CRMs are as personal as drink orders. Some prefer them straight – simple, to the point, and the same every time. Others like them with a little more ‘kick’ – a new feature here, snazzy workflows, and eye-catching visuals.
Whatever your preference, drinking or otherwise, a great CRM truly only becomes so when you decide you’re all in. No more straddling the fence, with a spreadsheet of data and a half-baked customer list in your CRM. No more leaving it on the shelf until you’ve ‘got more time’. If you’re a small business owner or team member looking to break through the ceiling of administration headaches and move into a new level of capacity, then a workhorse CRM is the organisation magic you’ve been looking for.
CRMs are the beating hearts of automation systems for small businesses. Designed to manage all of your customer relationships and interactions within one automated system, CRMs are built on the premise of helping you improve those daily relationships. When they’re operating the way they’re designed, CRMs help you to stay connected to your customer bases, improve your profitability with rich and authentic interactions, and streamline your workflows and processes to make the most of automation enrichment.
With that in mind, here’s a couple of key CRM hacks to whip your relationships into shape…
Bring email automation for small business to life with your CRM of choice.
Transactional emails and email journeys are powerful ways to bring in new business and serve existing customers – but without clear systems and protocols, managing customers at all stages of a customer journey, across different customer segments and across product or service ranges can be a nightmare.
Email automation is the key for small business communication scalability. As CRMs can track and add new leads across multiple channels, they can work on your behalf to categorize incoming leads across likelihood, department, incoming lead source and more.
By utilizing automation hooks to connect incoming CRM leads with your EDM provider of choice, you can pull the trigger on automated emails and journeys that are shaped specifically to cater to each incoming lead pool or return customer.
Improve your customer support capacities
Great customer support can leave just as lasting an impression as the great delivery of a product or a service. In fact, customer support can be the make-or-break area for consumers, determining whether they’ll return again and again or disappear in the wind. Delivering top-tier customer support takes time, resources and focus, an area that can be assisted greatly through the insights and specificities offered by CRM systems.
By keeping track of exactly which products and services your customers have ordered, as well as metrics such as order dates, delivery dates, tracking numbers, locations, #s of orders, order value and every interaction to date with your company, your customer support team can walk into every conversation equipped with a full personal history across that customer’s brand interaction.
Knowing your customer becomes a whole lot easier when your CRM’s taking care of their details for you – take all of the credit for timely birthday messages without remembering a single date (and that’s just the tip of the iceberg).