How to optimise your CRM system for success
A functional and well-adopted Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system can make a world of difference to your business. Optimising your CRM system will improve the customer experience and ultimately help you to achieve your goals. According to Salesforce, even though effective CRM systems can increase revenue per salesperson by 41%, 43% of businesses are failing to use their system correctly.
Understand your customer journey
By delving deep into your customer journey, you can begin to optimise your CRM system to enhance the customer experience and drive sales. By understanding the specific nuances, touchpoints and opportunities, you can tailor the CRM system to the needs of your customer, providing useful information and relevant calls to action at each stage.
Creating personas that represent each segment of your customer base will help you to map out how each of your customer groups progresses through the buying cycle. You may find that you have more than one typical sales cycle; the better known CRM systems can manage multiple processes. By creating a customer journey map, you will see a visual representation of how a customer progresses through your sales cycle, understanding their needs and problem areas.
Create one version of the truth
It is common for organisations to struggle with multiple systems containing various customer data. Email marketing, finance, CRM and customer service systems may all hold a range of information on your customers. However, without hours of manual intervention, there can be many versions of the truth as these systems are outdated silos of data. Not only are you missing an opportunity to gather valuable insights into your customers, but there is also a chance to serve your customers better by coordinating efforts.
For example, if you can combine your customer service data to your email marketing data, you may avoid an unsubscribe from a poorly timed marketing email to a disgruntled customer, or improve email targeting by segmenting based on previous sales activity.
Drive efficiency with integrations
The better known CRM systems are well-stocked in various apps and integrations to improve the user experience and enhance capability. You will find there is a myriad of tools ranging from project management and collaboration to social media, video marketing, invoicing, surveys, live chat and ticketing.
Connecting your CRM data with other data sources from around the business can help to give your team more time to manage customers.
Level up your marketing communications
As a marketeer, having all of your customer and prospect information available in one place is a definite win. Understanding their preferences, website experience, email interaction and social media activities in a single location can magnify your targeting efforts.
Your customer is bombarded with content more than ever before, and they are becoming increasingly discerning in the content they consume. A personalised, well-timed email tailored to their specific interests will go a long way.
Measure and optimise for success
With all your accurate, quality customer data now in a single place, it makes sense to use this to measure your results and make improvements where needed.
Many of the better-known CRM systems incorporate powerful reporting functionality. Dashboards can be created for each stakeholder set within your business. For example, a marketing manager may be more interested in email performance, whereas a sales manager is likely to be more concerned with the pipeline. Once you have decided which data is important to track, where you focus efforts and how to measure performance, you are ready to optimise your system.
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