4 Small Business CRM FAQs

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.