The most important part of any relationship is.....?

The most important part of any relationship is.....?

Relax everyone, its really not what you think.... The most important part of any relationship is not..... doing the garden work together.

I wonder how many of you can identify with the cartoon on the right? I'm sure that there are many different types of people reading this article and I'm also sure that each and everyone of you would fall into a different delivery category here. I have seen and experienced this exact scenario a number of times. Its fairly common in our world.

The Reason I chose this specific subject for this article is because I feel that communication is the absolute core of every single relationship. If there is no communication, there is no relationship. For those of you that have partners or are married, think about what your relationship would be like if there was no communication at all. This doesn't include the silent treatment gents.

How many of you have been to a foreign country or have a friend that is deaf? No matter what happens you will somehow and in some way, find a way to communicate. For most of us, communication is a need and something we are driven, as humans, to do.

Communication is not just limited to customers, it should cover the entirety of your business. Both internal and external relationships and communication are crucial to the success of any business. The cartoon above is a great example of really bad communication both internally and externally. If the communication was great, the same picture wold be shown in each frame.

CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is all about managing relationships and interactions with customers. Now that's a pretty broad statement because "Managing Relationships" could have a world of different meanings. There are millions of components that make up the engine that is Customer Relationship Management. In my humble opinion, I believe that communication is drive shaft that powers this engine.

Using Dynamics CRM, One can easily manage sales pipelines, create a beautiful customer 360 degree view (Holistic view), track customer movements, but without the element of communication, I can never really understand who my customer is. Its exactly the same as staring at a celebrity. You know who they are, you know what they do, you know what they look like, but that is not a relationship until communication is made. The way to create the true customer 360 degree view is by adding all the relevant communication to, about and from the customer and enabling access to the information for RIGHT people within the business.

The next question is: how are you currently communicating with and about your customers? Probably vie email, phone, social media and face to face meetings. There are so many ways and forms of communication. The important concept here is being able to centralize all of that communication to one place and generate the true customer 360 degree view. Management of this communication per customer will in turn, allow you to build a stronger relationship.

With the Dynamics CRM platform you are now able to generate a true customer 360 degree view by bringing all of this communication into 1 single, central location. Using various tools and applications offered within the Microsoft stack, emails can be tracked into Dynamics CRM, Phone call activities can be created, internal micro blogging with Yammer is integrated, social information can be made relevant to the customer, meetings can be managed and users with the right roles and permissions will now have access to understand the true relationship with the customer.

You are now able to clearly understand your customer and provide them with the right information based on their needs. You no longer have a 'celebrity' relationship with your customer but a real relationship based on solid communication.