The competition is fierce in the small business arena, and as companies increasingly make cutbacks, lay off staff and cut out IT departments the need for small business Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions continues to grow. Before investing in CRM, every small business should consider the following.
As a small business, why do I need CRM?
In many cases, small businesses can benefit more from CRM than their larger competitors. For many small businesses, personalization is already a part of how they interact with their customers, but for most, the process is time consuming. By using CRM solutions, a small business can streamline many processes to free up employee time, better target customers, improve customer care and satisfaction with personalization.
By saving time and connecting with more customers, CRM helps small companies increase their profits. For companies that: use more than one method of tracking customer data, have high customer turnover, suffer from lack of personalization and lack of understanding of a customers needs then CRM solutions can be beneficial. Allowing the storing and accessing of all information in one location accessible anywhere at any anytime.
What are the key benefits of CRM for small businesses?
CRM is about efficiency and profitably. With a small business, employees at the sales and management level can benefit from a set of tools that make their jobs easier to handle. Employees can use CRM to input customer information and to provide a record of how a customer request was handled. Marketing teams can run reports and determine how successful a particular form of marketing was for reaching the small businesses primary audience as well as manage their efforts with mass direct mailings and support follow-ups. Accounting departments can streamline employee payroll by having information directly entered into the system to create customer invoices.
As a small business, what if I cannot afford a dedicated support staff?
It is true that traditional CRM platforms often-required companies to have a team of technology experts who could keep the database running and trouble shoot any problems. Thanks to web-based CRM options small businesses now have different alternatives available for their choosing. Data is backed up and encrypted online with web-hosting options allowing companies to update information by mobile and while in the office. Web-based CRM is an ideal option for companies with employees located in remote offices or for companies with virtual staffing.
How much training is required to get my employees up to speed?
Most small businesses are surprised to find out how easy it is to train employees on use of web-based CRM programs. Look for programs that are user-friendly with easy to navigate interfaces that ensure employees will not have a steep learning curve. Review several different programs, check out user reviews and create a test group to determine how well a program will work for the specific needs of your business. This can be done by adding a small sample of customers to the program to review how easy the system is to manage.
If you have ever read the definition of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and thought, "I just don't get it" you're in good company. CRM has many different meanings and different applications, instead of wasting your valuable business time trying to understand what CRM is focus on learning to improve areas of customer relationships that need improvement.
Your customers are the backbone of your industry and there is no business that does not have a customer. Therefore, there is no business that does not have to learn what matters most to their customers and implement strategies to give the customer exactly what they want. Stop wasting time stating how little money your business has to adopt CRM strategies, because without effective CRM you will not have any customers for long.
Even if you do not think you can afford CRM do your competitors feel the same way? Can your business afford to lose its most valuable clientele? Does your business have any strategies that work at retaining new customers? For a small business, these questions are even more important to find the answers.
Before deciding to use software and other resources to develop CRM start by finding out what your customer wants, though you can gleam some information from market research one of the most effective ways is too ask. In the survey ask customers how you can make your product or business more useful to them, their response can open your eyes and introduce new ideas and strategies of how to reach out to customers and market the business. Typically doing a customer satisfaction surveys a business may become aware of a defect or lack of customer dissatisfaction they were previously unaware of. Once a CRM platform has been started and used for a while, another survey can be used to determine if customer satisfaction and loyalty has increased.
There are a number of ways a business can choose to send out a customer satisfaction surveys, the method used will determine how many customers choose to respond. A paper-based questionnaire may get a response from customers that are more loyal but for customers who are already frustrated or upset by customer service they may view a paper survey as just another instruction or annoyance. Phone based interviews will get more responses than a paper questionnaire. Call center reps can be given the questions upfront and can be coached or getting honest answers from the customers and keeping the call length to a manageable time for the customer.
Web based surveys are seen as the least annoying by customers and can be taken any time that is convenient to them. Companies can send their clients a brief survey by email or through their web site. For a reasonable fee, companies can use a Web site service to design a user-friendly survey. Additionally, companies that utilize field representatives to take orders meet with clients' offsite and make repairs in client homes can conduct face-to-face interviews; if this method is used having a survey that is already prepared can help a company ensure that the information they receive back is useful for improving customer satisfaction.
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