Here at Caldere Associates, we strive to help you achieve sustainable growth by understanding and responding to your customers’ motivations and behaviours. We’re here to help you build a customer relationship management (CRM) solution that enables you to create new systems, processes, and work streams in response to the evolving needs of your customers. But how do you know if you are ready for one? This article shows the 5 signs you need a CRM solution.
Let’s look at tell-tale signs your business would benefit from implementing a CRM solution. Do any of these questions resonate with you?
- Are you a growing business that needs to stay in touch with customers, contact people more easily and up-sell effectively?
- Do you need a simple, user-friendly tool to help keep your business organised, growing and free of clutter?
- You want to start doing some email marketing, but you’re using too many spreadsheets to keep your email lists.
If you are yelling yes at your screen, read on to see how many signs you need a CRM solution to keep your business ticking.
1. Your Customer Service Could Be Improved
Getting customers is hard work; acquiring a new customer costs seven times more than keeping the ones you currently have. Customer experience directly influences retention, so focusing on how to improve your customer experience is critical. A CRM system enables you to accurately manage your customers, freeing up your time to anticipate customer needs rather than deal with customer complaints. They say prevention is better than cure, and a CRM is no exception. With employees able to recognise and respond to customer needs more quickly, less complex problems can be solved with little or no employee interaction. This allows your team to become better equipped to give full attention to difficult tasks. A unified view of your customers gives you all the detail you need to deliver excellent service and grow your customer base.
2. You Don’t Have A Centralised Information Point
Can you access all your customer information – name, number, email, and account information in one place? Having these details at your fingertips allows you to ensure sharing any learnings between all your team and that the right person deals with customers at the right time. From marketing automation to lead scoring, pipeline tracking, tailored business processes and personalisation, your CRM solution gives you control over your contacts. What’s more, you can access your info anytime and anywhere. On the road at a meeting? No problem; update details from your mobile device so information is instantly available for you and your team to see and act on immediately.
3. You Spend Time On Repetitive Tasks
Do you do the same tasks time and time again? Is a portion of your day or week taken up working on the same process repeatedly? A CRM system designed with you and your customers’ needs at the forefront will allow you to automate repetitive tasks. This frees up your time to work on things that benefit your business in the long term, and your employees can spend their time on projects where they add the most value. It enables you and your team to work on things that challenge and motivate them rather than getting bogged down with repetitive tasks that don’t use their expertise and creativity. Automation ensures accuracy and increases your teams’ productivity. Your team will have the time, resources, and freedom to focus more on strategy and innovation and less on “the tech”.
4. Your Reporting Isn’t Accurate Or Customised
Your CRM delivers a consolidated picture of team performance and service metrics in a single window. It lets you get a snapshot of real-time data whenever needed. Accessing everything at a glance with powerful, easy-to-construct reports, dashboards, and Business Intelligence means you can make data-driven decisions. Your CRM solution allows for almost any data visualisation imaginable, with the option to drag and drop various reports to create dashboards for your most crucial KPIs and forecasts with powerful analytics from any device. With reliable reporting, your CRM gives you an insight into the future, helping you predict potential issues, make better decisions, and measure the impact of those decisions. If this seems like a pipe dream with your current reporting capabilities, you’re probably ready for a CRM solution.
5. Your Projects Need Managing
Do your projects run smoothly and efficiently? Do you spend time managing resources and dependencies and creating reports? A CRM allows you real-time collaboration with different teams from different locations. Whether you work from a Gantt chart or calendar format, time tracking, billing and other enterprise functions integrate intuitively, saving you time and energy in gathering data from different places. A CRM system keeps everyone connected and makes managing all interactions easier for your team. With clarity around tasks and projects, you have the time and insight to cultivate unrivalled customer service.
If you’re reading this and resonating with our 5 signs you need a CRM, and you’re ready, we’d love the opportunity to have a discovery call to see how we could support you in effectively implementing Zoho CRM or the Zoho platform into your business.
Let’s start a conversation here.
