Getting Started with CRM
Customers are the lifeblood of any business, and the more you know about them as the owner or manager of a business, the better you will be able to keep your customers happy. Important information for managers and marketers this year includes customer needs, attitudes and motivations, as that information helps them understand customers and their buying habits.
Building good relationships with your customers increases loyalty that results in more repeat and referral business. Businesses that are most successful generally have a customer-centric ethic ingrained in the company culture, and knowing your customers well is key. Feedback is essential, so spend some time really talking to customers. So, it is important to learn all you can about your customers, and to be able to utilize that information in making decisions.
While tracking and analyzing customer data can give you a wealth of useful information for business and marketing purposes, many businesses still do not track information about their customers because it can be a time-consuming process. Luckily, technology has brought us many software programs that can make all of this work easier to do.
Customer Relationship Management
Most database software used by companies to collect, track and analyze data about customers is named customer relationship management (CRM), because it has lots of valuable info to help you understand your customer’s needs.
Take a good look at the information you have about your customers, and look for patterns, like when they typically place orders or the size of their orders. This can be helpful in offering them discounts or bundled deals to increase your orders. A CRM system will help improve customer retention, and identify needs that allow you to sell more efficiently and increase revenues and profitability.
Automating tracking systems
CRM systems hold lots of valuable information, but until recently it required someone to physically enter all of the data. Worse, billing and CRM were often siloed systems, so the data all had to be entered more than once. Nowadays, there are systems which make it much easier for companies to collect all of their customer data, and to do much of it automatically.
Zoho CRM offers email integration that allows you to manage all your customer correspondence within the platform, automatically tracking email conversations, and associate them with leads and CRM contacts. This allows you to easily centralize your customer information, setup followups, and share with other users in the company. Zoho integrates with Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail and other POP email services.
In much the same way, RingCentral has upgraded its applications to manage customer phone calls more automatically. Cloud communication is the core of the system, and it integrates with Zoho CRM and other systems to enable dialing, logging and recording calls automatically to enhance team productivity.
With all of the great software and productivity tools available, there is no reason for a company not to get to know its customers well and use that information to serve them better, while also increasing the company’s sales and profitability. Choose a CRM system that is right for your company, automate your data collecting tasks, and reap the benefits in enhanced customer service and revenue. Get started today with Catalyst Group Development to help set your business up to better understand your customers and improve results.