Better Customer Care

"Customer Relationship Management", or CRM, has become the holy grail of most service businesses. Below is a good definition:

CRM:
Pro-actively managing your customers to better understand their needs and wants, with the long-term goal of continually expanding the breadth and depth of your relationship.

Why is CRM important? Simple: the longer and deeper your relationship, the more profitable the account becomes. It's far more cost-effective to work hard at keeping existing accounts than to go out and win new ones. CRM helps businesses:

• Attract New Customers
• Reduce Attrition
• Sell More Services to Existing Customers

CRM is at the core of Cornerstone's billing services. It starts with the pro-active messaging used on the invoice, to educate, promote, and solicit feedback and referrals. If customers have something to say, it's always best to give them every opportunity to say it. That way service issues or complaints can be dealt with immediately...before they evolve into cancellations.

For Full Service dealers, all subscriber feedback is immediately captured and relayed to the dealers via "log notes" in Cornerstone's real time system. So if a customer indicates that they are moving in a month, our dealers know it as soon as we do, and can then act on it. Survey responses are also logged, to allow for follow up. A dealer having problems with false alarms can include, on the back of the invoice, a primer on how to avoid false alarms. So the system is a low-cost way to improve service experience in a variety of ways.

Finally, "AutoPay" options give subscribers several easy ways to pay, with the added benefit to the dealer of fewer receivables to manage.