How to Make the Most of CRM Analytics

We all know we should be tracking customer behavior, website traffic, social media engagement and a wealth of other variables. Every business, even SMBs, now have the technological means for precise tracking and adjustment.

This is easier said than done, however. Even if we have the tools, knowing what to focus on can be overwhelming. This is especially true when we barely have enough time for all the customer touch points, email newsletters, social media posts, product iterations and other demands placed on the modern small business.

Don’t panic. Nor should you ignore analytics just because it is overwhelming. Start small and stick to the fundamentals. You then can expand your analytics use once you get going. The key is starting somewhere and progressively growing and refining your approach.

Your CRM is a good starting point for analytics. Properly used, your CRM is the major artery where you can track and analyze your customers and your relationship with them. It can provide aggregate and individual analytics that are central to your business. Most modern CRMs, Agile CRM included, come with a bevy of tracking and analytics features that make the job easier.

Here are five areas you’ll want to focus on. They make a good starting point for your analytics journey.

Essential CRM Analytics

1) Customer feedback always stays on top and there are many means to get it. The direct mail marketing is the most effective way; and in the age of social media, customers are taking to Facebook, Twitter and other platforms for ease of operation and quicker response. This also makes the surveys streamlined without any distortions. All these add up to the analytics to make the CRM better.

Businesses have to extract information from the survey forms and use it to add more enhancements to the satisfaction of the customer. The feedback will be helpful to upgrade and streamline the process for better customer service. [bctt tweet=”There’s nothing called a negative feedback, it simply helps you to move toward a positive direction” username=”@agilecrm”].

2) Bird’s eye view of the customer is integral to understand his/her requirement and move ahead with a consistent response. The key is to understand their behavioral patterns to design effective marketing campaigns, referral and loyalty programs, affiliate marketing initiatives and more. The CRM software should also capture the customer’s social presence, store visits, blog comments, online buying behavior. Then CRM analytics can pull out behavioral, demographic and psychographic insights to make you well -versed with the customer satisfaction index on price changes and other promotional offers. Simply put, the CRM should help you step into a customer’s ecosystem.

All-in-one CRMs such as Agile CRM come with many inbuilt features for segmentation.

Geographic segmentation – Run a territory management check.
Demographic segmentation – Tag filtering for different companies – B2B, B2C, Services etc. to get an objectifiable metric.
Psychographic segmentation – analyzing buyer preferences and tracking the visitors to know where they spend most of the time.
Behavioral segmentation – How many times a particular task is done.

3) Track engagement levels to check customer preferences, offer popularity, partner visibility, and see how this action can be transformed into more customer share and increase in revenue. No matter how hard you try to push your product, without proper customer engagement it can’t gain enough traction.

The customer satisfaction score, or CSAT as it’s often called, intends to measure a customer’s satisfaction with the service received. In its simplest form, CSAT is expressed as a percentage between 0 and 100, with 100% representing complete customer satisfaction.

You can make the most of the analytics and know the customer engagement levels with CSAT (Customer Satisfaction score). Agile CRM stands at a staggering 88 for its CSAT score.

4) Measure and monitor escalation to rely more on FCR (first call resolution) through email, chat or phone. Customer satisfaction ramifies into ‘purchase’ and ‘problem resolution’. The CRM analytics must measure the frequency of problems that arise with a specific offering, and at what stage of the customer life cycle they are more in number. This helps you to fix the problem right at the manufacturing stage or something that pops up during the delivery or after first use. These insights also bring out any issues that are beyond your scope.

Imagine a scenario where the customer calls up the contact center after browsing through the website. This is clear case of escalation because of non-availability of necessary information at an important customer touchpoint. Right here, business analytics can be a saving grace to walk you through perfect steps for enhanced customer satisfaction and retention.

5) Gauge customer lifetime value (LTV) to gain insights into the real value of a customer relationship. Don’t confuse the sales records for better relationships because the profitability of a business may not be an indicator of customer satisfaction. On the other side, the high billing customer may not stay long with your business and the one who drops in occasionally may yield huge gains. All that matters is the value of the deal and how often the customers are purchasing our products.

The recurring revenue obtained from the customers is important. This helps SMBs understand who is bringing how much revenue to their business. So keep an accurate calculation of customer value rather than relying on past data. A measure of LTV acts as a key metric and the CRM has to mine this information to present better analytics.

The SMBs can check the Net promoter score.

If you survey 100 customers and ask them to refer to others. 60 of them might say YES and the remaining NO. In this instance, the promoter score is 60 and the net promoter score is 20.

All this said, your specific analytics needs will vary based on your business. If you are the owner of a restaurant, for instance, your key performance indicators (KPI) could be the sales volume, occupancy levels, turnaround time and better feedback. On the other hand, if you own a consulting firm or a technology company, your KPIs might be something else.

Start with these five analytics essentials and add in the particulars needed for your business. But whatever you do, don’t brush off analytics. They matter especially because you’re at a competitive disadvantage if you’re not tracking and adjusting based on key metrics.