When implemented and used correctly, your Customer Relationship Management system should be a great way to store masses of information, manage staff, spot trends and look after clients effectively.
However, a poor approach to CRM can be very damaging to your reputation and your relationship with customers. Here are five key reasons to make CRM a priority for your business. And a couple of them may surprise you.
1. Low Adoption
Often, your CRM system is used by busy people. They might spend half their day traveling to a meeting and the other half of the day in it. Then, somehow, they find time to prepare for another two meetings the next day. Due to their busy schedule, they often haven’t got time to sit around entering what they’ve done into your CRM system. They are already focusing on what they are going to do next.
If you are struggling with CRM adoption, here’s what you should be considering.
- User Experience. Is your system easy to use? Does it provide all the metrics your team needs? They should be able to easily find the things they need most of the time.
- Get Mobile. These days, no one is still for too long. Your team moves around! If you want them to be more engaged and involved with your CRM, make sure it’s mobile. This way they always have access.
- Work With Email. Your emails and CRM should be connected. The more these two are working together, the easier creating and locating data will be for your team.
- Create a Working Process. Work with your team to create a process that will work with their daily schedule, while being standardised and transparent.
- Train. You can’t expect everyone to know what to do with your CRM system. Make plans for continuous training to ensure that your whole team is on the same page and understands how the system works.
2. Changing Business Requirements
Many businesses hit a wall when they try to make their existing systems evolve with their business needs. They find that either the database structure or the hooks to newer technologies simply don’t exist. This means either developing workarounds or forgoing functionality altogether.
Consider the following if your CRM system is not changing with your business.
- Managed Support. Does your CRM partner or vendor offer you a managed support plan that includes change requests?
- Update your Working Process. Work with your team to update your processes to include your changing requirements.
- Admin Training. Do your staff know how to change your existing system to support your changing requirements? Have they been trained in CRM configuration and customisation?
- Take Advantage of New Technologies. Are you aware of the latest technologies available that could enable your changing business requirements. Do you get regular updates from your partner or vendor?
3. Not Integrated?
Have you ever felt frustrated working through tedious processes that require you to go back and forth between multiple systems? Does your CRM work directly with the other tools and systems you use?
While CRM is powerful on its own, integrating your CRM with other tools across your business makes your job so much easier. Ideally, your CRM should serve as the core hub to all of your activities, and integrations allow users to get data from multiple systems in one place. Here are the integrations you should be considering.
- Email Integration. By integrating your Gmail or Outlook inbox and CRM you’re able to log all of your emails, access productivity tools you love including templates and sequences and see all of your CRM contact data without leaving your inbox.
- Calendar Integration. Sync your schedule and stay on top of commitments within your business by receiving scheduled prompts from your Gmail or Outlook calendars.
- ERP/Accounting System. you’ll want to integrate your CRM with the accounting or ERP app of your choice. You’ll be able to include invoicing, sales quotes, expense claims, and order forms with your contact and organisation data without needing to switch screens.
- Marketing Integration. Reach the right inbox at the right time with the right message. To make this happen, keep track of customer activity, demographics and buying habits, all accessible from your CRM.
- Website Integration. Get a fuller, more complete picture of your clients’ interactions with your website, you will be better informed about your clients’ behaviour and requirements.
- Live Chat & Chat Bot Integration. Having live chat integration ensures the contact details and conversation is recorded in the CRM. In addition, chatbots can handle frequently asked questions when no one is available.
- Social Media. Make sure your CRM can connect with the social networks you use the most, whether Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Instagram, you name it.
4. Your Customer Service is coming up short
Are you delighting and retaining happy clients? A delighted client is more likely to return and to tell a friend. If your customer service is coming up short, consider the following.
- Keep in Touch. With regular, personalised communication, you will see how your customers’ perception of your company starts to improve. Around 60% of businesses lose a client because he/she felt they were too “indifferent” towards them.
- Seek Client Feedback. Use surveys to gain real insights into what you’re doing well, and which areas require improvement. it makes clients feel that you value them, and are willing to resolve their issues. Sometimes you can turn these issues into an unforgettable experience and really take your clients by surprise.
- Provide Relevant Information. Your CRM should group customers by a variety of characteristics and automate sending completely customised messages to these groups upon different triggers. Sending your customers relevant and informative emails or SMS will help in keeping them happy and increase the efficiency of your business.
- Self-Service. Some consumers prefer helping themselves than going through a customer support rep or process. Make the process of dealing with your business self-serve and painless.
5. It’s too hard to know what your team is up to
Whether they’re in the office, on the road, or working from home, it’s essential to know what your teams are doing and how they’re performing. A powerful CRM system allows team members to update details wherever they are, so information is instantly available for you to see and act on immediately, if needed. A good CRM not only allows you to track what’s going on with your business; it helps you see where you should allocate resources.
If you don’t know what your team is up to, consider the following.
- Set Goals and Measure Them. You need up-to-the-minute measurable metrics so you can track each of your people’s progress at a single glance.
- Work Smarter, Not Harder. Have you developed an overly complicated reporting system for tracking team performance? The aim is to streamline your team’s workload by making it more focused. Do you have easily customisable sales reports that allow you to quickly visualise the precise data you are interested in to assess your team’s performance.
- Find an approach for each Individual. Each person in a team is an individual with their own combination of skills, experiences, and circumstances. Does your existing CRM fit in with their personal approach, and allow you to monitor their performance?
- Get Mobile. Make sure your whole team can access CRM directly from their phone or tablet. Make it easy for them to keep CRM up to date so you know what is going on in your business.
