Customer relationships are integral to the success of a business. Customers’ buying processes and habits are constantly evolving and one way to differentiate your business from the competition is to build great relationships with your customers and become their trusted advisor.
Moving to a CRM system can help to manage these relationships, but what are the signs indicating that your business is ready to make the change?
What is a CRM?
CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management and refers to a software system used to build and manage customer relationships. CRM software helps businesses to manage all interactions with their existing and prospective customers, helps to streamline processes, encourages collaboration, and improves productivity.
Every organisation will have some sort of CRM, from pieces of paper to Excel spreadsheets, , but at some point, these manual and outdated processes will no longer support a growing business. We outline the signs which indicate your business needs a CRM solution.
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Lengthy Manual Data Entry
Using traditional methods like Excel or paper notes to record customer data can be time-consuming and increases the chance of human error. Duplicate records, typos, and simple mistakes waste your resources, time, and money. Furthermore, manual data entry can limit other employees from being able to access that valuable information.
However, with a CRM, data entry can be fast and efficient. Forms can be customised to ensure that all the essential data you need to help service your customers is captured; data which can then be easily accessed by other members of your organisation.
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Your customer service is not meeting the required standards
Landing customers can be a huge challenge, so losing them due to poor service is the last thing you want. If your customer service team is constantly spending more time resolving customer complaints rather than proactively anticipating their needs, that is a sign indicating your business needs a CRM system.
A CRM system would help you offer a proactive service to your customers. Customer service cases can be assigned to the right agent, while a shared knowledge base can be created to help agents answer common questions. All communications can be recorded within the system, so staff have a full view of the interactions between agents and customers, so there are no missing details or a lack of understanding around a situation. An intelligent solution, such as Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service, allows your organisation to effectively manage cases via multiple channels, track entitlements or SLAs (service level agreements) and collect valuable customer feedback to analyse and improve your service.
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Poor insights and reporting
Analysing data is as important as collecting it. Being able to create insights, management information, and reports from your data helps inform important business decisions which could change the growth and development of your company. However, if members of your team are manually producing reports, this is an inefficient use of time. A CRM system can automatically create insights and real-time dashboards which can easily be accessed in one place. An intelligent CRM system can even “clean” customer data, such as removing duplicates or automatically fill in missing information.
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Struggling to manage your leads
A major sign of your organisation requiring a CRM system is if you have more leads coming in than you can manage. Everyone wants a lot of inbound enquiries, but if there is an inconsistent process in managing them, it can have the adverse effect on your business. This is where a CRM system would come in, as it can efficiently prioritise and organise your leads. A CRM can list leads in order of importance, delegate each one to the right salesperson, and store templates or messages to ensure a consistent sales process is being followed.
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Numerous manual, repetitive processes
Every organisation wants to reduce costs, but many do not realise that a CRM platform can reduce your costs over a longer time. Through automation, an organisation will save time on many laborious tasks which means reduced costs on admin and management.
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Lack of internal communication and collaboration
Working in an organisation where communication is lacking is never a healthy working environment. An effective CRM system, such as Microsoft Dynamics 365, can help improve communication by tracking all interactions related to the customer experience and streamlining it in one centralised location. As a result, team members will know exactly where each customer is in their journey which immediately improves collaboration between departments.
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No measure of marketing efforts
If you are generating a lot of leads, it’s also important to recognise which marketing efforts are contributing to those leads. Without the ability to evaluate your marketing activities, you will not be able to make smart and effective decisions on future campaigns. A CRM platform can collate key marketing metrics from your social, web, and email channels that are crucial to help you identify new opportunities.
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You are constantly growing
As your business grows, issues will arise with current processes. Ultimately, there is a ceiling on your organisation’s growth if you continue to use spreadsheets or pieces of paper as the main methods of customer relationship management. The lack of a coherent system, which helps you maintain great customer relationships, keep a consistent sales process, track marketing activity, collate data, and create useful insights will eventually hurt your overall growth.
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Using multiple disparate systems
Having your sales, customer service, and marketing systems in several different areas can lead to disorganisation and confusion. Furthermore, it’s an inefficient use of time to train staff on several different systems when a CRM can centralise all these functions. As a result, a CRM system will increase user efficiency as all key data can be stored in one easy-to-access central location which helps to create a single source of the truth.
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Missing key deadlines with prospects and customers
The busier your organisation gets with inbound enquiries, the harder it is to manage each one. Missing a key initial phone call with a lead because you are consumed with other important tasks in the business, can mean losing a potential customer. A CRM system can help prevent this through timely automated reminders and calendar integration which ensures any important appointments or meetings are attended.
Summary
If you can see any of these signs within your organisation, it is time to take your business to the next level. As a Microsoft Partner, Strategy 365 can help transform your current processes with Microsoft Dynamics 365. If you are interested in a CRM system, please feel free to get in touch.
