As your organization grows, managing leads and customers can become quite the undertaking. For a smaller business, using spreadsheets or smaller, subscription-based off-the-shelf software may be enough to get the job done. However, at a certain point, using these tools may do more to slow down your organization than keep it moving in the right direction.
If you’re looking to greatly improve your customer relationship management, making an operational CRM a part of your business processes may be the best next step. Here are 10 ways you’ll benefit from integrating this type of operational software into your business practices.
1. Simplify contact management.
Possibly the most obvious, but also the most valuable component of a CRM, is its ability to help you with contact management. Not only does a CRM record your customers’ contact information, but it helps you to track where they are in the marketing funnel.
2. Easily track and capture your leads.
CRMs aren’t merely for your existing customers but your future customers as well. Maybe you have an eBook that some of your leads have downloaded. To turn those leads into customers, you can use lead management to ensure that you follow-up.
3. Organize your contacts into categories.
Using customer data, you can organize your contacts into useful categories through list management and segmentation tools. By categorizing your customers, you can send the right people, the right messages, and at the right time.
4. Strengthen your marketing processes.
Another great feature of CRMs is their ability to improve your marketing processes. From campaign management to marketing automation tools, you can easily target specific segments, while saving time.
5. Record your customers’ preferences.
If you’re in ecommerce, perhaps your customers can make an account on your website, and from there, input their preferred form of payment to their preferred form of communication. By tracking your customers' preferences, you’ll be able to quickly serve your customers and in the way they choose.
6. Track quotes, proposals, and more.
For those in the service industry, quote-to-order management may be a significant help in tracking customer preferences to the quotes, proposals, orders, and other items you provide them with.
7. Record customer communications.
Your customers certainly won’t be happy if you fail to respond to their emails or, conversely, call them too many times. To provide the best customer experience, your CRM can help you to track and schedule your communications with customers.
8. Develop accurate predictions.
With your customer segments and their preferences all in one place, you’re setting your CRM up to easily produce sales forecasts.These forecasts can help to let you know how to best continue serving your customers.
9. Automatically redirect calls.
If you have a high volume of customer calls, it can create delays and frustration when they call the wrong line. Instead, you can use call management automatically direct your customers’ calls to the appropriate line and, as a result, provide better customer service as well.
10. Regularly assess your KPIs.
To determine if your company is doing its best to turn those contacts into conversions, you can use service-level management. Through this feature, your CRM can help you to track your KPIs and determine your sales revenue, cost per lead, and more.
How Can a CRM Best Serve Your Needs?
Depending on your business’s needs, you may benefit from adding, or subtracting, some of these features from your new operational CRM. Likewise, your business’s size will likely influence if a subscription-based CRM, like Zoho, will do the trick, or if you’ll need something more.
For the most effective operational CRM, you may consider supplementing your off-the-shelf software with custom software or building an entirely custom system altogether. The more custom the application, the more it can be tailored to meet your unique needs.
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ClikFocus has been building operational software for businesses like yours for over a decade. We’re a solution-oriented team that will take your business’s goals, budget, and vision and turn them into one valuable software solution.
