CRM: improve the experience of your customers

More than two decades have passed since the first CRM software. CRM services were initially meant to be used as tools to manage marketing, sales and customer service teams. Today, their approach is more global and customer-focused. The introduction of the internet, the cloud, mobile application, and artificial intelligence (AI), have made the CRM possibilities explode. It is what allowed the CRM to become a pillar of the customer experience. In a few years, AI and data analysis will also gradually become essential to the customer experience. This will be a hard transition for those companies who are lagging behind in modernizing their CRM and who are still using outdated practices. The modern CRM is the heart of a digital transformation for a company. It represents the main system from which you could add extensions using smart technologies such as Insight, iDatalabs, Versium, etc. This article will show you how to adopt the new CRM customer-focused vision. We revisited and elaborated on the recommendations of the research study on the modern CRM made by Forrester a few years ago. Here are 6 steps to implement a modern CRM approach that will ensure the success of your digital transformation:

1 - Leverage your CRM to support the entire journey of your customers

The early versions of CRM were primarily aimed at optimizing internal business processes. Today, the primary objective of a CRM is to improve the customer experience from the beginning to the end of their journey. You will reap the greatest benefits by aligning your CRM strategy with your customer experience strategy.

2 - Use your CRM to get an overview of all your efforts

In its early days, CRM focused on isolated tasks, divided into different departments. With no fluid communication between the data and different work teams… The clients had to deal with several employees in the company if they had inquiries regarding different services. The modern CRM has a global and centralized approach. It connects the data entered by all the different users. Whether it is employees, customers, collaborators or devices, the modern CRM allows you to link all this information to better measure your performance and customer satisfaction.

3 - Adopt dynamic processes that are easy to modify

The popularization of cloud computing has allowed CRM to acquire great flexibility. Contrary to on-premise services, when your CRM is on the cloud, you can make changes in no time. It is possible to add extensions and new modules to your CRM allowing you to quickly address the changing needs of your company.

4 - Extend your CRM to many users

In the past, your CRM was only made accessible to the employees of your company. Today, the accessibility of your CRM extends to anyone interacting with your company. A self-service portal allows your clients, prospects, collaborators, employees or technicians to consult and enter their own data into your CRM!

5 - Tailor your marketing campaigns to your different customer groups

At the time of the first CRM, there was very little communication between the different departments of a same company. This made it almost impossible to use data that was specific to each sales and customer service team as a means of identifying the number of loyal customers generated by a marketing campaign. The modern CRM allows you to be informed about this data and to reap its benefits to achieve a better conversion rate of prospects. It is now possible to have an in-depth marketing strategy more specifically due to the automation of your campaigns which uses all the available data on your customers.

6 - Assess the success of your CRM by using a global approach

“Have our sales increased?” Was the only question the previous CRM asked itself. Pretty basic business plan, right? Today, the customer has become the main focus and sales have become an aspect among others. The sales team is no longer considered to be the only important team for profitability. While revenues are still just as important, companies can now assess the quality of their work at any level. The cleanliness of the premises, the availability of products and the customer satisfaction via automated surveys are all part of data that is taken into consideration by the current CRM.XRM Vision recommends these 6 steps to finding the right CRM solution for each company. Want to know more? Do not hesitate to contact one of our experts, who can offer you personalized advice. You can also follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.