Take Alvin Connor, manufacturer of natural body-care products in Speake, Liverpool. Eponymous owner Alvin Cooney is an old-school sales manager, whose trusty black box of contacts stays very close to his chest.
The business is small, with five employees. Although it has 2,000 retail customers, Alvin Connor handles only the top tier of 30; the rest are handled by distributors, who make up the balance of Cooney's 50-60 contact cards.
Asked what would happen if the box was left on a train, Cooney claims not to be too worried. "I have a BlackBerry with contacts stored on it, and there's a client file for notes," he says.
While he concedes that the company may grow to a point where a more centralised, computer-based system will be unavoidable, Cooney won't part easily with his little black box. "It's simple, tried and tested, and portable," he says. "Everything I need is there in black and white, and it doesn't fail or need batteries."
Sometimes computers just get in the way. For many small businesses, good customer relationship management is all about the personal touch.
Christine Browning, owner of Special Feetures [sic], a specialist shoe provider near Kingston-upon-Thames, admits that her company's approach to CRM is more 'state of the ark' than of the art. That's despite handling over 6,000 customers.
Specialising in women's shoes for long and narrow feet, the business's repeat sales are very strong. But for Browning, this has everything to do with what she is selling, and how the firm works with its customers. It has very little to do with IT-based prompting, despite the fact that the majority of business is done by mail order.
Special Feetures keeps customer details in a simple Microsoft Access database. "We need a database of customer records to get the money in, but there's no database for marketing," says Browning. "We're on the phone a lot to our customers; we don't need to segment them for marketing purposes."
Yet Special Feetures does a lot with its Access database. Since it has to keep account records for six years for VAT purposes the system, by default, contains a lot of useful historical information about customers' purchasing history, which can be called up quickly and easily using each client's unique reference number. Each of the company's six dedicated staff can access these records if they need to. Notes jotted down during a customer call are added to the Access database as plain text, using the company's own shorthand.
For the time being, Browning has no intention of upgrading to a proper CRM system as she feels it could detract from the personal touch the firm has worked so hard to cultivate.
The personal touch
The business has developed such an intimate feel that most customers assume it handles only a few accounts. "They'll casually ring up to see if their order has come in, saying 'Can I speak to Shirley? She knows my feet,'" Browning laughs. "With their postcode, we can soon find out, but they'd be shocked to realise we're a £750,000 business that distributes shoes all over the world."
But if you're determined to keep your CRM simple, beware of potential risks:
• VAT/regulatory requirements. Records must be kept for a number of years — typically 6-7. Data Protection requirements are also important, governing the way customer data is handled.
• If valuable customer data stays with an individual, consider how the business would be affected if that person, for whatever reason, isn't there.
• What about fire, flood and burglary? Or a contact book or mobile phone being left on a train? Is your customer data safely backed up? The cost of the time-consuming reconstruction of all your data — including potential customer losses — may well be higher than the cost of bringing in a new system.
CRM on the cheap
• Loose-leaf business card holder — stores up to 120 business cards. Simply jot notes on the back
Price: £5.99 each (viking-direct.co.uk)• Card indexes — simple record cards in a flip-top box. Infinitely scalable and easy to update
Price: £2.69 each (viking-direct.co.uk)• A4 to do book — permanent carbonless record book with constant duplication
Price: £3.78 (Staples)• Adam carbonless sales invoice forms (duplicate) — manual invoicing system with a unique numbering system
Price: £3.99 (Staples)• Cardscan business card scanner — uses a USB port and scans business cards directly onto smartphones, pocket PCs and desktop machines. Can synchronise with Outlook, ACT!, Notes and Goldmine.
Price: £157.97 (totalofficesupplies.co.uk)
