar concept is the value-based marketing which states the role of marketing to contribute to increasing shareholder value. In this context, marketing can be defined as &quot;the management process that seeks to maximise returns to shareholders by developing relationships with valued customers and creating a competitive advantage&quot;.\r\nIn the past, marketing practice tended to be seen as a creative industry, which included advertising, distribution and selling. However, because the academic study of marketing makes extensive use of social sciences, psychology, sociology, mathematics, economics, anthropology and neuroscience, the profession is now widely recognized as a science, allowing numerous universities to offer Master-of-Science (MSc) programs.\r\nThe process of marketing is that of bringing a product to market, which includes these steps: broad market research; market targeting and market segmentation; determining distribution, pricing and promotion strategies; developing a communications strategy; budgeting; and visioning long-term market development goals. Many parts of the marketing process (e.g. product design, art director, brand management, advertising, inbound marketing, copywriting etc.) involve use of the creative arts.","materialsDescription":"<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What the differences between B2B and B2C Marketing?</span>\r\nThe different goals of B2B and B2C marketing lead to differences in the B2B and B2C markets. The main differences in these markets are demand, purchasing volume, amount of customers, customer concentration, distribution, buying nature, buying influences, negotiations, reciprocity, leasing and promotional methods.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Demand:</span> B2B demand is derived because businesses buy products based on how much demand there is for the final consumer product. Businesses buy products based on customer's wants and needs. B2C demand is primarily because customers buy products based on their own wants and needs.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Purchasing Volume:</span> Businesses buy products in large volumes to distribute to consumers. Consumers buy products in smaller volumes suitable for personal use.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Amount of Customers:</span> There are relatively fewer businesses to market to than direct consumers.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Customer Concentration:</span> Businesses that specialize in a particular market tend to be geographically concentrated while customers that buy products from these businesses are not concentrated.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Distribution:</span> B2B products pass directly from the producer of the product to the business while B2C products must additionally go through a wholesaler or retailer.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Buying Nature:</span> B2B purchasing is a formal process done by professional buyers and sellers while B2C purchasing is informal.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Buying Influences:</span> B2B purchasing is influenced by multiple people in various departments such as quality control, accounting, and logistics while B2C marketing is only influenced by the person making the purchase and possibly a few others.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Negotiations:</span> In B2B marketing, negotiating for lower prices or added benefits is commonly accepted while in B2C marketing (particularly in Western cultures) prices are fixed.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Reciprocity:</span> Businesses tend to buy from businesses they sell to. For example, a business that sells printer ink is more likely to buy office chairs from a supplier that buys the business's printer ink. In B2C marketing, this does not occur because consumers are not also selling products.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Leasing:</span> Businesses tend to lease expensive items while consumers tend to save up to buy expensive items.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Promotional Methods:</span> In B2B marketing, the most common promotional method is personal selling. B2C marketing mostly uses sales promotion, public relations, advertising, and social media.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">What are marketing orientations?</span>\r\nA marketing orientation has been defined as a &quot;philosophy of business management.&quot; or &quot;a corporate state of mind&quot; or as an &quot;organization[al] culture&quot;. Although scholars continue to debate the precise nature of specific orientations that inform marketing practice, the most commonly cited orientations are as follows:\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Product</span></span>\r\nA firm employing a product orientation is mainly concerned with the quality of its product. A product orientation is based on the assumption that all things being equal, consumers will purchase products of superior quality. The approach is most effective when the firm has deep insights into customer needs and desires as derived from research and/or intuition and understands consumer's quality expectations and price consumers are willing to pay. Although the product orientation has largely been supplanted by the marketing orientation, firms practicing a product orientation can still be found in haute couture and arts marketing.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Sales</span></span>\r\nA sales orientation focuses on the selling/promotion of the firm's existing products, rather than developing new products to satisfy unmet needs or wants. This orientation seeks to attain the highest possible sales through promotion and direct sales techniques. The sales orientation &quot;is typically practiced with unsought goods.&quot; One study found that industrial companies are more likely to hold a sales orientation than consumer goods companies. The approach may also suit scenarios in which a firm holds dead stock, or otherwise sells a product that is in high demand, with little likelihood of changes in consumer tastes diminishing demand.\r\nA 2011 meta-analyses found that the factors with the greatest impact on sales performance are a salesperson's sales-related knowledge (knowledge of market segments, sales presentation skills, conflict resolution, and products), degree of adaptiveness (changing behavior based on the aforementioned knowledge), role clarity (salesperson's role is to expressly to sell), cognitive aptitude (intelligence) and work engagement (motivation and interest in a sales role).\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Production</span></span>\r\nA firm focusing on a production orientation specializes in producing as much as possible of a given product or service in order to achieve economies of scale or economies of scope. A production orientation may be deployed when a high demand for a product or service exists, coupled with certainty that consumer tastes and preferences remain relatively constant (similar to the sales orientation). The so-called production era is thought to have dominated marketing practice from the 1860s to the 1930s, but other theorists argue that evidence of the production orientation can still be found in some companies or industries. Specifically, Kotler and Armstrong note that the production philosophy is &quot;one of the oldest philosophies that guides sellers... [and] is still useful in some situations.&quot;\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \"><span style=\"font-weight: bold; \">Marketing</span></span>\r\nThe marketing orientation is the most common orientation used in contemporary marketing. It is a customer-centric approach that involves a firm basing its marketing program around products that suit new consumer tastes. Firms adopting a marketing orientation typically engage in extensive market research to gauge consumer desires, use R&amp;D (Research &amp; Development) to develop a product attuned to the revealed information, and then utilize promotion techniques to ensure consumers are aware of the product's existence and the benefits it can deliver. Scales designed to measure a firm's overall market orientation have been developed and found to be robust in a variety of contexts.\r\nThe marketing orientation has three prime facets, which are:\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Customer orientation:</span> A firm in the market economy can survive by producing goods that people are willing and able to buy. Consequently, ascertaining consumer demand is vital for a firm's future viability and even existence as a going concern.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic; \">Organizational orientation:</span> The marketing department is of prime importance within the functional level of an organization. Information from the marketing department is used to guide the actions of a company's other departments.\r\nAs an example, a marketing department could ascertain (via marketing research) that consumers desired a new type of product or a new usage for an existing product. With this in mind, the marketing department would inform the R&amp;D department to create a prototype of a product/service based on consumers' new desires.\r\nThe production department would then start to manufacture the product, while the marketing department would focus on the promotion, distribution, pricing, etc. of the product. Additionally, a firm's finance department would be consulted, with respect to securing appropriate funding for the development, production, and promotion of the product. Finance may oppose the required capital expenditure since it could undermine a healthy cash flow for the organization.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Mutually beneficial exchange:</span> In a transaction in the market economy, a firm gains revenue, which thus leads to more profits, market shares, and/or sales. A consumer, on the other hand, gains the satisfaction of a need/want, utility, reliability and value for money from the purchase of a product or service.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Societal marketing</span></span>\r\nA number of scholars and practitioners have argued that marketers have a greater social responsibility than simply satisfying customers and providing them with superior value. Marketing organizations that have embraced the societal marketing concept typically identify key stakeholder groups such as employees, customers, and local communities. Companies that adopt a societal marketing perspective typically practice triple bottom line reporting whereby they publish social impact and environmental impact reports alongside financial performance reports. Sustainable marketing or green marketing is an extension of societal marketing.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Marketing.png"},{"id":337,"title":"Sales","alias":"sales","description":" Sales are activities related to selling or the number of goods or services sold in a given targeted time period.\r\nThe seller, or the provider of the goods or services, completes a sale in response to an acquisition, appropriation, requisition, or a direct interaction with the buyer at the point of sale. There is a passing of title (property or ownership) of the item, and the settlement of a price, in which agreement is reached on a price for which transfer of ownership of the item will occur. The seller, not the purchaser, typically executes the sale and it may be completed prior to the obligation of payment. In the case of indirect interaction, a person who sells goods or service on behalf of the owner is known as a salesman or saleswoman or salesperson, but this often refers to someone selling goods in a store/shop, in which case other terms are also common, including salesclerk, shop assistant, and retail clerk.\r\nIn common law countries, sales are governed generally by the common law and commercial codes. In the United States, the laws governing sales of goods are somewhat uniform to the extent that most jurisdictions have adopted Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code, albeit with some non-uniform variations.\r\nA person or organization expressing an interest in acquiring the offered item of value is referred to as a potential buyer, prospective customer, or prospect. Buying and selling are understood to be two sides of the same &quot;coin&quot; or transaction. Both seller and buyer engage in a process of negotiation to consummate the exchange of values. The exchange, or selling, process has implied rules and identifiable stages. It is implied that the selling process will proceed fairly and ethically so that the parties end up nearly equally rewarded. The stages of selling, and buying, involve getting acquainted, assessing each party's need for the other's item of value, and determining if the values to be exchanged are equivalent or nearly so, or, in buyer's terms, &quot;worth the price&quot;. Sometimes, sellers have to use their own experiences when selling products with appropriate discounts.\r\nAlthough the skills required are different, from a management viewpoint, sales is a part of marketing. Sales often form a separate grouping in a corporate structure, employing separate specialist operatives known as salespersons (singular: salesperson). Selling is considered by many to be a sort of persuading &quot;art&quot;. Contrary to popular belief, the methodological approach of selling refers to a systematic process of repetitive and measurable milestones, by which a salesman relates his or her offering of a product or service in return enabling the buyer to achieve their goal in an economic way.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What's the Difference Between Sales and Marketing?</span>\r\nSales and Marketing: two terms we often hear together when working with mid-size companies. In some ways, this is logical because the two need to work together. But in fact, Sales and Marketing are two very different functions and require very different skills.\r\nBusiness leaders know what Operations are; they make stuff. They know what Accounting is; they record and control the money. And they know what Sales do; they sell stuff. So if you are not making stuff, selling stuff, or recording the money—what is marketing and why do you need it?\r\nWhat's the difference between Sales and Marketing? To answer this question, let's define what Sales and Marketing are separately and how they support one another.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is Marketing? Aligning with Customers, Now and for the Future</span></span>\r\nA key job of Marketing is to understand the marketplace from the perspective of the customer looking back towards the company and helping lead the company where it should be in the future. Marketing’s job is to direct the organization toward the segments, or groups of customers and channels where the company can profitably compete. It should help the organization see how it needs to modify its product offerings, pricing, and communication so that it meets the needs of the distribution channel or end customers.\r\nMarketing also needs to convert the market understanding into tools and tactics to attract the market, build (often digital) relationships, and develop leads. Without Sales, Marketing efforts run short. Marketing directs Sales as to where they should be hunting and what ammo to use. Note, however, that if Marketing becomes a sales support function focused only on the now, the future can become lost.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Without Marketing, Sales Suffers</span></span>\r\nNot even the best hunter can bring home dinner if they are shooting blanks at decoys. Markets are constantly changing. The job of marketing is to stay ahead of the changes and help the hunters see where they should be hunting and provide them with the right ammunition. If Marketing is only focused on delivering the ammunition for today, nobody will see where the industry is moving or where the company needs to hunt next. This limits growth not only for Sales and Marketing but also for your entire organization.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Can You be Both Sales and Marketing?</span></span>\r\nIn all my years, working for companies that ranged from Fortune 100 to mid-size companies I have never met anyone who was really good at both sales and marketing. I have held the title of VP of Sales and Marketing, managing a 500 person sales and merchandising force. I was really a marketing person with sales authority. The skills required to focus on the now and the push of sales are different. In many ways, they are contrary to the skills of looking to the future and the customer perspective of marketing.\r\nEvery Sales organization feels they have a good understanding of their customers. But every Sales conversation with a customer has a sales transaction lurking in the background. Therefore, customers can never be completely open about their needs and want when talking to a sales person.\r\nFor a company to really grow, someone must have the job of looking out the window towards where the company needs to go in the future. For many companies, this is the job of the CEO and Sales hires someone to do some sales support and gives them a marketing title. But as companies grow, the job of CEO starts to become a full-time job in itself and the strategic role of Marketing gets short-changed. A study of mid-size companies by the University of Texas showed that companies that separated the roles of Marketing and Sales were much more likely to grow faster than the industry average.\r\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Sales and Marketing: Today and the Future</span></span>\r\nSales need to be focused on the now. You can’t run a company unless your sales team is focused on bringing in today’s business. But you can’t really ask your Sales leaders where the company should go next and to develop the 18-month plan to get there without losing focus on today’s revenue. Besides, if your sales executive was really good at developing future-focused business strategies and tying that strategy to the plans and tools of marketing to make it happen, they would be a marketing person and not a now-focused sales person.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/icon_Sales.png"},{"id":152,"title":"Contact Center","alias":"contact-center","description":"A contact center is a central point from where you can contact.\r\nThe contact center typically includes one or more call centers but may include other types of customer contact, as well. A contact center is generally part of an enterprise's overall customer relationship management (CRM) strategy.<br />Contact centers and call centers are both centers for customer service, and the two terms are often used interchangeably, but a contact center supports more services than a typical call center.\r\nContact centers offer omnichannel customer support, including email, chat, voice over IP (VoIP) and website support. A call center typically uses phones as the main channel of communication and can handle a mass volume of calls.<br />Contact centers are used for inbound communication, outbound communication or a hybrid of both. Contact center agents also interact with customers via web chat, phone, email or other communication channels.\r\nThe contact center infrastructure that is necessary to support communications may be located on the same premises as the contact center, or it can be located externally.\r\nIn an on-premises scenario, the company that owns the contact center also owns and manages its own hardware and software. This requires staffing and IT investments that some companies choose to forgo by outsourcing those tasks to cloud providers or hosting companies.","materialsDescription":" <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is a Call Center?</span>\r\nTraditionally, a call center is an office where a large number of call center agents provide customer service over the telephone. Inbound call centers receive calls for customer support and often serve as a knowledge base for tech support, billing questions, and other customer service issues. These call centers focus on quick call resolution times and agent productivity. In outbound call centers, agents make calls rather than receive them. These could be sales calls, marketing offers, surveys, fundraising requests, or debt collection, for example.\r\nThe term “call center” conjures an image for many people of waiting on perpetual hold or being routed through an endless IVR that never gives them what they need. Because so many consumers have had a dreadful customer service experience along these lines, call centers have developed a bad rap. But as legacy phone systems give way to newer digital technologies, call centers are evolving.\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">What is a Contact Center?</span>\r\nThe term &quot;contact center&quot; (or “contact centre”) reflects the modern reality that there are many other ways to connect with a customer these days besides by telephone. The combined trends of increased customer expectations and newer technologies that allow for many channels of communication are creating a shift in the traditional call center model which has existed for decades. Consumers want more ways to reach businesses, and businesses are looking for new ways to improve customer experience.\r\nWhile call center agents generally focus on inbound and outbound calls, either on traditional phone lines or over VoIP, contact center agents handle a wide variety of communications. In a modern multichannel contact center, technical support might be delivered over in-app chat or video, while order status updates are delivered via SMS, event promotions are sent as push notifications, surveys are deployed over Facebook Messenger, and sales inquiries received by email are sent directly to an agent to connect by phone. Call centers handle voice communications, contact centers handle all communications.\r\nA company’s contact center is usually integrated with their customer relationship management (CRM) system, where all interactions between the organization and the public are tracked, coordinated, and managed. Depending on the infrastructure and ecosystem, it could be comprised of an alphabet soup of complex components. Many companies have purchased off-the-shelf systems or a highly customized network of technologies from multiple vendors. Some companies have adopted a cloud-based solution or two, but they remain siloed from the rest of their systems and can’t talk to each other.","iconURL":"https://old.roi4cio.com/fileadmin/user_upload/Contact_Center1.png"}],"characteristics":[],"concurentProducts":[],"jobRoles":[],"organizationalFeatures":[],"complementaryCategories":[],"solutions":[],"materials":[],"useCases":[],"best_practices":[],"values":[],"implementations":[]}],"partnershipProgramme":null}},"aliases":{},"links":{},"meta":{},"loading":false,"error":null},"implementations":{"implementationsByAlias":{},"aliases":{},"links":{},"meta":{},"loading":false,"error":null},"agreements":{"agreementById":{},"ids":{},"links":{},"meta":{},"loading":false,"error":null},"comparison":{"loading":false,"error":false,"templatesById":{},"comparisonByTemplateId":{},"products":[],"selectedTemplateId":null},"presentation":{"type":null,"company":{},"products":[],"partners":[],"formData":{},"dataLoading":false,"dataError":false,"loading":false,"error":false},"catalogsGlobal":{"subMenuItemTitle":""}}