Tag: Business Growth Technology

Buy CRM And Beat Your Competition With Business Growth Technology And Tools

Unless you are selling some unique product or service, your business must encounter competition. Now, separating your brand from this competition involves more than beating your rivals with a new concept or lowering price. Instead, buy CRM and let stellar customer management service push you ahead of the pack. To understand customer service priorities, Harvard Business Review recently conducted a poll on thousands of customers many of whom even use easy to use CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software and arrived at the conclusion that what clienteles wants the most is an ‘effort free’ experience.

Unless you are selling some unique product or service, your business must encounter competition.
Now, separating your brand from this competition involves more than beating your rivals with a new concept or lowering price.
Instead, buy CRM and let stellar customer management service push you ahead of the pack.
To understand customer service priorities, Harvard Business Review recently conducted a poll on thousands of customers many of whom even use easy to use CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software and arrived at the conclusion that what clienteles wants the most is an ‘effort free’ experience.

The CRM market is expected to reach over $80 billion by 2025, it’s no surprise that CRM is the fastest growing product in the software market. Click To Tweet

This is so because the more effort customers have to expend to get their requirements, the more dissatisfied customers become with the brand.
According to the findings, just promising your customer outstanding service has a surprisingly minimal impact on customer satisfaction, as customers were found to be more concerned whether their purchases would arrive on time than with other ordinary measures.

Here are 5 steps that you can follow once you buy CRM, to lower the efforts your customers make and improve your customer management skills:

  1. Empower your employees with excellent product knowledge

When all the employees in your organization can act as support, your customers will be able to get all their questions answered promptly. This will save the customers from calling up the help desk for trivial issues, which shall go a long way towards making them remain happy with your brand.

  1. Educate your employees in customer empathy

As a part of customer management strategy, train your employees that interactions with the customers can be both emotional and factual. Therefore, provide your employees with the necessary customer management and business growth technology and tools to share happy customer’s enthusiasm and reduce the tension of frustrated customers. Make your employees understand how they can make the customers feel that they are being truly listened to and not just simply heard.

  1. Build infrastructure that helps in great customer support

Build ticket-tracking facilities for the customers. You can also create self-help options on your website for your customers and implement call back facilities using easy to use CRM software instead of making your customers feel irritated with lengthy hold times.

According to researchers, customers find it more encouraging to read frequently asked questions or looking up at a tracking ticket, an activity that involves less effort, than calling up the company’s help line.

  1. Resolve customer issues at the first point of contact

Customers most often find it intensely frustrating to repeat a problem to a chain of customer service representative, so improve your support team’s first contact resolution policy by ensuring that the customer support personnel who initially handled the call takes full responsibility for the support ticket until the issue has been resolved.

Offering live support on your website is also another unique way for allowing more teamwork behind the scene, where veteran agents can teach the new hires by helping them with the answers as they chat with the customers on their problems online.

  1. Deliver your promises

Every product that works or package that arrives as intended reinforces customer’s trust in your organization. Hence, deliver your promises on time and with a smile.

Takeaway

Lastly, apologize sincerely and quickly if you cannot meet your promises for any reason, and make your apology personal.

Therefore, setting things right for your customers after you buy CRM goes a long way in restoring the experience that your clientele prefers. Something, which makes them, to select you for your customer experience management skills over your competition every time.

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Why Small Businesses Need Cloud Based Business Growth Technology And Tools

In the modern times, you just cannot debate the necessity of easy to use CRM tools for both small, medium-sized, and enterprise-level businesses. This is because Customer Relationship Management software platforms have outgrown to be a robust platform for sustaining optimal customer relationships. Therefore, most businesses have invested in world-class business growth technology platforms to enhance and maintain the efficiency of their CRM systems. In recent times, one of the major emerging trends in easy to use CRM solutions is the use of cloud based CRM software platforms. While there are a lot of debates going around as to whether an organization that has already used on-premise CRM software, should use cloud based CRM platforms, here are some of the key reasons as to why cloud based CRM is so very popular among small and medium-sized business owners across the globe.

In the modern times, you just cannot debate the necessity of easy to use CRM tools for both small, medium-sized, and enterprise-level businesses. This is because Customer Relationship Management software platforms have outgrown to be a robust platform for sustaining optimal customer relationships.
Therefore, most businesses have invested in world-class business growth technology platforms to enhance and maintain the efficiency of their CRM systems.

In 2008, only 12% of businesses used cloud-based CRM. This figure has now increased to 87% - SuperOffice (2018) Click To Tweet

In recent times, one of the major emerging trends in easy to use CRM solutions is the use of cloud based CRM software platforms.
While there are a lot of debates going around as to whether an organization that has already used on-premise CRM software, should use cloud based CRM platforms, here are some of the key reasons as to why cloud based CRM is so very popular among small and medium-sized business owners across the globe.

  1. Easy accessibility

Accessibility is the key to successful customer relationship management. This is because in the modern time sales reps need to access the CRM software wherever and whenever they want. Hence, a platform that allows sales reps to log-in and works from anywhere as long as there is an internet connection, proves to be helpful in critical situations where salespersons must have to make last minute calls to a customer. Hence, cloud based CRM software platforms allow your sales teams to close deals from remote areas and also generate new leads on the go.

  1. Scalability

Cloud based CRM software systems are also extremely flexible while considering the scalability factor of the tool. This is because when you buy CRM that are hosted in the cloud it allow companies to adjust their scope of operation, by either scaling up or down depending on the growth or fall in their businesses. While using a cloud based CRM software organizations can call up the CRM vendor, who can make the adjustments instantly to accommodate any growth or downfall in the data input capacity for the company.

  1. Flexible integrations

Another pertinent reason for small and medium businesses to buy CRM software tools that are cloud based is its ability to accommodate flexible integrations.

For most businesses using cloud based CRM to store their vital customer related information and initiatives, can integrate financial and accounting software, like QuickBooks CRM software, or emails and many other similar business growth technology and tools, that helps in establishing a seamless flow of data in both the applications needed for the growth of the organization.

  1. Allow Collaborations

Cloud based CRM software systems allow its multiple users to work inside one integrated platform without any type of interferences. For example, it permits each member of your sales, marketing, support, and accounts teams to have their own login, whereby it allows the possibility to log on multiple accounts at the same time. This feature of an easy to use cloud based system also offers enhanced security, since it prevents someone unauthorized from stealing any data from the CRM database .

  1. Centralization of information

Gathering information on the prospects, leads, and customers is often an uphill task for both small and medium-sized businesses, which can even be frustrating and time-consuming at times. With a cloud based CRM system, it is easily possible to collect all the customer information from one central location and also, share the information with different members in an organization.

  1. Increase productivity

Since with a cloud based CRM solution your team can work without being tied to an office desk, hence once you buy CRM that are cloud based it helps to increase the rate of productivity in your workplace. Additionally, cloud based CRM software not only allows your teams to track their customers and prospects from anywhere, but it also helps in collecting real-time data and initiating meaningful conversations that increase customer engagements to increase productivity across the board.

  1. Enhanced security

More so, after the implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) norms, system security has become one of the most critical factors of any business. As cyber-attacks can always happen on the local systems used by on-premise CRM systems, the level of security offered once you buy CRM platforms that are cloud based are cheaper and more efficient, which reduces some major investments needed for implementing onsite security of the network running in the office.

  1. Hassle-free and quick deployment

In this age of advanced digitalization, it takes only a few minutes to lose a customer. As time is the essence of customer relationship in modern times therefore, sales reps need a business growth technology solution that can allow them to interact with their customers from anywhere, before they change their minds. Cloud based CRM software allows faster execution and deployment of commands regardless of the user’s location, which reduces unnecessary pressure on the IT teams.
In other words, cloud based easy to use CRM systems allows businesses to reduce their time-lag considerable while increasing their rate of quality services which boosts sales and customer experience.

  1. Data backup

Data backup is just another most critical function that usually consumes a lot of resources for most businesses. Given that a CRM database collects and stores a lot of confidential and important information about their leads, prospects, and customers, cloud based CRM allows companies to back up their data and retrieve it easily in case of any unforeseen breach of data, or system breakdowns.

  1. Easy installation

Last but not the least, most easy to use cloud based CRM software solutions can be installed in a matter of hours, which helps in not impeding the day-to-day workflow of small and medium-sized businesses, whereas on-premise CRM software needs few weeks and at times even months for proper adoption and deployment.

Conclusion

Given these following advantages, small businesses should not ignore the impact of a cloud based business growth technology like a cloud based CRM systems, be it Salesforce or any other Salesforce Alternative CRM mostly used by startups and small businesses since it is time that companies must overcome the use of outdated legacy customer relationship management technologies and explore effective and financially viable ways to improve their customer relationships.

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Effective Ways to Evaluate and Boost Your Customer Service in Small Business

Is your customer service team meeting their expectations for your small business? Most often than not the answer to this above-stated question is revealed only when businesses are in a negative place and your customers are not happy with your services and/or offerings. This is because it is only when your customers are unhappy, we audit our customer’s satisfaction with their service experiences and try to douse the fire before things go out of our hands. Now while held up in traffic on a busy morning, you might find yourself jammed and stuck behind a public vehicle with a bumper sticker that reads- “Hello! How is my driving?” Well, even though it is one way of showing that cars with bumper stickers stuck on them like these shows that they are ready to continuously evaluate their own performances, nevertheless asking “How are we doing” is a good step in showing that your business does care about how potential customers think about your brand and your company.

Is your customer service team meeting their expectations for your small business even after using easy to use CRM solution for customer service and business growth?

Most often than not the answer to this above-stated question is revealed only when businesses are in a negative place and your customers are not happy with your services and/or offerings.

This is because it is only when your customers are unhappy, we audit our customer’s satisfaction with their service experiences and try to douse the fire before things go out of our hands.

Now while held up in traffic on a busy morning, you might find yourself jammed and stuck behind a public vehicle with a bumper sticker that reads- “Hello! How is my driving?”

Well, even though it is one way of showing that cars with bumper stickers stuck on them like these shows that they are ready to continuously evaluate their own performances, nevertheless asking “How are we doing” is a good step in showing that your business does care about how potential customers think about your brand and your company.
This is because it takes more than just asking the public to figure out if the customer service that your company is providing is meeting the real expectations of your customers.

Globally, 54% of all consumers say that they have higher customer service expectations than they did just one year ago - Microsoft Click To Tweet

Companies (especially small businesses) have pretty comprehensible indications when their customer service is bad.

Therefore, it is only when it becomes just about impossible to keep up with a volley of negative remarks and criticisms on social media and when sales start to dwindle or they are increasingly having to offer ‘make goods’ that managers and leaders are quick to see how they can improve the way questions and complains are handled by the service teams in the organization.

However, by the time they reach that aforesaid point, it might already be too late to keep up with a valuable relationship or prevent permanent damage happening to the brand.

Hence, most successful small businesses have learned to stop and make changes wherever it is necessary based on the variety and volume of customer complains coming through.

In fact, successful businesses take a hard look in the rear-viewing mirror before continuing on their customer support journey, to ensure that they have not missed any important markers on their way.

Therefore for ascertaining if the service provided to your customers is good enough can involve a mixture of subjective indicators and formal methods, out of which below are five to consider for your business growth:

  1. Find Out What Is Good Enough

There are several anecdotal indicators of customer service metrics to choose from, and there are also a lot more of it what is common across your industry.

Irrespective of whether you are using Salesforce or any other Salesforce Alternative CRM software these data can be readily captured as they directly impact your business growth.

Some of the most popular metrics found in easy to use CRM software include CSAT (Customer Satisfaction) score, NPS (Net Promoter Score), and CES (Customer Effort Score).

Although it is really hard to reach 100% in any of them, nevertheless based on Revenue per Customer, and Customer Retention and Churn rate, determine what looks good and what appears to be great for your startup or small business.

  1. Use Multiple Effective Feedback Loops

Most businesses big or small do some kind of survey to measure the quality of their customer service at one point of time or another.
This can work if your business has some sort of solid email database in the easy to use CRM, or you know of a convenient point in the customer journey where purchasers are most willing to complete your survey questionnaire.

In other cases, several small businesses and startup organizations even offer simple online forms on their websites to collect feedback of their support services, or in the modern times a ‘hashtag’ that can be used on social media for viewing their feedbacks.

Always remember presently we dwell in an omnichannel world and so according to certain research conducted it states that more than 40 percent of customers prefer not to do business with brands if they are incapable of using their preferred channel(s) for conveying their issues and feedbacks.

  1. Remain Aware Of Organic Feedback

Even if you have set up channels to get the opinions of your customers and find the right metrics for measuring your customer satisfaction scores, there will always be certain customers of your brand those that share their experiences (good as well as bad) on their own accord.

This can be a comment made by the customer to a sales rep (once they approached for selling a new product), something said in a public forum, or on stage at an industry-specific event.

Therefore remember to check and pay special attention to these customers who take time to send snail mails even in this era of digitalization and social media as to whether they have been pleased or displeased about the customer service they received from your brand.

  1. Test The Effectiveness Of Self-Service Tools

Your small business might create a solid product/service manual, or create a knowledge base and an open library of necessary documentation and other contents online to aid your customers help themselves.

However, if most of these generated contents go unused, it becomes pretty obvious on how good these resources have been marketed or developed for helping your customer’s needs.

Self-service is just another customer service channel. Irrespective of whether it is a sophisticated chatbot, or simply a community of online users where your customers can come up with answers aided by their peers, the use of self-service in customer support shows how well they trust your brand to empower them with DIY (Do It Yourself) capabilities.

As it has been seen in research that 68 percent of consumers rather use self-service channels for resolving simple questions, and so if your self-service is not good enough, it will not only going to annoy your customers but it will also put more burden on your customer support teams.

  1. Ensure That You Are Capturing Referrals

If your small business is working in a B2B landscape, customer testimonials and case studies are valuable business development resources.

Hence check the measurements in your easy to use small business CRM software , to find a quick look at the number of times, your support reps have asked for testimonials and case studies and their acceptance rate versus rejections to gauge the quality of your customer support activities.

Now willingness of your existing customers to encourage family, friends and colleagues to use their same brand can be considered as a healthy sign of strong customer service, which can be easily captured through simple enquiries about how the new customer first heard about your offerings, or by including a question in their survey forms as to whether they would recommend your brand following the sale of your offerings.

Takeaway

Finally, you can also access cutting edge business growth technology to easily access the quality of your customer service, by using AI (Artificial Intelligence) that have also been integrated with service tools, which helps organizations to be more proactive to provide the customers what they need in advance, by analyzing current trends which ultimately leads to revenue growth.

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Buy CRM- Since A Successful Business Comes From Building A Successful CRM Strategy

Customers are very important when we think of any business; nevertheless, most businesses do not have a proper plan and clear strategy to capitalize on existing and prospective customers. This is where comes the role of CRM software which ensures you provide the best possible service, keeps automated business practices in place, ensure customers never face billing-related problem keeping both reminders and bills on time. Hence a complete five-star service is what Salesforce or any other Salesforce Alternative CRM brings for your business. The major benefits that your business can get from business growth technology like CRM software include.

Customers are very important when we think of any business; nevertheless, most businesses do not have a proper plan and clear strategy to capitalize on existing and prospective customers.
This is where comes the role of CRM software, since once you buy CRM it ensures that you provide the best possible service, keeps automated business practices in place, ensure customers never face billing-related problem keeping both reminders and bills on time.
Hence a complete five-star service is what Salesforce or any other Salesforce Alternative CRM brings for your business.

Each year, 70% of businesses state they plan to increase spending on bsuiness growth technology. The figure remains the same in 2019 - SuperOffice Click To Tweet

The major benefits that your business can get from business growth technology like CRM software include:

  1. Understand customers better with enhanced and increased knowledge

When you have more and better information about your customer you are better placed to take a decision on what service you can deliver delivered irrespective of whether it is selling an offering or communicating something to your customers.

  1. Improve process to find a better return on investment

Once you buy CRM and set up your business processes aided by an easy to use CRM the main improvement that you can see is more conversion of the leads, better interaction with customers leading to a more satisfied and happy customer base.

  1. Better coordination between sales and marketing teams

The functions of the marketing team lead to better sales output. The major gap between sales and marketing teams has always been a lack of a dedicated channel of communication. Easy to use CRM is a business growth technology that bridges the gap and creates connections that result in a more cohesive operation between the employees in your company.

  1. Create a world-class customer experience

As a vendor of award-winning small business CRM software, working with several businesses we have learned how to bring better customer experience and how it can change the ways most people do business in their company. CRM software builds standard processes that help not only the in-house employees in business but also networking partners and external agencies associated with the company.

  1. Empower customer service team

It has been a worry of most customer service desk of not able to provide support because of the lack of a unified and answerable system operating for all departments within the company. CRM is a business growth technology that makes every department within the organization liable to deliver its job on time and builds a better and coordinated system to help customer service teams to provide world-class services to the consumers of their brand’s offerings.

  1. Plan the ways marketing budget is spent and improving on the existing ways

Want to check how your email marketing working or how the sales team converting the prospective leads? Want to know whether leads are being followed up in time and with correct details? Buy CRM to end all your worries and get them solved overnight. Additionally when SFA (Sales Force Automation) is integrated with easy to use CRM it helps in creating a better-planned marketing campaign and thereby aid in improved business functionalities.

  1. Help in accurate decision making

Easy to use CRM empowers you to take correct decisions based on many facts and data stored in the CRM database . With the power of data, this business growth technology helps you to know the working styles of the employees and whether their service gets delivered in time, which helps the management to take on time, better and accurate decisions for consistent revenue growth.

  1. Find better and new prospects with the use of modern technology

These days easy to use CRM can be integrated with social media which helps you to stay connected with your prospects and customers. Social media listening enables CRM platforms not only to ushers a more cohesive work culture in the organization but it also increases point to point delivery of the work faster bringing more liability on each head. This is how better and improved prospect finding starts and continues for sales growth.

  1. Build long term relationships

CRM brings many important things on Sales Force Automation which your customers need like an immediate and timely response of their queries, easy availability of information, and automation of business process helping them stay with you for more by keeping them happy and satisfied over time.

Takeaway

Therefore with the clear intent to keep customers happy and to keep all other related processes well placed and automated buy CRM to keep your entire organizations focus on not only keeping customers satisfied but also reduce churn leading to increased business growth.

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Easy to Use CRM Trends To Follow For The Success Of Small Businesses in 2019

Keeping in line with the development of technological advancements is most important for businesses both big and small. Likewise, it is also extremely vital to update your marketing and customer interactions as per the latest easy to use CRM trends for users of this software, especially in small businesses. Because remaining aware of the constantly evolving business growth technology and tools, helps SMBs to drive present customers to do recurring purchases and also attract new customers, which further increases their ROI.

Keeping in line with the development of technological advancements is most important for businesses both big and small.
Likewise, it is also extremely vital to update your marketing and customer interactions as per the latest easy to use CRM trends for users of this software, especially in small businesses.

Because remaining aware of the constantly evolving business growth technology and tools, helps SMBs to drive present customers to do recurring purchases and also attract new customers, which further increases their ROI.

About 79% of leads do not convert without CRM - ThomsonData (2019) Click To Tweet

On a comprehensive and wide-ranging note, users of best CRM for small business, while they watch these latest trends, it helps the small and medium firms to expand their customer connect and increase sales for consistent revenue growth.

Considering the same, here are some of the important and best small business CRM trends of 2019, which can add more viability to your sales and marketing skills:

  1. Increasing Requirement for Adoption of Mobile App

In recent years, both small and mid-sized firms across the globe have started deploying easy to use CRM as their new-age marketing tools.

However, in 2019, due to the rising sale of mobile and handheld devices, it has been noted that CRM integration with mobile apps will also escalate for assisting the customer care representatives.

Mobile CRM will also help the sales reps to receive notifications, capture relevant notes and contact or call the customer from their mobile devices, using an online mobile CRM app, for consistent sales growth.

Therefore, mobile CRM, which was earlier just an option for owners of the best CRM for small businesses, is fast becoming a very important part of managing customer relationships successfully.

  1. Improved Predictive Analysis

All best CRM software for small businesses helps their users to find out the number of interested customers, their preferred mode of communication and the preferred time of communication for their customer base.

However, going by the easy to use CRM trends of 2019, the latest improvement in the predictive analysis will not offer greater insights pertaining to ideal engagement approach for small businesses, but it will also aid in digging out their customer transaction history and other customer details for executing ideal customer sales.

  1. Improved Integration

In the past, small business owners who are fully aware of what is CRM technology also faced several obstacles while integrating CRM solution with all the main elements of their businesses.

Considering this fact, in the present times, CRM integration leading to better connectivity is going to expand radically as SMBs will be able to include new products and services into their CRM software.
For example, the use of QuickBooks CRM software that even helps in integrating accounts with CRM platforms.

These integrations will include powerful solutions for workflows, social media, customer sales, and product tracking, which will no doubt offer a holistic solution for a 360-degree customer view during communication by the users of CRM software.

  1. Importance of Social Media Networking

Finally, it is natural that your customer support team will have their own timing and a specific day off. Nevertheless, customers nowadays always expect faster responses online. Hence, customers when they fail to communicate with their preferred brands through conventional communication channels, they tend to follow their brands on social media to get the latest news and developments about new product launches in the company.

Therefore the best CRM for small businesses in 2019, will be trying to upgrade their technology to become pioneers in social CRM (SCRM) functionalities, whereby they can promote their business via social media channels, which will allow their users to find 24/7 accessibility with their customers.

Conclusion

Therefore to conclude in 2019 and beyond an easy to use and effective CRM solution can not only provide your startup or small business with an opportunity to unify and streamline disparate areas in business but it will also proactively contribute to anticipate and understand the needs of the customers which will improve your businesses’ bottom line.

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4 Principles to Go Beyond Just Customer Satisfaction And Achieve More

Before we discuss about the use of business growth technology to go beyond just customer satisfaction and achieve more, here is what the research from Gallup (an American analytics and advisory company based in Washington, D.C) and other research organizations says: “If you are trying to boost up your rate of repurchases and overall customer loyalty, then for that customer satisfaction is never just enough.” This is because, in order to increase the advocacy levels and customer loyalty of your brand, you need to exceed customer satisfaction. Rather you need to buy a business growth technology solution like easy to use CRM and conduct a customer feedback program that will provide you with all the insights to illustrate how to improve.

Before we discuss about the use of business growth technology to go beyond just customer satisfaction and achieve more, here is what the research from Gallup (an American analytics and advisory company based in Washington, D.C) and other research organizations says:

“If you are trying to boost up your rate of repurchases and overall customer loyalty, then for that customer satisfaction is never just enough.”

This is because, in order to increase the advocacy levels and customer loyalty of your brand, you need to exceed customer satisfaction. Rather you need to buy a business growth technology solution like easy to use CRM and conduct a customer feedback program that will provide you with all the insights to illustrate how to improve.

If you are trying to boost up your rate of repurchases and overall customer loyalty, then for that customer satisfaction is never just enough. Click To Tweet

Therefore, here are four fundamental guidelines for creating a solid customer feedback program after you buy CRM – since failing to follow them can make you veer off course.

However, primarily we must know what can good customer feedback do for our businesses?

High-quality customer feedback can provide your business with the desired insights to take your company’s customer satisfaction scores to the next level.
In fact, at its best, customer feedback is a discipline that is research-driven which therefore requires solid insights to improve the customer experience of your brand.
This is because customer feedbacks help in exploring friction points, customer successes, and missed opportunities in your business and hence it is a way to stay on top of customer issues with your business processes and offering(s).

Customer feedback can address critical customer-facing questions like:

Did our representatives answer your questions in totality?

Was your product repaired to your desired satisfaction?

Perse, it can also tackle strategically placed concerns like:

What would you like us to do to make our customer service better than our competitions?

How can we boost our customer satisfaction and also sales?

When these questions are asked correctly customer feedbacks can provide you more insights, greater accountability and a lens in the details that will ultimately boost the happiness of your customers.

Now, onto the Principles…

Principle #1

Be Objective

What is the point in doing a customer feedback survey using your email campaigning feature in easy to use CRM, if the data captured cannot reflect what is really going on with your customers?

We say this because we have observed several customer satisfaction surveys and many other customer feedback methods that suffer from biased and uneven representation of facts and data.

The complete guideline for the objectives can fill an entire book; nevertheless here are three best practices:

  1. Use an accurate sample
    Try to find out, by asking yourself, how well the customer feedback sample represents your customer base.Ensure that your sample is statistically valid, random and representative. That implies if only one type of customer is providing feedback then your data can be skewed.
  2. Abolish bias
    Eradicate leading statements, double-barreled questions, skewed scales, and other subjective constructs.For example, instead of asking the customer in the feedback survey: “How satisfied you were with our services?” (Thereby suggesting that the customer was at least somewhat satisfied) ask questions that are more pertinent and neutral like “How would you rate the quality of our service?”
  3. Ensure replicability
    The information collected from the customer feedback surveys in your CRM database must be such that any analyst with your data should be able to apply your methods and finally arrive at the same conclusion, be it by coding, assessing or categorizing the data.

Principle #2

Use the Best Methods

Even though in general surveys are the default method for evaluating the customer satisfaction of any brand, however sometimes there are even better tools.

These other methods for evaluating and measuring customer satisfaction include:

  1. Mystery shops
    This customer satisfaction gauging method reveals real insights into customer service, especially in specific scenarios. In fact, this is also a great way to compare your brand to your competitors.
  2. Customer interviews
    This customer satisfaction gauging method provides an in-depth view of your customer’s expectations pitted against their true experiences and is also a great way for uncovering issues that you did not know to ask about.

Principle #3

Engage Your Customers

Creating the right engagement is the ultimate foundation stone of customer satisfaction. Therefore keep your surveys relevant and short as if they are too long or ask irrelevant questions, it can alienate your customers.

Now, in the context of your surveys it means:

  1. Ask compelling questions
    Use conversational style verbiage in your surveys so that your customers feel at ease and actually want to share their experiences with your company.
  2. Use dynamic logic to keep the questions relevant
    All customers are different, so apply branching logic to allow your customers to answer only those questions that apply to them.
  3. Add small tokens of gratitude
    Thank your customers for their effort and time by providing them things like gift cards, priority codes and others, so that they will give their valuable feedbacks even in the future days to come.

Principle #4

Take Analysis Seriously

This is where insights found from easy to use CRM software platforms and other business growth technology solutions come into play.

Provide your customer feedback processes its due diligence and use the right insights to find the signals among all the noises while doing your analysis, which implies:

  1. Evaluate what drives your outcomes
    Simply viewing and analyzing the NPS (Net Promoter Score) and CSAT (Customer Satisfaction) score is not enough. Rather you must prioritize them to take your next steps and actions.
  2. Parse and categorize the comments
    Segment your customer feedback data to uncover themes by scientifically categorizing and parsing unstructured data like open-ended comments of your customers in your CRM database.

Conclusion

These principles are all interconnected and therefore naturally affect the outcomes of each other. Hence, do your research before creating your customer feedback survey and sending them using Sales Force Automation in your CRM.

As we even said earlier, customer feedback is a research discipline, and so if you are not scientific in our approach, you will not be able to gain any actionable insights that can boost customer satisfaction and thereby grow your businesses’ bottom line.

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4 Lead Management Tip Using Business Growth Technology And Tools

Once you are trying to find out ways to boost revenue and find growth, one of the most basic processes you require to take into consideration is to look into the lead management program in your company. This is because, leads can arrive through a myriad different channel, and it is often times found in several organizations that there are many loosely held structures in place to react and manage these leads. As your businesses’ ability to accomplish the desired revenue targets essentially starts with good lead management skills, working around these four important tips can aid you in revamping your lead management efforts dramatically for rapid business growth.

Once you are trying to find out ways to boost revenue and find growth, one of the most basic processes you require to take into consideration is to look into the lead management program in your company.
This is because, leads can arrive through a myriad different channel, and it is often times found in several organizations that there are many loosely held structures in place to react and manage these leads in absence of proper business growth technology and tools.

In 2008, only 12% of businesses used cloud-based CRM–This figure has now increased to 87%. Click To Tweet

As your businesses’ ability to accomplish the desired revenue targets essentially starts with good lead management skills, working around these four important tips can aid you in revamping your lead management efforts dramatically for rapid business growth.

  1. Create a Solid Definition of a Lead and Make Sure All Employees Value It

One of the biggest challenges that the sales team and the rest of the company face is in understanding the definition of a ‘Lead’.
It has been estimated by Gartner that more than 80 percent of leads that are sent to the sales team are never acted upon. This happens because of two primary reasons.

  • Firstly, the leads are routed to the wrong person and not in a timely manner.
  • Secondly, the leads sent are not ready to engage with the sales persons yet.

Hence, for effective lead management with business growth technology and tools and for finding better sales, you need to provide and educate your sales staffs with a more granular knowledge of as to when a lead becomes a prospective customer and should be forwarded to the sales for necessary actions.

  1. Adopt an Effective Customer Management Tool

For ultimate effectiveness in sales, you need to buy CRM and provide your sales reps with lead management tool that captures information about every interaction that your sales personals are having with their leads, prospects and customers.
Modern easy to use CRM software for managing leads, prospects and customers integrates different channels of communication, which includes emails, SMS, chat, social media listening, and more.

  1. Follow the Source

Your prospects most often hear about your business and your brand through referrals, ads, online banner ads, or any other forms of advertisement.
However, it is mandatory that you need to keep track of what actually caused your prospects to raise their hand so that you can understand which channel of communication works and does not work for generating your leads.
As a part of effective lead management strategy using easy to use CRM software, it is important that your sales team need to capture the source of all intervening events, so that you can understand how many times you need to touch your prospects and leads before converting them to customers.
Therefore, if you do not capture the source of your leads using a CRM for SMB or large enterprises, you will have no way to find out which lead sources are working for your business.

  1. Quickly Distribute the Leads

Lastly, studies have confirmed that if you can respond to a lead within 12 hours of a prospect establishing contact with you, your sales closing rate falls back drastically.

Just think about your own experience. How many times have you tried to contact a business establishment to request information and they never got back?
Hence, respond quickly and set your brand apart from your competition.
Using lead management software platforms like Salesforce or any other Salesforce Alternative CRM software solutions mostly used by small businesses helps in providing automatic reminders to your sales reps, since business growth technology solutions like easy to use CRM assists sales teams not to miss any calls and thereby stop leads falling through the crack.

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Proven Means For Providing “World-Class” B2B Customer Service

Faulty and poor customer service cost companies billions of dollars every year. Therefore, if your business delivers poor customer service, it is natural that not only you will lose money but your customers will stop shopping with your brand and move to competition within a few days of receiving pitiable customer service. In fact, in a survey done by Bain & Company in 2005 on 362 firms they found that only 30 percent of businesses organizations uses the functions of their company to deliver “best-in-class” customer service, although it was even found that more than 80 percent of brands that assume they deliver great service only 8 percent of their customers believe that they have received great service from these companies.

Faulty and poor customer service cost companies billions of dollars every year.
Therefore, if your business delivers poor customer service, in spite of using an easy to use CRM for boosting relationship with your customers, it is natural that not only you will lose money but your customers will stop shopping with your brand and move to competition within a few days of receiving pitiable customer service.

After one negative experience, 51% of customers will never do business with that company again.- NewVoiceMedia Click To Tweet

In fact, in a survey done by Bain & Company in 2005 on 362 firms they found that only 30 percent of businesses organizations uses the functions of their company to deliver “best-in-class” customer service, although it was even found that more than 80 percent of brands that assume they deliver great service only 8 percent of their customers believe that they have received great service from these companies.

Nevertheless, over the last 12 years there are also several businesses in the modern times that have stood out from the rest of the group, and were able to deliver high quality support services that just ticked all the boxes needed for delivering world-class service to their customers which we have highlighted in this article, since providing such excellent service is not just a buzzword, rather it is the lifeline for ushering business growth .

Respond to all customer service questions

According to a survey done by a CRM vendor of repute, it was found that while the average response time for best in class businesses was 3 hours, most company’s average response is pitiably 12 hours 10 minutes.
This means while the right departments at the best in class businesses that have the correct support procedure in place receive the requests in the right time and thereby handle it accordingly, most companies do not respond to their customer support emails.

Hence if you are also looking forward to providing world-class support to your customers primarily respond to all your customer support emails, and create rules in your customer service software (like an easy to use CRM) that will allow you to automatically forward the requests to the correct departments in your organization for faster resolution of their problems.

Create automated responses to accept a support request

Companies that provide world-class services to their customers let their customers know that their support request has been received and are begin handled.

While most than 90 percent of companies do not use auto-responders for acknowledging that an email has been received, according to a survey more than 10 percent of customers state that “waiting too long for a response” is one of the biggest problems that customers face when it comes to finding appropriate customer service.

Hence, do not make your customer wait, instead set up an auto-responder in your easy to use CRM solution integrated with your email client, and use an email template in the acknowledgment mail that will include a unique ID and support work hours to track the request, along with supporting links to a self-service online FAQs or knowledge base.

Follow up to see if the customers are happy

Even though most companies forget to do this, follow up on your customers to see if they are happy with your service, since this is an easy opportunity to get your brand ahead of the competition in the marketplace.

For this much like creating an automatic acknowledgment email, you can use market automation in your easy to use CRM software to set the follow-up to be sent after 3-5 days after your service response to see if your level of service was satisfactory.

Answer all questions in the first response

It has been found in surveys that only 20 percent of businesses are able to answer the support service emails in full upon their first reply.

A good customer service is all about answering your customer’s questions in full.

Therefore if you want to provide world-class support to your customers answer as many questions as possible and for the ones you cannot answer include a footnote in your reply that you will surely follow-up on them at your earliest with regards to any unsettled and unresolved issues.

Make it easy for the customer to contact support

For your customers always remember finding a businesses’ contact details is the first step to getting their problem solved.

Therefore, if you want to provide best-in-class customer service to the consumers of your brand make your email address, social media links, and phone number(s) clearly visible on the homepage of your business website, making it easy for your customers to contact your company for resolving their issues.

Moreover including these details on your website also adds an element of trust as best companies never feel afraid to hear from their customers.

According to a survey done by KoMarketing Associates, it has been found that more than 79 percent of B2B buyers will abort purchasing from any brand if the contact information is not visible in their websites.

Use an all-in-one CRM to empower your team

Companies that end up delivering great customer service usually do so since they have the right business growth technology and tool (like an easy to use CRM) and the right process to accomplish their job.

All-in-one CRM software platforms that are capable of helping marketing, sales, and support teams allows businesses to set up automated internal processes that aid them in acknowledging, tracking, managing and create reports on all customer support requests and tickets, which in turn helps your support teams to respond and answer to more customer requests easily.

Therefore if you do not have a customer support tool in your organization, it is high time that you must get started and invest in easy to use CRM, so that your support strategies can help your company become best-in-class by having the right business growth technology and tool, to begin with.

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Is NPS (Net Promoter Score) Still Useful Or Is It Ineffective

The metric NPS (Net Promoter Score) was introduced by Fred Reichheld from Bain in the year 2013 and is still considered as the most popular metrics used in business to evaluate and measure their customer experience while using an easy to use CRM for consistent business growth. Now, at its core, NPS is a metric that illustrates customer loyalty that is used as an index score between 0 to10 and is evaluated by asking the customers about the likelihood to recommend your brand and business or your offerings to anyone in their friend’s list. The easiest way to calculate Net Promoter Score is by subtracting the Detractor from the Promoters of your offering(s).

The metric NPS (Net Promoter Score) was introduced by Fred Reichheld from Bain in the year 2013 and is still considered as the most popular metrics used in business to evaluate and measure their customer experience while using an easy to use CRM for consistent business growth .

Now, at its core, NPS is a metric that illustrates customer loyalty that is used as an index score between 0 to 10 and is evaluated by asking the customers about the likelihood to recommend your brand and business or your offerings to anyone in their friend’s list.

Businesses that leverage CRM software see sales increase by 29%, sales productivity increase by 34%, and sales forecast accuracy increase by 42%. Click To Tweet

The easiest way to calculate Net Promoter Score is by subtracting the Detractor from the Promoters of your offering(s).

Customers who scored:

0-6 are conceived as Detractors (customers those who have a negative perception about your company or your offerings and are therefore less likely to spend on your brand.)

7-8 are conceived to be Passives (customer who are somewhere in between Detractors and Promoters.)

9-10 are conceived to be Promoters (customers who have a positive perception of your company or your offering and so are more likely to purchase from your brand and even recommend your offerings to their friends, neighbors, and relatives.)

Therefore while calculating Net Promoter Score a scale of 0 to 10 is used for measuring which customers are Promoters, Passives, and Detractors of your company.

Now, given the changes and evolution in Customer Experience (CX) evaluation techniques, new and fast-emerging technologies and Big Data- does NPS (Net Promoter Score) still remains the best and effective metric to determine the health of your company’s CX and predict customer loyalty?

Well, there are several organizations using Salesforce or even Salesforce Alternative CRM for startups and small businesses would argue that NPS is still useful and relevant to their company for reasons as mentioned below:

It is simple to implement

Companies just need to ask one single question to predict the customer’s loyalty for their brand, which can be easily done via surveys over email (using easy to use CRM ), phone or even third-party survey providers, without the requirement for waiting for more complex and detailed researches.

It is easier to benchmark CX against competitor and industry

The measuring methodology of NPS is a globally standardized method, which makes it convenient for brands to compare an “orange” with an “orange”.
This is because the likelihood to recommend the specific brand, rather than attributes of products and services or different components of the customer journey (which may be unique to each brand) makes it simple for everybody to understand and interpret that if the NPS is going up or down.

Moreover, businesses can ask follow-up questions to the customers in order to understand why they are providing the scores, which can help businesses to more effectively pinpoint the drivers of loyalty for their organization.

Additionally, NPS is capable of driving collectible accountability in delivering Customer Experience and so having a steady and dependable KPI for all employees that can persuade employees to work together more effectively and collaborate for a common and unified CX goal.

Nevertheless, putting these benefits aside, there are also many constraints and limitations of NPS, which are often linked with the methodology design and implementation approach of this metric as explained below.

Therefore the most common NPS challenges that we view include:

Although NPS may be one of the most popular metrics, however, NPS provides limited insights into the true health of a customer’s experience and cannot be relayed upon as a true predictor of a customer’s inclination to be loyal and therefore purchase more from your brand.

This is because understanding any customer’s desire to buy would more often than not require a more specific intent to repurchase questions along with the standard NPS question that you ask your customers for measuring their loyalty for your brand.

While there are organizations those that implement NPS more successfully than others frequently include follow-up questions in their Net Promoter Score surveys to perceive the root cause of their NPS, these insight are most often not translatable as these are mostly generic questions and hence the customers might not be too specific about answering whether they had a product or service-related issues or the customers were generally dissatisfied with one small aspect of their experience with the brand.

Additionally, most often several companies measure the NPS of a specific customer channel like a recent interaction with a caller or a website visit rather than an integrated and ongoing review of the customer’s interaction with the company or a broader review of the customer journey with the brand.

Conclusion

Hence to sum up, just relying on NPS insights and metrics alone to make decision is likely to result in fruitless CX investment decisions and so it can be finally said that instead of getting bogged down by Net Promoter Score companies must also look into metrics like CSAT (Customer Satisfaction) score and CES (Customer Effort Score) to measure the effectiveness of their brand’s Customer Experience to ensure increase in customer loyalty and improve business outcomes over the long haul.

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5 Rocking Tips To Build A Steadfast Relationship With Your Prospective Leads

We have been hearing all along “People purchase from companies and persons they like”. Nevertheless, how much people may believe in this clichéd words, it is simply not true. In reality, people do not buy from persons and companies they know, but rather they purchase from places and people they respect and trust. So if you intend to be your prospects’ best buddy by mechanically uttering ‘Yes’ to whatever your prospects ask of you, know for certain that you are not always earning respect from your prospective leads- and consequently not closing as many sales as you could have done otherwise using your easy to use CRM for revenue growth.

We have been hearing all along “People purchase from companies and persons they like”.
Nevertheless, how much people may believe in this clichéd words, it is simply not true. In reality, people do not buy from persons and companies they know, but rather they purchase from places and people they respect and trust.
So if you intend to be your prospects’ best buddy by mechanically uttering ‘Yes’ to whatever your prospects ask of you, know for certain that you are not always earning respect from your prospective leads- and consequently not closing as many sales as you could have done otherwise using your easy to use CRM for revenue growth.

After a presentation, 63% of attendees remember stories. Only 5% remember statistics. Click To Tweet

Hence, instead of fighting hard to be always liked, it is high time that you should refocus your attention for building deeper connections with your leads and prospects, which is built on belief and respect of your leads, prospects, and would-be customers.

Therefore here are 5 rocking tips to help you learn how you can do so, right away:

  1. Curtail the phony enthusiasm

All sales reps and managers had been taught at some point in their professional run to display enthusiasm about their brand.
They had been mentored, that in order to sell their offers, their enthusiasm must shine through first.
Nevertheless, this old school thought has in fact resulted in all salespeople trying to give the identical over-the-top introduction to prospects, which is undoubtedly wrong.

It sounds more like this: “Hi, how are you? I am really so excited to meet and explain to you all about what my organization does and can do for you right now.”

Now, if you think this sales-y intro sounds perfect, try recording your next few phone calls and check if your voice becomes louder, over the pitch, when your prospects answer the calls.
If it is so, hang on, that is exactly the “fake-enthusiasm” we have been talking all along.
This is the fake enthusiasm that you need to drop off.
Hence lower your tone, speak slowly, and be authentic in your presentation.
Remember, fake exuberance sounds extremely very sales-y, but an authentic tone of voice pulls together both trust and respect.

  1. Focus only on your prospect

This might sound obvious, but it is startling to find that most salespeople start their conversations with their prospects by talking about their company, or what are the offerings they can provide to their prospects.
Now, before you make a guess and think, “I don’t do that” just grab a pen and paper and answer the question “Why should a prospect do business with you?”
Next, read what you wrote.
Did it look like you just talked about your offering(s) – or did you concentrate exclusively on your prospects, how they may profit and find advantage from working with you?
Always take it as thumb rule before you talk with your prospects in your easy to use CRM that prospects only care about themselves. Hence, make them the center of your conversation, so that it can help your prospects to find a connection with your offerings.

  1. Offer some value

Make a difference, set yourself apart from other salespeople, enhance your knowledge base, and try to offer some value right out the gate.

For small and midsized businesses that use CRM for small business, the customer relationship management software it provides a unique 360-degree holistic view of the prospect to the salesperson using the easy to use CRM software.

Therefore, use this knowledge provided by the CRM application software to list a few challenges that are common among your prospects, challenges that you can solve, and also share what you have observed in your prospect’s industry during your lead nurturing phone calls.
However, as a matter of caution, do not blab and jump into your solutions too quickly, but rather utilize the conversation as an opportunity to share helpful insights with your prospects while getting your prospect talking about their own pain point, inhibitions, and challenges for fortifying your relationship.

  1. Create a transition with a question

After you have asked your prospect about a few recurrent challenges that you have seen in your prospect’s line of business it is time to get the prospect talking. Hence, try to simply ask your prospect, “Do any of these challenges ring true to you?”

Although this approach may sound a bit provocative, where you stand the chance of coming out clear, this question will immediately ring the bell with a prospect that is going through those same challenges.

You can always think, “What may happen if they say no?”, but if your prospect does not have the challenges that your business solves, then considers those prospects simply misfits.
Rather let go of those prospect in your CRM database and move on with the next call, and find someone who truly needs what your business has to offer to its customers.

  1. Get your prospects talking about their challenges

Once you have successfully offered your prospects some value, elaborated a few key challenges and transitioned the conversation with a question, it is the time that you must keep your prospect talking. After all, prospects will only have faith in you if you can really show them that you have an ability to resolve their key challenges, and you can never do that unless you understand their pain points.

Probing the prospect with multiple questions in most cases will prompt the prospect to open up. As an apt analogy, it is like acting like a doctor who needs to know about all the symptoms of the patient’s malady to properly diagnose and offer a treatment plan.

Using this approach, you will be seen as an expert or a ‘doctor’ in the eyes of your prospect, which can easily build a connection between you and the prospect and so make the relationship move further on and surely close the deal.

Conclusion

We are very sure that by following these tips you will not only start building deep connections with your prospects and customers but holding on to these approaches will help you to connect prospects with better conversations and subsequently move towards fetching in more sales that lead to rapid business growth .

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