A Word About CRMs

What is a CRM?

CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management and put plainly it is a system for maintaining information about your customers – clients, donors, shoppers,patients, etc. Every organization exists to serve someone, and your organization can benefit from having a strategy for how to manage, maintain and grow those relationships. CRM’s can be something as simple as an address book or sophisticated software built expressly for that purpose. Whatever you use, the main goal is to have a centralized location for storing all the information you hope to maintain about your customers. The information you store should help you cultivate those relationships in whatever way is most appropriate for your organization.

Why Should You Use a CRM?

It sounds like it could be a lot of work to setup and maintain a CRM, so why do it?  You definitely don’t have to. Honestly, it’s also not worth it without a strategy to take advantage of what a CRM provides. Depending on your organization’s needs, a CRM can help you grow.

There’s a well-accepted notion that it costs more to acquire  new customers than it does to maintain an existing one. That’s probably trueacross most industries from non-profits to retail to consulting to real estate.Once you’ve landed a new customer, CRM’s can help you maintain that relationship so your customer base continues to grow. Your time and capacity are limited, so as you expand, it’s natural you won’t have the time to personally touch base with all your earlier customers. You may even start forgetting details about customers you once knew very well. A CRM can help you store and track information to build relationships with your customers — new and old.

In some industries, repeat business is few and far between. In these cases, it may be even more important to stay in touch with your past customers. Non-profits are a good example. Most people give charitable donations certain times of the year . When that time of year rolls around, you want your former donors to remember to give to your organization. A CRM system can remind donors to donate.  I once read about a car salesman who sent 3-4 cards in the mail to all his customers. People don’t buy a carvery often, so he was definitely making a long-term investment. Sure enough, it paid off. As the years went by people were in the market for a new car, and his was the only name they knew!

The more you know about your customers, the more you can personalize your interactions with them.  It’s easy in the beginning when you aren’t juggling thousands of customers to know the names of spouses, children, etc. But as your business expands, those details don’t get any less important; they just get harder to remember. A CRM system gives you a single place to annotate and store that information. When you interact with your customers you have that information at hand. Most everyone appreciates that personal touch that makes them feel as though you see them as a person and not a dollar sign. 

CRM Software

While you don’t need anything fancy, there are a lot of advantages to using CRM software. There are many free solutions that are very good. For more feature-rich systems, there will most certainly be a service cost, but you may find it’s more than worth it for the time it saves you. Most systems will support very basic customer data, which will likely be more robust than a spreadsheet or addressbook you maintain on your own. Maintaining a common set of data for each customer, allows you to have a consistent understanding of your customers so you can customize how you nurture those relationships. CRM software can also provide a number of advantages that may be well worth it in time and cost.

Consider some of the features below when you’re shopping around for CRM’s:

• Multi-user access. Online CRM systems are critical if there are multiple people in your organization responsible for maintaining customer relationships. An online CRM allows multiple people to access your CRM, make updates, etc. as long as they have an Internet connection.
  
  
• Custom data. If you collect or want to maintain information specific to your business needs, many CRM systems allow you to add fields to customer records. This allows you to tailor your CRM to fit how you want to nurture and/or maintain your customer relationships.
  
  
• Industry-specific.There are a lot of general-purpose CRM’s that can work for everyone regardless of industry. However, some CRM’s are built specifically to cater to a particular industry. This saves you the expense (of time and/or money) to customize a generic CRM to your needs. For example, realtors often want to track housing transactions with every client. Nonprofits want to collect donor and giving history. Sales agents want to track leads, revenue potential, etc.It can be helpful to have an industry-specific CRM – especially if you don’t have an idea for what all you want/need.
  
  
• Automation.One major benefit to using a CRM software is the level of automation that some provide.  Automation saves you valuable time and can help ensure that every customer hears from you. This is critical if you want to scale and continue to nurture relationships you forged from the very beginning. There are a few different types of automations you might find helpful:
  • Internal Workflow. If your organization has a process for working with customers,some systems have features that will support defining that workflow. As a customer moves through your process, the appropriate people are notified.Here’s an example: Let’s say you run a CPA firm. Your office has a Customer Manager whose job it is to respond to all general inquiries – including those that might lead to new clients. At some point, as the conversation progresses,the potential new client will want to talk to a CPA directly. Your Customer Manager can pass on all the notes gathered to the CPA to continue the conversation without losing a beat.
  • Triggered Emails. A very common automation is sending emails based on a collection of events or criteria. You are probably familiar with a variety of triggered emails such as welcome emails when you sign up for a new account on a website,“abandoned cart” emails from e-commerce sites, birthday emails, etc. These triggered emails help you stay in touch with your customers with minimal effort but still maintain a personal touch.
  • Third-party integration. Some CRM’s support a variety of other third-party services/applications and can automatically keep the two in sync with one another. For example, if you use Outlook as your email client, it’s possible to connect your CRM to Outlook so new email contacts are automatically added to the CRM as customers.  Similarly, if you use a mass email service like MailChimp, it’s possible to keep your MailChimp list in sync with your CRM system. These automated integrations help you keep all your critical services in sync with minimal to no effort on your part.

There are so many CRM software solutions on the market today with many more features than the above. It’s worth taking some time to research systems that will be a good fit. Ideally, this isn’t something you want to change frequently. Most system aren’t 100% compatible with one another, so switching CRM’s could require significant time and/or money. In general, it’s easier to migrate from a simple system to a more complex one, so if you’re not sure what you want, start with a more basic system and go from there.

Put Your CRM To Work

Your CRM is only as good as you are at using it. It doesn’t on its own maintain a relationship with your customers. You still have to be apart of that equation. To be successful with your CRM, consider the following tips:

1. Buy-in. Are you (and everyone else who will need to use the CRM) on board? If you aren’t truly sold on the benefits of a CRM, it won’t be worth the time and cost to use one – especially if you’re paying for it. To be successful, you will need to integrate your CRM into your every day operations. Are you ready for that? [PIC: FIST BUMP]
   
2. Not just the bells & whistles. Sometimes it’s best to invest in the best of the best of CRM software and later grow into all the features it provides. The problem with that is those systems are often very complex and their user interface probably reflects that. If you aren’t familiar or not confident in your tech skills, this can be a big hurdle to get past. When you’re choosing aCRM, look for one you feel makes the most sense to you. Most systems have free trials you can sign up for to test drive.
   
3. Just start. If you are bought into the benefits of a CRM, it can be overwhelming to think of everything that goes into setting it up, maintaining it and putting it to use. My advice – just dive right in. As with anything, over time, you’ll  get the hang of it. Your first step will likely be to get all of your existing contacts into the CRM. As you explore your CRM system, it will give you more ideas for how you can put it to work for you. Your CRM and how you use it should evolve with you and your business needs. You don’t need everything implemented from Day 1. It can be helpful to just start with the basics and add more as you gain confidence and comfort.
   
4. Practical.It helps to be realistic about what you want to get out of your CRM. It’s not a silver bullet for customer service. While there might be a desire to try to collect as much data as possible about each customer, the cost to collect and maintain that data might not be worth it if it’s something that will never be used.  For example, collecting birth dates. The idea of sending a customer a birthday card sounds great. But if collecting that information isn’t naturally part of your business, it could be awkward and/or costly to implement a system to ask customers for their birthday (e.g. a coffeeshop that offers free birthday drinks). This is especially wasteful if you never get around to sending out those birthday cards.
   
5. Use your CRM. Make it part of your work flow. The more you can make your CRM a central part of your business, the more use you will likely get out of it. Instead of being a chore, make it a natural part of the work day. Getting into the habit of using your CRM to track new contacts, annotate useful information, etc. gives you the agility to send communications to your customers whenever you want.
6. Plan. Have a plan in place not only for collecting and maintaining the customer data but for using it also! That’s the main advantage to using a CRM system. The benefits you get from a centralized database are useful but the power comes from putting that information to work for you. Whether you plan monthly, quarterly or annually, set aside some time to think about how you want to nurture your customer relationships. Think about this holistically and not just from the point of view of what your CRM can do for you.  Whether it’s hosting customer appreciation parties, automated emails, or birthday cards, have a customer outreach plan in place.
   
   

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, a CRM system can be a huge benefit to your organization and critical to your growth. At a minimum, CRM’s provide a centralized database of information about your customers. The real magic comes from putting that information to work for you. Personalize how you cultivate and nurture the relationships you have with your customers. The best CRM solution is the one you actually use. You want one that’s easy to use and plays nicely with other core services your business relies on. A good CRM system and strategy for putting it to use will ultimately save you time and help you grow your business.

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DISCLAIMER: The information and advice I offer on this site are 100% from my own experience, understanding and independent research. I encourage you to do your own research, form your own opinions and practice your own strategies. Please share what works with the community.