CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. CRM software can help you manage your company-wide interactions with clients, sales prospects, and existing companies. The software will allow you to automate the information on each customer, when they were contacted, what they bought or said, and will house personalized information triggers to help you maintain a friendly relationship.
Typically CRM is used for sales activities. But there are also great applications for customer service, technical support, and for the companies marketing efforts. Any company that wants to find, entice, and get new clients, then cultivate and retain those clients, should consider a CRM software system for a small business. And if you have former clients who are unsatisfied or just drifted away, a CRM system will help you come up with a plan to bring them back through the doors.
Small businesses today are utilizing customer relationship management software as the visible face of their company-wide business strategy. Owners will implement CRM as a critical part of their overall approach. CRM will also allow all departments within the organization to log their experiences and plans to interface with the customer or potential customer.
What Can CRM Software Do For Your Business?
Basically CRM software is used to gather and organize information. It will allow your business and all the employees to view all customer interactions and the results of those actions. If problems arise, for instance, customer service will see all the customer’s product orders and any communication concerning those orders. This allows the service rep to respond faster, and in a knowledgeable manner. The same with technical support, the tech would know what the customer bought, would see if there had been any earlier complaints or attempts at solution, so they wouldn’t have to cover old ground.
The sales staff would know if there had been any shipping or service issues before they attempted to make another sale. This would allow them to ask first if the issue had been resolved successfully and to clear up any concerns before they asked for more business. Hopefully preventing an upset customer that the sales person didn’t even know they’d had a problem. The sales person would know the customer’s history, and be better able to know what the client might need and the approach to take with the sale.
The CRM software will also provide data to be analyzed, flagging specific opportunities and warnings. For instance if all eighty percent of the customers who bought widget A, came back to buy attachment C, then you should be calling the twenty percent of widget A purchasers who hadn’t yet purchased attachment C. You might also consider bundling widget A with attachment C for the next promotion.
Owners will be able to see what marketing strategies are working, and which should be discarded. They can offer more training to unproductive employees, and warn departments when they might be receiving more calls about a common service issue.
CRM Software and Small Businesses
Often small businesses make the mistake of thinking they aren’t big enough for Customer Relationship Management Software, when this is the perfect time to implement and start using it. Small businesses need every customer the can get and keep. There is CRM software perfect for small businesses, in fact small businesses can often better utilize this software as the information input into the system and the resulting analysis is less complex than it would be for a larger company.
In a small business CRM software is typically easier to implement throughout the organization, instead of just concentrating on the sales group. There are even online CRM options that would allow very small companies to take advantage of the software’s insights, even if you work at home. Some simple contact managements systems are offered free, or free for a specified trial period. Contact Management software is like a light version of Customer Relationship Management Software.
Summary
Customer Relationship Management Software or CRM can help not only your sales force, but the rest of your business, in focusing their efforts on the customer. Small business owners can device a company-wide strategy that will allow all departments to focus their efforts on understanding the customer, knowing the history of sales and contacts before they try to help, and in treating the customer as if he is your company’s number one priority.
The sales force can prepare for each call, knowing that if the customer had had service or technical issues it would be in the CRM system, and he could call to check to see if the issues were resolved before he tried to sell the customer something else. The CRM software will also allow owners to gather information that could result in more sales or help the companies marketing efforts.
