Customer Relationship Management: Maximizing Your CRM For Success

Customer relationship management (CRM) systems exist to add value to businesses.

15:31 10 March 2022

Customer relationship management (CRM) systems exist to add value to businesses. 

 

The current global IT spend on enterprise software systems is around 601 billion U.S. dollars.

 

But what if your CRM doesn’t add value to your business?

A couple of things might be at play. You could have the wrong CRM system for your business needs (that’s a whole other blog topic). Or inefficiencies in your business processes could be impacting your CRM. What are business processes for your company currently looking like? Ineffective processes won’t get the most out of your CRM, no matter how good it is.

 

Constantly evolving customer experience KPIs require businesses to make swift service strategy changes. Changes that your properly utilized CRM can handle. Take a look at the following statements to see how many are relevant to your situation: 

 

• Daily tasks are not automated
• Reporting leaves a lot to be desired
• Duplicate data is the bane of your life
• Your CRM doesn’t save you admin time
• Leads are difficult to prioritize 

 

Even if just one of those statements is true, it’s time to make some changes. 

 

CRMs are a vital sales improvement tool for any business. But to really maximize your customer relationships, your CRM must work in conjunction with the rest of your customer data organization.

 

It’s Not You, It’s Me.

If you think your CRM is fit for purpose, but you aren’t using it to its full extent, read on. 

 

We’ll explore how to boost sales and customer relationships with your existing CRM. You’ll learn how to:

 

1. Improve customer relationships
2. Gather business intelligence
3. Automate routine processes
4. Harness the CRM and VoIP combination
5. Send better marketing campaigns
6. Run meaningful reports
7. Sync CRM with other tools 

 

Align CRM With Business Goals 

Before we dive in with what your CRM can do for you, let’s first think about what you want it to do. Successful use of CRMs directly results from pinpointing business goals. 

 

Your business goals could be just some of the following:

 

• Streamline sales and marketing processes
• Manage all contacts with ease 
• Better proposal creation 
• Introduction of advanced tools like VoIP services
• Integrate customer service
• Enhance sales processes 
• Facilitate employee management 
• Track analytics and performance
• Improve case management 
• Monitor client interaction
• Improve database management 
• Run more successful marketing campaigns 
• Enhance customer communications 
• Improve lead generation and management 

 

Think about your unique business goals to maximize your CRM system in one or all of the following ways: 

 

1. Improve Customer Relationships

Customers will often jump ship after just one experience of poor customer service. This is why it makes great business sense to retain the customers you’ve already got.

 

Disorganized customer data rarely encourages sales. Use your CRM to track and customize your conversations with customers, wherever they are in the customer lifecycle. All meeting notes, call and email logs should get consolidated to determine retention or upsell opportunities.

 

When you have a thorough understanding of your customers, you understand their situation and can act accordingly. 

 

Level up: A centralized location for all your customer data is paramount. 

 

1. Gather Business Intelligence 

Alongside improving customer relationships, your CRM has the capacity to inform you of your business’s health. Customer intelligence is a key part of your CRM’s functionality, so ensure you’re analyzing those valuable consumer profile behaviors. 

 

Discovering your audience’s preferences across a whole range of issues will greatly enhance your relationship. For example, Coca-Cola uses their CRM to promote collaboration and offers. Utilizing customer behavior data to identify issues, then promoting tailored solutions on social media channels to drive offers can radically improve CX. 

 

Another, in the hospitality industry, hotel marketers utilize data from a hotel CRM to boost marketing efforts, such as sending personalized emails to drive revenue.

 

Level up: Understand customer trends to enhance your marketing campaigns and identify areas for optimization.

 

1. Automate Routine Processes

Remove as many manual processes as you can with the power of your CRM. CRMs are designed to automate, so let them do their job! Pretty much all routine workflow tasks can be automated, but here are a few suggestions to start you off:

 

• New website leads

Website leads must be acted upon immediately. Your CRM can do this for you. This is how it works:

Website form fill > registered in CRM > CRM prompts sales rep via your hosted IP phone systems > call is forwarded > sales rep receives all the lead’s details on their phone > sales rep contacts customer.

 

• Follow-up emails

Automate emails from successful marketing campaigns to follow up on their email opens:

CRM generates a report from email campaigns > view contacts that opened their emails > forward all contacts to sales reps to follow up.

 

• Contact notifications
  Your CRM can send notifications about subscription renewals, payment dates, and many more routine reminders. Create a message and let the system set up a workflow to automate notifications to your chosen contacts. 

 

Use the data in your behavioral marketing software to boost engagement by personalizing your content marketing efforts. Tailoring your messaging results in more conversions and fewer emails in the trash.

 

• Customer communications
  Send automated marketing emails to new and returning customers. You can navigate them to appropriate resources to provide value at their first point of contact. 

 

Level up: Identify then implement the best sales automation functions for your business.

 

 

1. The CRM and VoIP Combination

This is the ultimate tech combination for enterprise businesses. A computer based phone system facilitates great customer interactions and promotes sales opportunities. 

 

VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) calling gives sales reps the chance to connect with potential customers from anywhere. Partnering data from your CRM with the latest internet-based telecommunication solutions gives your team essential information at their fingertips.

 

What does VoIP caller mean?, you may ask. VoIP calling uses the cloud to communicate via the caller’s preference. This can be through their mobile, laptop, tablet, or desktop computer. 

 

Features include video conferencing, voicemail to email, online fax, and call queuing. It’s these different communication possibilities that provide the best customer experience possible. 

 

Level up: Keep customer delight and engagement high with modern customer service communications like VoIP.

 

1. Run Better Marketing Campaigns

Developing better marketing campaigns is achievable with your CRM. Gather valuable market insights about how to approach target customers. Find out which of your products or services are most appealing and the best marketing method to reach prospects. 

 

Whether it’s digital marketing through channels like Facebook, mobile ads, or voice search, your CRM can create, deliver, and track multi-channel marketing campaigns. Investigate marketing tools within your CRM to target and segment customers into categories for maximum conversion opportunities.

 

Boost your sales performance by analyzing your existing customers’ purchasing history and tailoring promotions just for them. 

 

Birchbox nails customer personalization campaigns. By reviewing what their customers have bought previously, they create hyper-personalized offers that are very successful. Tailored messages and promotions drive customer loyalty, and in this example, reinforce the brand’s connection, to continue subscribing: 

 

 

Level up: Check out the different marketing trends that appeal most to your target audience. 

 

1. Run Meaningful Reports

Your CRM provides insight into customer satisfaction for better customer retention. In addition, you can monitor new customer leads to leverage great client references.

 

The most meaningful reports are generated from your customized dashboards. You may have industry-specific features included in your CRM. For example, a charitable organization would need unique fundraising capabilities. 

 

Produce valuable reports from your CRM, such as:

• Sales Reporting
• Sales Intelligence
• Sales Forecasting
• Sales Pipeline
• Business Intelligence 
• Sales Activity
• Lost Sales 
• Campaign Performance 
• Lead Source Effectiveness 
• Revenue Streams 

 

Level up: Customize your CRM dashboards to suit the integral needs of your business model. 

 

1. Sync CRM With Other Tools

For cohesive workflows, sync your CRM with existing business tools. For example, ensure your calendars and email service providers are aligned with your CRM system. This saves time and negates duplicate data entry. 

 

Another point of connection is your social media profiles. This way, your social listening skills are up to date and you are always part of the conversation online with your customers. 

 

Level up: Keeping customer information up to date across all channels avoids losing time gathering business intelligence.

 

CRM Questions to Ask Yourself

Now you’ve got a much better idea of what your CRM is capable of, build a checklist so you can start seeing the benefits right away.

 

• What are the limits to contact storage?
• Is it simple to track deals in the sales pipeline?
• Can you automate workflows, and prospect and lead management? 
• What are the built-in integration capabilities?
• Which dashboard customization options are available?
• Does your CRM offer industry-specific modules? 
• How frequently are updates offered, and are they automated? 

 

Are You Ready to Maximize Your CRM?

Sales success and your CRM go hand in hand. To make the most of your CRM, ensure all employees are on board with the processes and fully engaged with the system. After all, your CRM is only as good as the team that uses it on a daily basis. 

 

Harness the power of your CRM to maintain great customer relationships and build new ones. You’ll be glad you did. 

Bio:

Richard Conn - Senior Director, Demand Generation, 8x8

Richard Conn is the Senior Director for Demand Generation at 8x8, a leading communication platform with integrated contact center, voice, video, fixed VoIP number, and chat functionality. Richard is an analytical & results-driven digital marketing leader with a track record of achieving major ROI improvements in fast-paced, competitive B2B environments. Here is his LinkedIn.