Customer relationship systems: Innovative

In a previous blog post entitled CRM System: Helpful, but complex, we talked about how companies can benefit from using customer relationship systems. We mentioned CRM tools help businesses get organized and develop relationships with customers, and how they facilitate decision support and help the organization manage their budgets. You can read this blog post by clicking the link provided in the related blog posts section at the bottom of this page.

On a further note, we’d like to bring forth an advantage of customer relationship systems that businesses often don’t realize. Customer relationship systems can lead to innovation, and with business competition being higher than ever, it is essential for companies to innovate.

Customer relationship systems can trigger customer-led innovation

There are two key steps companies must follow if they wish to innovate. First, businesses must exploit their existing ideas and internal knowledge. Secondly, they must explore new ideas and acquire them from external sources. In the case of businesses, external sources will involve customers and business partners. Some may find this challenging as they would need to get used to the idea of the customer playing the role of collaborator and being part of the development process. Those exploring this concept for the first time may face an initial roadblock as they figure out how to capture external ideas and feedback and make them flow through the company.

When it comes to triggering customer-led innovation, customer relationship systems are greatly beneficial. With these, companies can encourage customers to submit feedback and ideas and easily capture them into a single system. From there, they can engage them into conversations through community forums and easily track these ideas as well as internal ones. Leading companies such as Dell, Starbucks and Lego are using platforms to listen to and collaborate with customers in order to build products that the market wants.

OneDesk: An alternative to customer relationship systems

OneDesk acts as an alternative to customer relationship systems by allowing organizations to put all internal and external project contributors on the same page. It also facilitates customer engagement, which improves the customer experience. With everyone collaborating, companies will have an easier time deciding which products to produce. They can then take action through OneDesk and turn the feedback into actionable items and assign them to the appropriate person to be worked on. One unique capability OneDesk has is that it allows companies to and customers to stay in touch throughout the development process. Everyone can stay updated on the project’s progress at all times; this leads to a new level of customer loyalty, collaboration, and innovation.