“One of the greatest benefits of CRM is that everyone can be on the same page about where you are with your customers—you can push out information, you don’t have to call,” Wolverton says. “It’s not a phone call, ‘How’s the deal going?’ You can log on, see the stages of all your opportunities. As a manager, especially, it’s being able to get a high-level view—‘Yep, all the customer issues are being taken care of, all of the leads are being owned and addressed’—and to have that all in one place and to have the ability to focus on other things and set up rules for when you need to pay attention. For example, maybe you don’t care until the big deal closes. Maybe you want to know if a case has been open for three days and no one’s touched it. With a CRM, you can set rules so you don’t have to keep an eye on how your business is running—you only need to pay attention to when things are going off the rails.”
It can be tempting to think of CRM software as a solution in itself. But as Wolverton notes, if the techniques your business uses in managing customer relationships is convoluted and inefficient, no software tool will fix those problems.
“The thing to think about with CRM is that it is as good as you decide to make it,” Wolverton says. “The data that goes into a CRM is the data that comes out, so you need to make sure that for the people who are closest to your customers, it’s really easy for them to update the CRM. How many conversations start with, ‘Are you still at this address?’ You want the people on the front line to be sure that customer data is good, but then having data sit there is not particularly interesting—you need to get insights from that data with great reporting tools. You need to also take action based on that customer data—so rules and processes that make the best use of that data.”
Beyond making it easy for employees to update customer data in a CRM, companies need to think about whether a CRM can automate routine tasks. The time savings gained from automation can then be redirected into more proactive, hands-on support.
“With CRMs, you think of customer service—a lot of it is about people wanting refunds, or they want to update and change something, and those things often need approvals,” Wolverton says. “How can you automate some of those processes? You don’t want to bring your junk drawer into your CRM solution. It’s a good time to look at your business and the systems that are working and the ones that maybe aren’t. Think of all the places you have pain, and see if maybe there’s a solve for that in your new CRM system.”
Meanwhile, managing customer relationships over time requires clear, actionable reporting about the entire customer journey, from prospects in the sales pipeline to common pain points for current customers.
“If you’re not thinking about the value that you want to get out of a CRM, and a sort of ideal state for the information you want to know—I think it’s great when you’re starting with a CRM to understand the reporting questions you’re going to have and then work backward,” Wolverton says. “Those are some of the best ways to think about how to design your CRM—it’s about knowing what answers you’re looking for. Or even a problem you might get—like today, we have no idea what our pipeline looks like, we do not understand why we get spikes in customer support calls. It’s about being able to see success as milestones in your roadmap, being able to answer some of those questions, and gradually rolling out a system that gets you there.”
So how will you know which CRM software solution is right for your business? The range of options might seem daunting, but arming yourself with information—as well as having a clear understanding of your business’s needs and existing processes—can make the search easier to manage. Wolverton says companies should consider a few important factors: ease of implementation, the availability of product support, and reporting functionality.
“The range of CRMs is very large. Some of them are difficult to install—that’s still a thing—and others are difficult to configure,” says Wolverton. “How easy is it to get started? How available is help—is there someone you can chat with or call as you’re getting started who can help you out? What kinds of things are you trying to solve? If you want to get a CRM software to get some insight into where your product or service is doing well, or on average how long is it taking to close deals, then you probably want to make sure that there’s some reporting that’s part of the CRM you’re buying as well.”
When selecting CRM software, it’s also critical to consider how it aligns with sales, marketing, and customer service departments—for example, does it provide the kind of pipeline visibility needed for the sales team and leadership? Does it enable marketing automation, making it easier to understand how to create targeted messaging based on past customer conversations with loyal customers? Marketing automation—paired with popular tools such as MailChimp—can lead toward increased sales since customer data will provide insights into what pitches will resonate with customers.
For example, a CRM with advanced marketing automation can enable teams to automatically track which messages have the best customer engagement and also send offers based on a customer service history and a customer’s journey with your company. That makes it considerably easier to tailor messages that in turn will have a greater chance of converting into sales.
Will you have the kind of CRM tools on hand that will help boost customer engagement via proactive messaging, as well as reach out to potential customers?
Beyond that, Aniano says, be sure to consider ease of use. A tool that’s cumbersome and difficult to customize will stand in the way of nurturing customer relationships and harm productivity. “Beyond being the record of customer interactions, CRM systems need to have toolsets like workflow, custom fields, and tagging, to give you the ability to act on the customer experience and the customer relationship where it’s most important to your business,” Aniano says.
When implementing a CRM solution, think about how much you can do on your own—can you set the system up yourself, or will it require onsite help? If you can’t handle it in-house, expect future support costs and limited ability to customize the platform to your needs, especially in a timely fashion. Should you try a free CRM trial to give it a test-run?
“If you are a small business and you need a CRM, you had better be able to sign up for a trial and get it up-and-running for a use case and connect it to one or more business tools on the first day,” Aniano says. “If that’s something you can’t do as an enterprising business owner, as a key employee at a small company, then that’s a red flag. If you end up having to call sales, call a technical expert, just to get the simplest use case done as a small business, then that’s probably going to prevent you from delivering the customer experience or delivering on your vision of the CRM—if you don’t have the resources now, you’re not going to have them in six months. The best indicator of CRM success is day one to day five success as you go through that trial.”
Especially for small businesses, which might be relying heavily on tools such as Quickbooks, Google docs, and Dropbox, Aniano says, it’s vital to consider just how a CRM solution will integrate with those existing tools.
“When you’re buying a CRM, which might be the second or third technology purchase you make, you had better hope that it’s pre-integrated with those other tools you use,” Aniano says. “Because as a small business you don’t have the time and certainly don’t have the resources to be doing heavy implementation and integrations yourself.”
And while choosing a CRM that’s customizable should be a priority, that doesn’t mean you should go overboard during implementation, Wolverton says. “With any CRM, the ability to customize is incredibly tempting,” she says. “Customization is great, but it should always be used sparingly. You can end up in a place where you’ve created a data record or a process where I’m sure you want 300 fields from each one of the people interacting with your CRM, but they’re just going to stop using it.”
That means when building out your CRM, adopt the mindset of a business transformation consultant—and a user experience expert—and then test, test, test. “It’s always good to say, ‘Hey, we built this. Does it work?’” Wolverton says. “Does it feel right to the people who are using it, before you roll out things in a big way? Don’t overwhelm your users. Make sure that you’re constantly going back—I think that people sometimes think that once you set up a CRM and get going, you’re done. It’s a perpetual process. You want to do continuous improvement, make sure you’re continuing to use all of the functionality that you set up. The great thing about SaaS and online CRMs is that new features are coming out all the time—and you get them as part of your subscription. It’s great to give yourself time on a regular basis to understand the new things and how they could benefit your business.”
Best CRM For Real EstateThe 7 C’s of customer relationship management—customer centricity, company culture, customer experience, data, journey, consumer experience, and expectation—form a holistic approach. Implementing a CRM as a strategic marketing tool fosters robust customer relationships, increasing profits and revenue growth.
This is the idea that being dogmatic about your customers will bring you success. It’s about putting customers at the center of your business and making every decision with their best interest in mind.
Company culture is the personality of your business. This includes how employees interact with customers, how leaders treat employees, and how you behave as a brand towards customers.
This includes everything from the first time a customer hears about you to the time they engage in your product or service to after they have left an interaction with you. Your customer experience must be memorable and pleasant throughout each step of the process.
How do you know if your customer experience is good? Collect data! Using data, marketers can measure statistics like conversion rates, retention rates, average spending amounts, and more. Then, they can use this data to improve their customer experience.
The customer journey refers to all the touchpoints along a person’s path to becoming a customer and, eventually, a loyal customer. During this journey, several steps need to be met for someone to become a repeat customer and advocate for your company.
The consumer experience is what people remember about interacting with your brand after their first purchase or interaction has ended. It’s how they feel about your brand after doing business with you and how likely they are to buy from you again.
Consumer expectations are what consumers think about when considering interacting with you or buying from you again. For example, when someone thinks about buying, they expect fast and free shipping options. You may have consistently built up consumer expectations over time by providing those services.
They think it’s an overhyped and overpriced strategy that doesn’t help their bottom line. However, that couldn’t be further from the truth. CRM can be the difference between a business thriving or floundering. Businesses that have used customer relationship management to their fullest potential have seen incredible growth in profits and revenue.
By following the seven C’s of customer relationship management, companies have increased their sales by 25% on average. Why? Because they’ve focused on their customers.
Businesses use this data to improve their customer experience over time to attract new customers and keep their existing ones happy. This is because customer relationship management is a strategy for everybody! It doesn’t matter how big or small your company is – you can use CRM to improve your bottom line.
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