5 'Zero Cost' CRM Strategies

CIO - It's not shocking that many companies are scaling back, delaying or canceling IT projects. Recent Gartner survey data of 475 IT decision makers in global enterprises with 1,000 or more employees found that more companies are actually postponing or scaling back computing projects rather than canceling them outright.

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Conventional wisdom would hold that customer relationship management (CRM) software is one area of the business not to be ignored during tough financial times. But who's got millions to spend on new CRM apps and functionalities?

According to Gartner analysts, companies don't have to spend millions. In fact, they might not be tapping into many functionalities that their CRM applications already offer or may have to spend next to nothing to gain more insight on and better connect with their customers via their websites, call centers and other sales and marketing systems.

"Companies need to think in terms of spending smarter, not spending less," notes Scott Nelson, managing vice president at Gartner, in a recent report. "There are zero or low-cost strategies that can be implemented now that can make all the difference, generate competitive differentiation and not draw the attention of the CFO."

As recommended by Gartner, here are five CRM strategies that companies can undertake now while not breaking the bank:

1. Target Customer Communities

Like many other analysts, the Gartner report expects that future CRM strategies will rely on "creating online communities of customers" using social media, including Facebook, Twitter and other websites. These Web tools are quite free, of course.

"The economic downturn provides a great opportunity to begin experimenting in this area," notes the report, "and Gartner advises companies to set up accounts on the various websites and learn what they do and don't do, and how users interact" with a company's brand and systems.

2. Scour Customer Analytics

The average enterprise has already bought and installed analytic and customer intelligence packages (with varying degrees of success), and economic downturns are great times to tap into that computing horsepower. "Many companies have more information than they know what to do with," states the report, "and now they have the opportunity to put this to good use studying attrition models, looking at the next most likely to buy models, and figuring out channel usage patterns."

Of course, as the report points out, decision-makers using the analytic tools should remember that customer behaviors may change significantly when the economy finally does improve.