Why Small Business Must Use Efficient CRM Software

As a small business owner, you need to manage various tasks and teams – customers, sales, suppliers, marketing – the list goes on.

The balancing act often results in confusion, misunderstanding and miscommunication. These tasks take up most of your time, which otherwise could be utilized to improve your business.

One of the better ways to manage your customer relationships and save the excess time drain is by using customer relationship management (CRM) technology. A competent CRM software can help you manage contacts efficiently and save time.

Here are the top 3 reasons to choose a CRM software:

Automated Tasks

You may have assigned a specific team to be in charge of customer outreach, and made the overall decision on how it will be implemented. However, at the micro level you need trust that each of the team members will follow through with their assignments on every customer interaction. One misstep can result in a loss of a current or future customer.

With good CRM use, many of these tasks can be implemented automatically once a customer takes a specific action. If you’ve ever purchased a product from Amazon, for instance, you know that the company often sends out a customer satisfaction survey once the item has been delivered. Think of how many people the company would have to hire if these survey emails were manual.

Instead, Amazon uses CRM automation to send out email surveys. Every time there is a sale, the CRM runs a routine and determines if a survey should be sent. Even if small businesses don’t send a survey with every email, they still can use automation for many manual tasks. For instance, content creation and marketing.

Improved Communication

Consider this scenario. One of your employees set up a meeting with a client for a specific date and time. The client calls to cancel the meeting, but another employee takes the message and leaves a note. The colleague never sees the note, and he ends up declining a meeting with another potential client to avoid a time conflict. When the first client doesn’t show up, the employee contacts him and is told he canceled the meeting. So he tries to get the second client on board for a meeting, only to be told this potential customer took his business elsewhere.

This is a classic case of miscommunication that stems from manual processes. The message simply fell through the cracks. As a result, both clients were left with the impression that the company is in disarray.

A CRM allows all employees to be on the same page at all times. It creates a central database in which important information is constantly updated, and it ensures that nothing worth knowing ever goes unnoticed by any members of your team.

Improved Quality of Service

As mentioned, a CRM allows your company to automatically interact with your customer base throughout your business relationship.

One of the most important parts of this relationship in terms of growing your business is in the feedback you receive from your customers.

However, when most people hear “feedback,” they tend to think of the final stage of a single interaction. But there’s much more to it than that.

There is valuable information you can take away from every single meeting you have with your customers. The collected feedback data can provide insight on what your company must do to improve its ability to meet customer needs.

Of course, you also can solicit information from clients after the majority of your business has concluded.

Either way, without a CRM, this information is likely to only be discussed at monthly (or even quarterly) meetings. Furthermore, there’s simply not enough time in these meetings to dive deep enough into the collected data to make a meaningful difference.

A CRM can make this information available at any time for you and your employees to analyze and consider.

With instant access to customer profiles and feedback, teams will get real-time notification on these data. Later, this data can be put to use based on the decisions made by teams and make consistent improvement in the customer service.

CRM systems, quite simply, take a lot of the menial “legwork” out of your typical office job.

When busywork is not automated, employees tend to feel underutilized, leading to lower job satisfaction and other negative effects.

However, when boring tasks such as setting up meetings, searching through files and contacting customers with boilerplate survey questions are all done automatically, supervisors can assign more complex and rewarding tasks to their workers.

This, in turn, creates a working environment in which everyone feels valued and respected. When this happens, the company grows.

[bctt tweet=”SMB’s can’t afford to miss the opportunities that come from a good CRM.” username=”@agilecrm @AntonyMesser @pickaweb”]

NOTE: Tony is an ardent user of Agile CRM and we would like to appreciate him for this article contribution.