Posted & in Business, CRM, Marketing.

How a CRM Can Elevate Your Business

CRM, otherwise known as Customer Relationship Management, is a system used to elevate businesses to the next level. You may have heard the term before or maybe you haven’t. Regardless, you should get familiar with the term ASAP because CRMs are all the hype.

At the heart of the system, CRMs are meant to track and measure interactions between the company, customers and potential customers. You can use a CRM irrespectively and respectively to your industry; you can use it to measure appointments, communications, ratings, proposal tracking and much more. When you properly implement and execute a CRM system you can increase sales, boost customer satisfaction and create a system that runs more efficiently.

CRM’s that are integrated with your call center or answering service provider allows for streamlined 24/7 assistance and solutions for customers and prospective customers. A CRM keeps everyone in the loop and informs anyone working with the system the information they need.

Build a Plan

Consider the many ways that your business interacts and can interact with a client. Everything you think of should be able to be implemented into the CRM system, meaning the system should be flexible yet able to track interactions with clients.

Think of the contact process. What information will you need in order to have a successful, sufficient sale and service? Do you want to follow-up with them later and about what? Consider everything that could take place and that could help your customer service team gain a competitive edge.

You will want to also consider the user database. Think about: Who can access data? Who can modify data? And so on.  In the end you will need to consider all of this to plan a route of action for each member of your team. Take for example your management. They will always need to have access to see what’s going on and have a central playing ground regardless of if someone moves on from the company or adds to it.

You can take this step-by-step. You can implement one part or thought at a time to your CRM and develop a full CRM transition by going through the process in phases. This way you can allow for adjustments in regard to feedback and what works better for your staff.

Consider

Consider CRM tools that are already out there.  There are a few popular CRMs that are well known including SalesForce, ACT, SugarCRM and so on. You can either use these CRMs or develop a whole new CRM process. Either way, find a way to execute the service and even if you have a CRM you can make it better!

Contact your local answering service to see if they have any recommendations. They may be able to provide insights on the industry and how to execute everything to see all the benefits and improve customer service.