Are R-cubed a CRM agency?

It’s a good question. And to be honest, we don’t always know how to define ourselves.

Are we a data agency? Well yes, because we work with masses of data, finding insights and extracting its value for our clients, but it makes us sound a bit like a government department or a research company.

Maybe we’re a marketing consultancy. Yes, up to a point, as we’re all about improving understanding of customers and sending the right message, to the right person at the right time. But then again, we’re not creating TV ads or billboard posters.

A lot of our clients refer to us as their ‘Customer Relationship Management agency’. And that’s ok with us. Because we help our clients develop and manage relationships with their customers.

But even then, we’re not entirely comfortable with being a Customer Relationship Management CRM agency, as customer relationship management means different things to different people.

Some people use it to mean technology that you can use to organise your data, such as a customer data platform. That’s not us. We work with all sort of technology, but we’re not software sales people.

Others will tell you it means focused marketing campaigns, with lots of personalisation and targeted offers. Again, yes, but CRM is about more than just running campaigns.

To us, Customer Relationship Management is a state of mind – a strategic approach to managing your customer base.

It starts with understanding your customers completely. Who they are, what they buy, how they shop, their browsing behaviour, what stimuli they respond to, what devices they use, the channels they prefer. This means pulling all your data together into one place, a Single Customer View, and is the starting point for anyone interested in CRM.

The next essential is to assign value to each and every one of your customers. Not just their value now, but also into the future. Which customers are going to leave you? Who will stay? Who will increase their spend? Where should you be focusing your efforts for maximum value?

You then have to deliver on this insight, using it to drive an effective customer comms strategy. We believe it’s the key to increasing customer satisfaction AND sales at the same time.

So call us a CRM agency. Call us a data agency. Heck, call us a bunch of geeks who get overly excited by data analysis.

But whatever you do, if you like data driven marketing – call us.

Or are we something else entirely?