Top 5 best practices to get the most out of your CRM

Customer relationship management software (CRM) can be a great investment for your company, so it is important that you make the most of it. To do this, you need to know and understand the best practices of a CRM. From knowing what you want to using the tools (such as automation), we are here to help you.

THE 5 CRM BEST PRACTICES ARE:

Know what you want from your CRM.

2.- To make the most of the integration of the CRM.

3.- Invest in the training of your team.

Benefit from automation.

5.- Take advantage of the analyses.

KNOW WHAT YOU WANT FROM YOUR CRM

It all starts here: knowing what you want and what CRM is the right one for it. Ask yourself: is it a mainly sales tool Are you interested in making more sales from existing customers or creating new ones? potential customersDo you want to deepen your relationships with loyal customers or improve your email campaigns to all shoppers? Do you need to improve internal communications?

Define your objectives and find a solution for CRM to help you achieve them. This also makes it easier to monitor your progress once you have integrated the CRM You know what results you want to achieve.

Best advice: Many CRM will have packages in place for your business - for example, CRM solutions for Call Centres, Travel agencies, financial brokers o Insurers- but, if your business does not fall within a specific type, you should be able to plan and customise your CRM according to your needs.

MAKE THE MOST OF CRM INTEGRATION

With a good integration of CRMdata from all systems should be collected, stored, organised and analysed at the level of the system. CRM. This includes its programmes and applications, e.g. email and calendar integration, which will now be in one streamlined place.

At this stage, make sure you understand what is being integrated, why you need it and how to use it. While it is tempting to install all available integrations, be sure to focus on what is important to your business. In addition to email integration and CalendarSome examples of integration of CRM are the ease of managing the communication with the whole team, la contact and customer management, easy and simple form generation and data collection, and the software of calls and live chat.

"The better accessibility of the data provided by the CRM can reduce the complexity of the sales cycle by 8-14% on average. Decision-makers in CRM also claim that they benefit from a 14.6% increase in productivity when they use CRM social and mobile".Nucleus Research, 2015.

INVEST IN TRAINING

Build your teams, and build them well. There is no point in a CRM if it is not understood and/or used properly by the company as a whole. Make sure that all your staff know which tools should be used within their department, and how and when to use them.

You also need to think about customer data and metrics. Set a standard for each department to follow to ensure that data entry standards are met across the board.

BENEFIT OF AUTOMATION

Perhaps the greatest benefit of a CRM is automation. The CRM aim to manage and automate the minor tasks that their teams have to complete on a regular basis, in order to be more efficient and productive.

As indicated in the CRM mass producers and distributors like Coca-Cola benefit from automation. It can monitor inventories and production lines to replenish supply shelves and anticipate machine repairs, as well as automatically replenish orders, send invoices and process payments.

TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE ANALYSES

With a CRM you can measure, analyse and manage real-time metrics on every element of your business. From phone numbers called and costs, to inbound and outbound queue metrics, make the most of these analytics to inform future business decisions. Your data will let you know whether your efforts are agile and effective across all departments and, if not, what needs to change, whether it's through better task allocation, budget adjustment or anything else.

Want to try Datalyse CRM?

- Datalyse is a fast and easy to use CRM that allows you to unify your business needs, centralising all your operations in a single application. Find out how a CRM can help your team on our website and in our blog or please contact us from the contact us section.