Customer Relationship Officer Interview Preparation Guide

CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. It is a strategy and practices that companies use to manage and analyze customer interactions and data throughout the customer lifecycle.

The most important modules in CRM include:

☛ Marketing
☛ Inventory
☛ Sales
☛ Service Desk

Here, the interviewer is looking to gauge your engagement skills. What lengths would you go to to make sure that you leave no stone un-turned to retain a customer. I usually pick a live situation and elaborate on that. Make sure you talk about the size of the deal, it's impact on your overall base of accounts, and the exact steps you took to turn the account around.

Talk the interviewer through a policy you developed, structuring your answer around these recognized steps.

☛ Clearly identify the goals for the policy
☛ Ensure correlation between the customer service goals and the company mission and objectives
☛ Identify the specific processes that will result in goal accomplishment
☛ Develop standard operating procedures and guidelines for the processes
☛ Train your staff in the implementation of the new customer service policy

In your answer describe receiving feedback from customers to identify areas for improvement, looking at every touch-point in the customer life-cycle and implementing actions to improve the process.

"I identified that customer satisfaction with our email support was not what it should be. The rule of thumb has been providing a response within 24 hours. However with the pace of everything increasing online I understood that we needed to achieve more impressive response times. I instituted a response time of 4 to 8 hours as the standard. This has set us apart from our competitors and improved customer satisfaction"

In my experience delegating responsibility and authority is crucial. A team needs to be able to develop and grow as individuals and a whole, not be held back by low expectations or ego.
I believe in building a team. Each member of the team should be clear on their role, know where they fit in and feel as though they can depend on one another. I also believe in real-time feedback. If you do something wrong you should know it immediately. Regardless of right or wrong, the further removed feedback is in time, the less effective it is.

While this question is an invitation to do some chest pounding, remember to illustrate strengths that will benefit the employer and are relative to the position. For example:

☛ being a problem solver
☛ being a motivator
☛ being a natural leader
☛ the ability to perform under pressure
☛ a positive attitude
☛ loyalty

Are typically all solid strengths, but again, consider the position. For example, mentioning you are an excellent “team player” in a job where you largely work alone suddenly becomes irrelevant to the employer and demonstrates a genuine lack of self awareness.

Good customer service is ensuring that every customer is satisfied. This is done by answering their questions, resolving problems and dealing with complaints. The goal is that each customer leaves with a positive impression of the company.

Pressure is actually a catalyst to my work. When there is an imperative deadline, I refocus my energy into my work which in fact, has helped me to produce some of my best works. (Give examples) I guess you can say I thrive under pressure.

The benefits of incorporating CRM into an organization includes

☛ Manage customer contact information
☛ Measure success of campaigns
☛ Organize customer interactions in a central location
☛ Track organization trends
☛ Help to understand customer preferences, habits and actions
☛ Managing customer service requests
☛ Weaken expense and business risk