The major difference between us (humans) and the rest of the animal kingdom is the fact that we developed our intelligence faster than our evolutionary peers. We have lived through the furthest technological leap our kind has made since the dawn of time.
One of the things that we associate with intelligence is tidiness. Through all the technological advancements we have made as an intelligent sort, our ability to keep our findings documented in an understandable and universal manner always helped us in advancing our culture.
But as I mentioned, we are living in a period of unprecedented technological advancement, and with that comes an unprecedented amount of data that is being funneled through the business-customer channel.
Many businesses are suffering from unreliable data
storage, ineffective resource manipulation, bad in-team communication, and manual import and export of data. All of these things are things that we should leave behind in our venture to the future.
What are the benefits of CRM?
CRM (Customer Relationship Manager) is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a bunch of code bonded and branched together to form a kind of software that has the sole purpose of making your relationship with your customer better.
Imagine a world where all of your data is easy to access, easy to manage, and accessible to all of your employees without the fear of data corruption or deletion.
A world in which, with 2 clicks you get your message across to your whole team. In a couple of seconds, you can manage your personnel, see all the data going in and out, and oversee reports and tasks at hand. CRM is software that allows you to keep yourself updated with everything that is going on with your business.
What does CRM offer you?
A safe place for all of your customer data
In a business world where the customer is always right, it is of the utmost importance to cater to our clients. When your client calls you with a problem, his dream scenario is that you will pick up the phone and without a moment’s notice will tell him the easy and quick solution to his problem. All under a minute.
Realistically this isn’t possible, but we can improve. We are not telepathic but we are tidy. A customer calls and introduces himself/herself and tells you the problem they are having.
In an easy and visually-depicted way you can access all of your client’s data that you have in your system. The client is new and you don’t have any infrastructure data about them? Just email them a form that takes 15 seconds to fill and tell them to email you back with the data.
Some CRM systems have built-in features that allow them to import data from all sorts of sources. For instance, “Act!” has a built-in feature to automatically update data from Outlook, and that is just the tip of the iceberg.
No manual data input and reporting
Manual data input is really something we should stop. The process is grueling, tedious, lengthy, and worse of all, it is error-prone. Oftentimes a typo or a wrong digit in a contact number can be costly.
This is a good way to ensure yourself and your team that the documentation you have on hand is correct. It brings a sense of stability and assurance.
Don’t let me even get started on the morale boost that the whole office is going to experience after cutting their data input in half. Do you want to check how your ongoing project is advancing with one of your clients?
Open your Clients tab and check the latest report. Some CRM systems are quite advanced in their automatic reporting software. “Hubspot” is great with this, because it stores all the reports in a “chat-like” box where you can just scroll up and down to keep yourself updated.
