What is CRM and why should a company implement it? CRM, or Customer Relationship Management, focuses on improving customer retention, increasing revenues and profitability, and ensuring continuity for the customer through any staff changes. At its best, it becomes a key part of corporate strategy that everyone is involved in, not just salespeople. The idea behind it is to provide a tool where every stakeholder in the company records interactions with customers so that everyone is on the same page. How many times have you experienced a salesperson making a sales call to a customer and the salesperson did not know that there was a major customer service issue the week before? It makes the salesperson, and the company, look bad that this information is not shared.
One of the major advantages of utilizing CRM software is to eliminate the silos of information. In most organizations that have not adopted CRM, the customer experience looks something like this:
The second advantage of utilizing CRM software is protection of your customers. Let’s say you have a star salesperson that becomes disgruntled. If they manage their relationships in Excel, Outlook, or by day planner, then if they leave you lose all those interactions and very possibly the client too. By having all interactions recorded in the CRM software, management or the next salesperson can quickly get up to speed of what the salesperson has done and proactively communicate with the customer to retain them.
If you would like to reduce the silos of information in your organization and protect your customers, please visit us at john@oatesco.com or visit us at www.oatesco.com.
One of the major advantages of utilizing CRM software is to eliminate the silos of information. In most organizations that have not adopted CRM, the customer experience looks something like this:
- The salespeople manage their calendars in either Outlook, or even worse in a day planner.
- Management and customer service has no visibility into any of this information.
- All of the emails that the salespeople or customer service has with a customer is in a silo of that individual’s email or in their head.
- If any interaction does need to occur between sales and customer service, it is usually done by phone or by email again.
The second advantage of utilizing CRM software is protection of your customers. Let’s say you have a star salesperson that becomes disgruntled. If they manage their relationships in Excel, Outlook, or by day planner, then if they leave you lose all those interactions and very possibly the client too. By having all interactions recorded in the CRM software, management or the next salesperson can quickly get up to speed of what the salesperson has done and proactively communicate with the customer to retain them.
If you would like to reduce the silos of information in your organization and protect your customers, please visit us at john@oatesco.com or visit us at www.oatesco.com.
