If you want to deliver top notch customer service, you need a CRM strategy in place. Here are 5 fundamentals to get you started.
The benefits of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software is that it allows you to store information about your prospects and customers, maintain communication with them through emails. It also incorporates assorted tools for sales and marketing for increasing profitability.
CRMs are proven to increase productivity, boost sales and improve customer communication. What was once strictly limited to larger organizations, is now being adopted by startups and SMBs.
If your goal is to deliver top notch customer service, it’s certain that you must be planning to implement a CRM strategy, if you haven’t already. Here are 5 fundamentals that would help you to build a foolproof CRM strategy.
1. Decide on Your Goals
The aim of implementing a CRM is to help your business achieve its goals effectively. It’s necessary to be clear on your objectives and to know how to achieve them. Break the objectives into small achievable chunks and connect that to how CRM fits to achieve the composite goal.
As you grow and evolve, your objectives will change along the way. Keep some space in your plan which will allow you to be flexible and revise your strategy on the fly.
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2.Onboard Your Employees
Your employees will be the ones executing the strategy, hence it is necessary to get them on board with your CRM strategy. Involve them early in the planning and implementation process. Explain to your employees how it will make their work easy and help them achieve the organization’s objectives. Implement a change management plan that gives employees enough time to get used to the new system and ensures a smooth transition.
Empowering your employees with accountability and ownership will keep them motivated and move your CRM strategy in the right direction.
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3.Understand Your Buyer’s Journey
Before analyzing your typical buyers’ journey, re-visit your buyer persona. Start by answering the following questions:
- What are the traits of your ideal customer?
- Where do they live?
- What do they do?
- What are their pain areas?
- What do they appreciate in your product?
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Knowing the answers to these questions will help you relate it with the buyer’s journey (sales cycle). This will help you create and streamline content (emails, follow-ups, etc.) and workflows, and communicate according to the stage of sales funnel they are in.
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4.Break Down Organizational Silos
Once you start collecting customer data, it is important to develop a culture of collaboration to improve the Customer Experience. Breaking down organizational silos is the key here. When your marketing, sales and customer service departments are not on the same page, the organization, as a whole, can be working at cross-purposes. When you promote cross-departmental collaboration, you’ll be able to deliver better customer service. Also data collected by one department can be fed to another department to improve overall business operations.
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5.Implement Data Management Best Practices
You will be collecting different data points like: name, address, company, email, designation, birthdate, nickname, qualifications, etc. While collecting this data, it is necessary to follow a set of standards to ensure these data points remain up-to-date. That means along with collecting new data, you should also delete junk records, update old records and sync data with any other systems you might be using along with CRM to collect and manage data. Also, there should be a universal format which everyone should follow while filling in information. Having this standard in place allows anyone with the rights to get access to information, thereby streamlining day to day operations.
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Conclusion
Once you implement your CRM strategy, start measuring your performance on a periodic basis. There will be times when things might not work out the way you anticipated. Be open to change course if things are not working. Keep in mind the fact that people and processes are just as important as the software itself when it comes to CRM success.
A successful CRM strategy will help you build customer loyalty, skyrocket customer retention and convert your leads into customers.