5 Practices To Optimize Your CRM Platform Utilisation

Creating solid relations with customers, whether new or existing, should be every business’s priority. By ensuring they’re on top of customer relationship management (CRM), entities thrive in a highly competitive business environment.

Discover how CRM platforms work and how businesses can use this software to increase company revenues and drive growth while providing impeccable customer service.

How does a CRM platform work? 

Customer relationship management helps businesses grow by integrating marketing, sales, and client services. It creates a balance between increasing profits by gaining new customers and retaining current ones. In some cases, it also provides information on why some deals don’t succeed and how businesses can do their marketing and sales campaigns better.

The platform boosts sales, marketing, and customer service performances by allowing companies to generate and track leads, anticipate customers’ needs, personalize customer service and offers, and improve marketing efforts in one place. A platform that integrates a salesforce call list is one of the best examples of a comprehensive CRM solution.

Ways to maximize CRM platform for your business

Your CRM strategy is crucial when choosing the platform that you need. It also dictates how your company can use the platform to its utmost advantage. Before integrating a CRM platform in your business, experts recommend studying business processes and performance, as well as identifying the gaps where CRM can help.

Ahead, you’ll find some of the common strategies to ensure your business is getting the best out of your CRM software:

1. Keeping information updated

The platform does more than help businesses generate leads efficiently. CRM tools allow users to customize the data they want, helping them understand customer behaviour further and serve them better. Most systems include basic information such as name, address, and preferred contact channels. The staff should record any change in address or contact number and update client preferences and interactions.

The level of accuracy of CRM data entry usually determines the quality of the collected customer data. Poor data quality can also impact brand reputation and consumer trust, as clients will likely question your business processes. For instance, customer concerns must be recorded appropriately to prevent repetitive contact and miscommunication.

2. Establishing clear data entry procedures

Identify the data you need and have clear policies in place for a more organized and streamlined CRM implementation. CRM systems also include customers’ contact information with your business or your competitor’s, purchasing habits, and interaction history with your brand. These platforms also have your employee’s information to track performance and accomplishments.

Setting data entry and management policies can help maximize CRM utilization by promoting consistency and streamlining marketing and sales processes. Establishing clear guidelines on who updates and edits CRM data, pitches the new product, does follow-up calls, and ultimately closes the deal ensures that your staff can focus on their tasks and deliver better results.

3. Integrating CRM with other business software

Multiple business software can be incorporated with CRM to provide better results. When linked with an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, for instance, CRM provides a better view of the current marketing, sales, and financial data, allowing enterprises to have more realistic predictions.

If incorporated with accounting software, CRM can provide a clearer outlook of your marketing and sales expenses and performance. If used alongside your communication systems, it helps your agents prepare a specialized and more compelling sales pitch.

4. Tapping CRM’s artificial intelligence functions

CRM software offers various solutions that can help multiple business processes. With the help of machine learning or artificial intelligence (AI), businesses can automate their operations better and offer more time for sales and marketing representatives to perform their core tasks.

• Lead qualification: An AI-powered CRM software can effectively qualify leads by analyzing information culled from digital tools, such as chatbots and email bots. Complement this advanced data-gathering activity with AI-powered tools that use sentiment analysis in understanding a client’s emotional state while speaking with one of your representatives, and you might be able to plan your following strategies better moving forward.
• Content marketing: A machine-learning enabled CRM tool can also help your marketing team craft more compelling articles targeted to increase brand awareness and product promotion. By being fully aware of your existing and prospective customers’ preferences and pain points, your business can customize product descriptions, landing pages, social media content, and call-to-action campaigns.
• Sales forecasting: CRM can better predict sales growth based on past and current performance and business deals in the pipeline. This tool can also detect trends in customer data that contribute to a more accurate sales prediction.

CRM platforms can do the heavy lifting in terms of customer data analysis. With this helpful feature, your business can strategize its product and service offerings, providing better services to customers.

5. Be wary of data privacy regulations

Despite the extensive customer information and marketing and sales analysis that a CRM tool can provide, businesses must not forget about their responsibilities concerning data privacy regulations. In Europe, entities must be aware of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the European Union’s 1998 Privacy Directive, which sets data handling rules for businesses based in the region and even outside.

In essence, it’s not much different from the United States Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC)  Fair Information Practice Principles, which underline the basic principles entities have to comply with about gathering, using, and sharing personal information. Disclosing information on how entities may use their data and choosing information that may or may not be shared are two core policies. Data collectors are responsible for ensuring that all the information collected is kept secure.

Unfortunately, data breaches continue to happen, costing businesses millions in settlement. The largest so far was the USD$575 million payment imposed to a credit reporting agency in 2019, while the USD$230 million settlement imposed on a premier European airline carrier comes second. Rounding up the top three is a ride-hailing service, which, in 2016, paid USD$148 million in data breach settlements.

Being careful with handling CRM data helps prevent business data breaches. This is critical in preventing costly payments that could shut your company down.

Final Thoughts

The advantages of having a CRM application installed for your business can be numerous. The key, however, is choosing the best platform for your needs and optimizing it to your business’s advantage.

Companies must identify priorities and objectives for enhancing their customer relationship cycles before choosing the ideal CRM software. Additionally, businesses must focus on what the platform should and could do instead of going for the bells and whistles.

Ultimately, for the platform to succeed, the management must take the lead, ensure that the entire team is on the same boat, and set performance indicators to review efficiency.

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