How can a CRM system help your small business?
Help customer support and sales work more efficiently
If you aren’t storing your customer interactions properly, it can be a pain for support and sales reps to get the information they need to do their jobs. Keeping this data organised within a CRM makes it easy to access, which saves time and ensures those at your organisation are working effectively.
Many CRM solutions use marketing and sales automation to reduce the manual administrative work these teams have to do. For example, a CRM can automatically create contact entries when a new prospect fills in a form, or score leads so Marketing knows which ones to send to Sales.
Improve customer experience
If you want to keep customers, you need to provide a great experience. Gartner found that customer experience is more important than both price and brand when driving loyalty.
A CRM can help by giving support and sales teams knowledge of the customer and their prior communication with your company. Reps can make notes about the customer’s problems so the next time they contact you, they don’t have to repeat information they already provided. You can also store email and chat histories for each customer within the CRM. Teams can use this insight to offer customers personalised solutions to their problems.
Increase customer retention
Having information on hand about how customers use your business can help increase retention.
Imagine a gym owner that keeps track of member attendance within the CRM. If the owner notices that a customer has stopped using the gym, they can send reminders about classes or a free workout plan to increase engagement and, therefore, the likeliness of the customer renewing their contract.
Optimise the sales process
Using a CRM to track interactions with prospects can help sales and marketing teams take the steps that are most likely to result in a sale.
You can segment customers within the CRM based on their location, company size, the product they are interested in, or any other measure that could suggest they are likely to buy. Once you have these segments, you can target them with the correct marketing and sales collateral.
CRMs also have task management features that ensure your team takes the correct steps in the sales process. If a customer requests a call-back, the CRM will highlight this so someone on your team can contact them. Once the rep has made contact, they mark that they have done so to ensure customers aren’t hassled by numerous phone calls.
Effective interdepartmental communication
Having all your customer and prospect information in a single place ensures all departments within your organisation are using the same data. Cloud-based systems reflect any updates made to the CRM instantly across the entire organisation. This keeps your data clean and means everyone is always up to date.
Imagine a customer contacts a software support team about an issue they are having with the product. If the customer support rep records information about the problem within the CRM, tech support can gain knowledge of the customer’s problem before they contact them.
Enable remote work
Another benefit of a cloud-based CRM is that your employees can access it anywhere they have an internet connection. Remote workers have the same access to data as those in the office—streamlining your team’s ability to effectively work wherever they are based.
This opens your organisation up to the possibility of hiring employees on an entirely remote basis, allowing you to take advantage of global talent when hiring. Or, you can give existing staff flexibility in how they choose to work. This is important as studies have found that employees that work remotely are often happier than those that don’t.
Grow revenue per customer
A CRM can help you grow revenue per customer by highlighting upsell opportunities. For example, eCommerce stores can email customers about offers relating to existing purchases, while hair salons can contact customers if they notice they are coming up to their regular appointment schedule.
Detailed reporting
A CRM will typically include in-depth reporting features. Many have a sales pipeline that can estimate revenue within a given period based on average conversion rates and where your prospects are in the sales funnel.
If you use a CRM’s marketing automation features, it will provide information about how effective your marketing strategy is. This lets you take steps to optimise your sales processes. Related to this is A/B testing which allows you to try two different versions of the same marketing element—for example, offer, call-to-action, or subject line—and see which one is most effective.
