Your Small Biz Techno Coach

What is CRM Used For?

This is one of the questions I have been asked over and over regarding CRM or Customer Relationship Management.  For all sizes of business – small, medium, and large keeping track of your customer relationships can be complicated and time consuming.  You need to know what customer opportunities and issues are pending and require attention.  If you lose track of important tasks, you risk alienating and losing your customers.  CRM solutions allow you to organize and centralize customer information and interactions effectively.

Contact Management

Contact Management is the most basic function of CRM, and can be compared to a shared rolodex or address book for customers, prospects, and suppliers. This allows a company to centralize key information in safe and secure places so that the company holds the intellectual property rather than single or multiple staff members.   At the higher levels of CRM integration, employees across a given business can access data on a customer and are immediately aware of what the customer knows and how the customer relationship is at a given time.  Pertinent information may include notes from phonecalls, historical e-mails, proposals and requests for proposals.  This aspect of CRM is highly dependent on employees keeping the data current.

Sales & Marketing Automation

Imagine all of the time you spend everyday digging through e-mails, sticky notes, spreadsheets, etc.  Sales automation tools will automate your sales process and effortlessly keep track of and remind you of activities along the way.  You can set the automation to define the process, responsibility, and dates for all follow up activities.  Your leads and follow-up activities will not fall through the cracks.  Sales Force Automation can result in better lead conversion, better close ratios, and more sales revenue without increasing human resources.  With good data you will better be able to forecast sales, manage your sales reps, and have better reporting.  Additionally, you can measure the success of marketing campaigns.

Customer Service

CRM allows companies to resolve common issues fast and avoid duplicated efforts.  You are able to automate the workflow for service requests, complaints, and support tickets.  Some companies incorporate knowledge databases into their CRM as well.  Customer retention is key to small business growth.  It is much easier to maintain a current customer than to go out and find a new customer.  Managing customer issues through an automated workflow can help ensure that nothing falls through the cracks and each issue or case is followed through to the customers’ satisfaction.

Increase Your Bottom Line and create value

The ultimate goal in all of these scenarios is more customers, more satisfied customers, more revenue and more profit.  All along you are increasing the value to the customer and increasing the value of your business.