If you use a CRM, chances are you know this software can improve your bottom line by bolstering sales. A CRM helps simplify the sales cycle from beginning to end. You can close deals in your sales pipeline and assist everyone on your team to reach targets with ease.
What’s more, quotes are automated in the CRM, as well as order processing, meaning salespeople are able to increase revenue while driving down production costs.
But did you know that CRMs can be used for purposes other than improving sales? Here are three ways that you can use your CRM to produce results that can improve your business.
Enhance Customer Experience with a CRM
You can use your CRM to enhance customer experience , CRM stands for customer relationship management, after all. Customer experience is critical to business growth. A study by Walker predicts that by 2020, customer experience will be the top brand differentiator in the buying decision, leaving criteria like product and price in the dust.
A great customer experience is produced by continuous meaningful communication. Each and every contact with a customer can be highly influential. Do you want your customer to be happy when they walk away from a conversation with a customer service rep? A CRM can help make this happen.
CRMs hold information such as conversations, past purchases and activities, and show team members how customers interact with your business. It’s likely that in today’s day and age, customers are contacting your company through multiple channels.
Email, phone, chat, text messaging and website forms are a few means of communication. Chances are, customers may also be contacting different departments, like sales and marketing in addition to customer service. A CRM can capture all of these conversations, giving the entire business access to the same information.
How to Use a CRM to Enhance Customer Experience
- Use CRM data to keep customers up to date with offers, sales campaigns, news and more.
- Segment contacts so the right customer receives the right message at the right time.
- Show you care about customers’ feelings and improve service by asking them for their opinion using email marketing surveys.
- The CRM can be used to address customers by name, and when customers contact the company, your team member will immediately see their contact history and understand what their issue is, so they will not need to repeat themselves.
- Set up the CRM to automatically send an email to let the customer know you have received their request, putting their worries at ease.
Boost Team Performance with a CRM
Team performance can be improved with the use of CRMs as well. Employee productivity at your business may be waning with social media usage and internet surfing on the rise, as well as long, non-business related chats in the office and other time-wasting activities. A CRM can inspire your employees to put 100 percent of their effort into your company.
CRMs provide a real time look at your team’s performance. With this software, you can track KPIs that accelerate company goals and view rep activity broken down by time.
By giving you a bird’s eye view of your company data, you can see where productivity gaps are and adjust them quickly. You can identify who the top performers are, determine what they are doing right, so you can replicate their behavior.
How to Use CRMs to Improve Team Performance
- Give objective, reliable employee evaluations; the key to an effective workforce.
- Use the CRM to craft performance measurements that fit the unique needs of the business, creating accurate and objective performance summaries
- Use CRM reporting so that employees will know what they are doing right, where they stand, and how they may improve.
- Ensure that everyone has the know-how they need to do their jobs well by honing in on the coaching process.
- Use the CRM to simplify onboarding, and offer ongoing training, which produces 50 percent higher net sales per employee.
- Make work easier by letting the CRM take care of menial tasks. Happy employees are more productive.
Improve Marketing with a CRM
Marketing has changed exponentially with the advent of new technology. Customers are more discerning and tech savvy these days , with a vast number of choices at their fingertips. Content has become increasingly important. In fact, 90 percent of all data in the world has been generated over the last few years. The name of the game is now relevance. Personalized and diverse ways of engaging with customers are necessary, and highly individualized marketing approaches should be driven by , you guessed it , content and technology.
Customers have become fickle, and irritated with irrelevant content. CRMs help you to personalize your marketing content so that customers will find it relevant. The software also demonstrates the effectiveness of your efforts. You can see how a campaign is performing, drill down to see who became a lead or customer, and see which methods helped to convert them.
How to Use a CRM to Improve Marketing Campaigns
- Examine all customer data with ease , send out messages that appeal specifically to relevant customers.
- Browse through contacts, customer behavior and preferences, and find profitable targets.
- Segment your data by responses, products purchased, recent activities, emails opened and replied to, and personal likes and dislikes. Use this to predict which customers are most profitable before offering more relevant content.
- Personalize content by merging name and relevant information into emails and copy.
- Find what marketing efforts have worked and recycle successful ventures as campaigns and templates for new, similar audiences.
When you use a CRM for marketing, rinsing and repeating what works, you can expect to see costs go down as conversions rise.
These are just three ways that CRMs can be used outside of sales to foster business success. Do you use your CRM for anything outside of sales that we missed? Let us know in the comments below:
Mallory McGuinness works for LeadMaster, a CRM company, and has written content for over 90 companies over the past ten years.
