MORE THAN SALES – HOW CRM CAN BE USED ACROSS THE ORGANIZATION

CRMs carry great benefits for sales departments. However, there are also several other organizational benefits of a CRM that can help a company run better and iron out inefficiencies. These benefits land in two basic categories, creative and technical.

CREATIVE BENEFITS OF A CRM

Here are the various benefits of a CRM other than sales.

CRM FOR ORDER FULFILLMENT

If you run an E-commerce store, your job just begins after a purchase is made. The advantage of a CRM is that every one of those orders is fulfilled very efficiently. You can automate the CRM in order to create a deal which matches the entire value of the purchase once the order has been placed.

The deal can then automatically move through stages of order fulfillment such as packaging, labeling, and shipping, all the way down to delivery. This can help keep the customer informed of the status of the order.

You can then gather information about how smooth the process was through the order pipeline. You can also gather feedback on how the process went and where there were roadblocks or gaps in information. You can take in to account product reviews, social media mentions, etc. Hence, you can evaluate the effectiveness of order fulfillment completely through online data gathering.

As a bonus, you can also create a trigger in the cart checkout process to keep track of abandoned carts. This can help you trigger different automated responses if the cart changes stages and if it’s abandoned, such as an automatic email with a special offer to encourage the purchase.

ONBOARDING EMPLOYEES

Integrating employees into your company is paramount for a productive and cooperative workforce. Hence, it’s important to create a process which is effective and repeatable in order to get the maximum number of employees acquainted with the system.

CRMs can help you do that by automating various aspects of the system that is already in place. This helps make the experience of onboarding a little more seamless and consistent.

CRMs can connect various processes which can make employee onboarding much smoother such as, triggering the addition of an employee profile to the payroll provider once all the documents have been signed. CRMs can also automatically create profiles of new employees once the legal policy requirements have been fulfilled.

BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS

CRMs can help you communicate more personally with your customers. CRMs come installed with social media plug-ins, options to streamline customer communication channels, and automatic response protocols. Emails, SMSs, Snapchats, Facebook Chats, and even WhatsApp messages can be integrated as being received from a single customer.

CRMs can help you respond to customer queries more effectively and efficiently – not just in terms of punctuality and promptness but also in terms of tailoring a response for a specific customer.

CRMs can inform specific customers of an upcoming event based on their previous purchases, give them special discounts based on their online behavior, and recommend certain products based on their purchase history.

This also entails making customers feel like they’re being cared for. This ultimately incurs loyalty from them and translates into greater sales.

CONTENT CALENDAR

Content creation is the key to success for any organization. It’s the basis on which every single organization and company rests if using digital markeitng. Getting it out on time and delivering on deadlines can be very tricky though, and a good CRM can help you streamline that process.

CRMs can help you create design assets, make sure content has been proofed and approved before being released, and keep the entire organization informed by sending out notifications of major milestones.

This will not only help keep track of which department is handling which aspect of a certain project but will also help to find out which aspect of the process is at the root of inefficiencies and where improvements can be made to deliver better productivity.

INVENTORY AND FEATURE RELEASES

Since it’s far less expensive to retain a customer than it is to gain a new one, it’s important that you maintain a relationship with your customer which can translate into more revenue. A CRM can help you organize customers by persona. This way, you can push specific offers on to subgroups which may have a higher chance of responding to them.

A CRM can help you implement this by identifying certain groups to which you can roll out new features. In fact, these features may be developed as a result of the data gathered by CRM systems on customer pain points.

Using CRM data to target certain groups within your customer base can help you reap success when introducing new features, items, services, and products. It can also help you test those features for bugs, improvements, and critical failure points so that you can streamline your design process.

CUSTOMER SUCCESS

One way to increase customer lifetime value (CLTV) is to educate your customers about various benefits of your business. If you continue to sell to your existing customers through a managed customer success pipeline in a CRM, the returns can be exponential.

You can begin by contacting new customers through a customer success manager (CSM). You can then conduct a successful onboarding which takes the customer through a tutorial of sorts through the system. Since the customer hasn’t formed a habit of using the system, the initial use is gradual and slow.

You can slowly try to increase their habit of using your portal by sending them monthly reminders. Simultaneously, you should be listening to customer events by using Event Tracking. This will help identify which customers are at risk of leaving and why this is so.

You should pay attention to customers who complain about failed payments or reduce their purchases overall. If they’re canceling, don’t let them go without a fight. Try to reach out to them in order to understand why they left and what you can do to fix that.

TECHNICAL BENEFITS OF A CRM

CRITICAL DECISION MAKING

CRMs can contribute to how well-informed the staff of an organization is. CRMs can contribute to the managerial staff and the executive staff having better information to make critical decisions. In addition to having access to wide volumes of data that help in critical analysis, CRMs can provide access to real-time, on-location data for executives to make spur of the moment decisions.

What this means is that you can fine-tune strategies right when an opportunity presents itself. This can translate into high profits or the avoidance of heavy losses.

CRMs can also help you allocate resources better. It can identify which areas in the organization have the most promise and which best practices are worth backing in different departments.

BETTER DATA SECURITY

The Centralized CRM system keeps customer data and trade insights instead of splitting up the information to multiple desktops. This means that your security budget, resources, manpower, and infrastructure can be focused on a single ecosystem.

The parameters can be set so that only authorized employees have access to it. You can keep close tabs on a single channel for a possible breach and position a defensive line against a narrow channel, which, by its very existence, gives little room for an offensive.

News Source: Solastis Solutions Pte Ltd

Featured image for representation.