Today, more and more businesses recognize that using a customer relationship management tool is indispensable for effective communication with customers and their deep engagement. According to Gartner, Inc, in 2014 CRM software totaled $23.2 billion, which is 13.3% more that in 2013.
Many businesses seem to be seeing their CRM system as the magic tool able to improve their sales and act as a driving force for the whole company. This is especially true for those businesses that are about to implement their first CRM and are attracted by the bright perspectives painted by vendors.
Others, who have already been “cured” of this view by actually implementing the system, are sometimes discouraged by the absence of immediate results.
The thing is, even the most powerful and advanced tool needs to be handled properly, otherwise, it can eat up a lot of time without giving any value in return. In other words, a CRM without a carefully worked out CRM strategy is worth little. In this post, we’ll discuss the top areas to pay attention to in order to make the most out of your customer relationship management solution.
Modern CRM systems provide numerous possibilities of gathering all sorts of data about customer interactions. The frequent problem is that it is simply stored without being put to use. So, it is best not to follow the principle “The more - the better”. Instead, focus on finding out what data about your customers you really need and work out how exactly it can help to refine customer service and improve their experience. Once decided, there’s no point in keeping the unused and unneeded data from long ago as it may be outdated so that it may be up for a good cleanup.
Moreover, data analysts recommend that you define your data needs before even buying a CRM. This will help select the tool that’ll do the job without the need to pay for extra functionality that may be not used at all.
In our previous post on CRM reporting issues, we pointed out that inaccurate data can result in reports that are of little or no value, showing the distorted picture of the state of things. Aware of this, some companies take extreme measures to insure themselves against such occurrences and not only double check the data that is being entered or tracked, but also spend much time and efforts to clear up the data that’s stored in the system.
However, before setting out on a quest for clarity, it would be much more effective to take the time to define which of the data will be used according to your CRM strategy and which can be dispensed with as unnecessary. This will undoubtedly save lots of employees time they can use on actually doing their work.
Ideally, what companies are looking to get by implementing a CRM is deeper customer engagement and high retention rates. The more information about the customer, a CRM can collect and produce, the easier and faster it will be to keep him/her satisfied. However, it’s a common practice to limit access to certain types of data for various departments. So, often marketing doesn’t have access to the data sales use, while technical support cannot see any info on marketing activities.
It would be certainly a good practice to think over the customer engagement goals and work on the corresponding CRM strategy concerning customer data. Ensuring the needed level of data integration company wise will be a step in the direction of gaining more happy customers.
In many companies, CRMs are used as sales tools only, while all the rest of the functionality remains obscure. So, why not utilize your system to the full? For instance, the data collected by sales can help with marketing activities, helping achieve better customer segmentation for email marketing campaigns. Also, viewing a complete record for a customer (his/her preferences, interaction history, previous purchases and support tickets, etc. ) in just a few clicks could make a big difference for technical support staff, providing a fuller understanding of customers’ personal needs to satisfy them better.
Moving to a new CRM definitely may sound dreadful to the businesses that have been using a certain software for years. Worries about losing data, the need to get used to the new system and apprehension about big financial investments often make companies stick with outdated and inconvenient CRM that doesn’t fully meet the growing needs of the dynamic market.
However, improvements may be not that hard to achieve - there are numerous apps that can be integrated with the existing technological solution and do the job well. In case there are too many gaps to fill, it would be best to migrate to a more suitable CRM. Again, it doesn’t have to be done manually, and it doesn’t mean having to give up all the data.
Actually, Trujay is the tool for the job that handles CRM data migration totally automatedly, securely and quickly. It does all heavy lifting and saves days or weeks of work to import all your clients, opportunities, communication history, etc. to the new system. But, as they say, it’s best to see once than to hear a hundred times, so give it a test drive right now via a free Demo Migration and see for yourself!
That explains the migration process
To continue using this website, you have to allow cookies in accordance with our Cookie Policy
