Why do we need a CRM Solution?

What is a CRM?

A customer relationship management (CRM) system enhances, automates, and simplifies your business operations. While the significance of a CRM might sometimes seem secondary to that of an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution, it remains essential for your Sales, Marketing, Customer Service, and Field Service teams to ensure your business runs efficiently. The right CRM solution not only supports your staff but also benefits your customers. Conversely, the wrong, or not having a CRM solution can hinder your growth, increase employee turnover, and drive customers away. The fundamentals of any CRM solution should including the following:

How should a CRM solution benefit your staff

Exceptional CRM solutions offer employees the latest customer and client information in real time, so they can easily view customer data and create personalized experiences in the following ways:

• Get up-to-date data and analytics that help your sales staff identify and prioritize opportunities.

• Gain insights into customers and their needs so staff can tailor marketing communications, offers, and services.

• Offer specific information about the products or services a customer has bought and suggest appropriate service-related solutions or remediation options to resolve any issues they are encountering.

• Centralize customer information, which reduces search and follow-up time for your employees.

• Combine all customer related information into a central solution which in turn provides users with a 360-degree view of their customers, habits and needs.

How should a CRM solution benefit your customers

The right CRM solution also benefits your clients and customers. You can arm them with the tools to help them interact with you, communicate with them on their preferred terms and channels, while strengthening your relationships and loyalty. These benefits include:

• Allowing customers the ability to communicate through any channel and on any device.

• Giving customers access to more data so they feel informed and empowered in purchasing decisions.

• Offering customers the tools to schedule services that accommodates their preferences and availability.

The right fit, what a CRM solution should include

Starting with the basics. Here are the key features the right CRM solution should offer, depending on your needs:

Marketing

Execute multi-channel campaigns and improve marketing ROI. CRM marketing capabilities also:

• Determine the types of customer messages you need to send and the right time to send them.

• Seamlessly integrate with sales and analytics to find, nurture, and convert leads.

• Help create and send messages using your customer’s preferred channel.

Sales

Give your sales staff an overview of your customers; while helping you identify new business opportunities. The right CRM solution should offer options that help you:

• Share sales performance and key metrics with your colleagues.

• Identify and engage with the right buyers to grow sales relationships.

• Leverage processes to help you know what steps you should take during every step of the sales journey.

• Keep you organized by prioritizing leads, opportunities and sales related activities.

Customer service

Address customer issues quickly and effectively, so they’ll want to do business with you again and again. The right CRM solution will let you:

• Engage with customers on their preferred channel or device.

• Give you the information you need to quickly resolve a customers issue.

• Enable customers to use self service Bots and Portals.

• Use data and intelligence to learn how to provide better service and reduce costs.

• Offer a 360-degree view of your customer to help your agents deliver personalized service.

Field service

Offer connected and proactive services that help your technicians deliver positive onsite experiences for customers. The right CRM solution will provide tools that:

• Help your technicians improve service, reduce resolution times, and earn customer trust.

• Automate work so that the skill set of the technician matches the skills of the service request.

• Provide an effective scheduling mechanism to enable coordinators to optimize technician schedules and routes.

• Offer customers an easy-to-use self-service portal to track technicians or get self service recommendations.

What a CRM solution should offer

It’s important to choose a CRM system that’s adaptable. Not only should it work with your legacy systems and processes (if required), the right CRM solution should also be:

Extensible

Your CRM system should support different types of deployments, whether they’re cloud based or on premise.

AI & Machine Learning

Your CRM solution should harness AI and ML features to boost your teams performance, reduce administrative activities and wow customers.

Secure

Look for a system that customizes security levels for users and works with their security role.

Scalable

Get a CRM system that can keep up with you when you grow into other markets, while it streamlines everyday processes.

Five steps to finding the right CRM solution

It can be overwhelming to try to figure out what to prioritize when it comes to your CRM needs. After many years of implementing CRM’s, I would say this typically comes down to what features will provide the biggest impact to your customers and what features will give your end users maximum adoption. Start here by asking the following what, how, and when questions:

1. What do we need?

Make a list of features you need and customer pain points you suffer from today. Map your future state customer journey, even if it’s only the basic sales, marketing, and customer service processes, that’s a start. 

2. What do our end users want?

Get your staff onboard. If they’re not, or you’ve kept them out of the decision-making process up until this point, it’s time to involve them. After all, they’ll be the ones using this system. Make a list of the technology solutions your teams use today. It’s important to choose a CRM that compliments your existing technology ecosystem.

3. How much do we have to spend?

Work with your existing technology teams to understand what the new CRM will need to integrate to and where much of your existing customer data resides.

4. How much do we have to spend?

Once you have your current CRM wish list, create a budget. How much do you want to spend? Do you want to do a complete system implementation, overhaul, add a few features, or invest in a combination of both? Don’t forget, costs will include recurring licensing and one-time professional services to configure the system.

5. Who will implement the solution?

Many CRM implementations fail because companies think they can just plug a CRM in and turn it on. This is not the case, you will need an SME to guide you through the implementation process, customize the system and train you how to use it.