If you are realizing that you need to do a better job of keeping track of your clients, a CRM is essential, here are 7 reasons why:
1. Centralized Information – One of the most obvious reasons that a CRM is apparent in today’s work environment is having your information centralized. Customer information does nobody any good when it is stored in separate laptops, accessible only to users on that machine. Emails are usually stored in a single system, but are invisible to other people who work with the same clients. Communicating through a CRM allows everyone in your organization to see and keep up with what is happening with a given client. No one will look unprepared if they missed a discussion or critical meeting. Every piece of information can be made available to everyone who needs to know, and conversely you can keep certain files separate, by changing access privileges for users.
2. Paper Solutions are Not Sufficient – Are you one of those people who has collections of business cards and 3-ring binders full of notes in their office? Its easy to grab a pen and paper to jot down notes quickly, but even easier to lose that scrap of crucial information. You can’t type a phrase into a file cabinet and have it arrange your information so that it shows just the contacts who meet your criteria. You can send a paper marketing mail out, but you won’t get the attention of people who check their email twenty times a day for every time they check their post. CRM technology is as critical part of any successful business.
3. No Data Loss – In addition to paper notes being mislaid, disorganized, or discarded. Data is even vulnerable when it is stored on your laptop or desktop, or on your office server. Servers can crash. Hard drives can fail. But a good CRM solution, administered by a good CRM provider, will be structured in a secure manner on servers that are maintained and backed up regularly. The advent of cloud computing brings you data anywhere and anytime, so long as you can access a connection. No matter where you are in the world, the critical customer data you gather is immediately accessible to your colleagues in every location needed.
4. Coordinate the Present – Using what you’ve learned about the relationship you have with your customers, you can make your business into a responsive and confident authority. You can design programs that give your customers the right kind of customer service experience. You can get sales and support staff talking to each other so that they can work together to give customers only what they want. You can use customer feedback to tell you where your resources are best spent. You can use past sales history to suggest what potential maintenance issues a customer might be facing. In addition, you can plan your time using built-in calendar and task management so that every process is done right the first time.
5. Quickly Understand the Past – There’s really no good way to look back into the history of your relationship with a customer without using CRM technology. If you want to look back in time and understand how things have progressed, you need a solution that tracks all of their communication, history, and issues. You’ll be able to save clients by knowing how to anticipate their needs and forestall common problems. You’ll be able to create marketing materials based on purchase and communication history.
6. Stay Organized in the Present – You can design programs that give your customers the right kind of customer service experience. You can get sales and support staff talking to each other so that they can work together to give customers what they will need next. You can use customer feedback to tell you where your resources are best spent. In addition, you can plan your time using built-in calendar and task management so that every process is done right the first time.
7. Predict the Future – Once you understand the past, and know what to do in the present, you will have a reasonably good idea what your efforts now will give rise to in the future. You can use past sales history to suggest what potential maintenance issues a customer might be facing. Things that used to come as complete surprises will be explainable, and you can plan for them, when you know why and how they happened. The better your data is in your history, and the better you track your campaigns, projects, and events, the more you can know about what is likely to happen.
For more information on a CRM to suit your needs call (866) 710-4228 or send us an email.