In principle, CRM or sales software is actually a very simple business tool; essentially a phone book on your computer. However, it’s critical to your business for maintaining successful customer relationships. Thus, it’s important that you use it to your advantage by making the most of every option; supercharge your efforts.
While you have a base CRM program to work with, there are a number of ways you can kick it up a notch, to make it work harder for you. When you do this, you provide better customer service, while saving time and resources.
Spring Cleaning
It’s such a simple method, but being organized is so integral to your overall deployment of customer service. If you have a cluttered program, it takes longer to find the right information in a timely fashion. By cleaning out your contact info, ridding ex-customers and keeping only necessary information, your customer care employees can provide significantly better service. Consider these organizing options:
- Current customer info: Set in motion an initiative to go through the contact info with each customer who calls. Clean up numbers and addresses, as well as eliminating any unnecessary information and historical notations.
- Previous customer info: While it’s smart to keep customer information after they’re no longer with you, you don’t have to keep it forever. You can keep their demographic data, and any other information that will help your campaigns in the future, but be sure to get rid of personal contact info, or file it into a separate area if needed.
Integrate Social
Everyone is talking about it, but not everyone is doing it. Integrating social with your CRM software is critical if you want to keep up with the fast paced technological world we’re living in. Your customers want to maintain relationships on Facebook and Twitter; if you can’t, you risk losing them to competitors. However, making the switch to social can increase brand impressions and customer loyalty. So, how do you integrate?
- Current software: Many companies are now offering plugins or software extensions and updates to incorporate social into the program you’ve been using. This is beneficial for your business, as it will require less training time.
- Go manual: Instead of physically making changes to your current program, consider training staff to provide manual customer service via answering questions on social forums, networks, etc.
Get it Automated
CRM software shouldn’t just be a place for contacts to sit, it should do some work, too. Contacts help you sell product, get new leads, create loyal customers – so your CRM software should do all those things too, right? By automating part of the sales process, you make more time for your salespeople and spend less time generating leads and forms. Consider some processes to automate:
- Lead generation
- Lead management
- Customer reports
- Client retention forms
- Lead quotes
Your CRM software is a simple, yet valuable tool. However, many companies aren’t using it to their full capacity, and losing out on great opportunities. Get social, get automated, and do a little spring cleaning to see what your CRM can do for you.
About the Author: Jessica Sanders is an avid small business writer touching on topics that range from social media to business management. She is a professional blogger and web content writer for ResourceNation.com.
