Tag: Customer database in CRM

How Can You Best Use Customer Data in Your All In One CRM Software For Revenue Growth

In order to be successful in business nowadays, you have to go beyond selling your offerings and have to nurture and build your relationship with your customers. The good news is that thanks to technology like all in one CRM software solutions, there are plenty of opportunities today to understand your customer and their requirements, and remain engaged with them regularly. Customers in the present times interact with businesses more than ever before via email, phone, online purchases, or social media platforms. Moreover, brands often encourage their consumers to offer opinions and share purchase preferences, provide feedback, at every interaction in their journey. However, when customers think that those revelations are going unnoticed, they shift to more engaging brands in the blink of an eye.

In order to be successful in business nowadays, you have to go beyond selling your offerings and have to nurture and build your relationship with your customers.
The good news is that thanks to technology like all in one CRM software solutions, there are plenty of opportunities today to understand your customer and their requirements, and remain engaged with them regularly.

Mobile access to CRM increases sales force productivity by an average of 14.6% - Nucleus Research Click To Tweet

Customers in the present times interact with businesses more than ever before via email, phone, online purchases, or social media platforms.
Moreover, brands often encourage their consumers to offer opinions and share purchase preferences, provide feedback, at every interaction in their journey.

However, when customers think that those revelations are going unnoticed, they shift to more engaging brands in the blink of an eye.

Hence failing to listen to the customers has never been more injurious to the success of businesses than what it is now.

Nevertheless, the same technological advancements that permit so much customer interaction also helps smart organizations to manage and act upon the data resulting out of these communications.

Scalable and modern cloud-based storage options like CRM database, computing technologies, intuitive API integrations, and others have created unprecedented opportunities for businesses nowadays to know their customers, decrease the time needed to act upon this knowledge and thereafter finally create more profitable and stronger customer relationships.

Now, the key to doing this is to deploy the right technology and understand how to use it and so you need to understand how data stored in the customer database in CRM can help to build stronger relationships.

Therefore, here are three smart ways for data collection using cloud based CRM systems and its use that can help your business create meaningful and profitable relationships over time.

1. Provide a more complete understanding of customers

Many large organizations have already figured out means to leverage data to build better relationships with customers of their offerings.
Nevertheless, SMBs have been hampered by a paucity of resources to appropriately collect and manage customer-facing information even a few years back in the past.

Now as the tools to generate customer data proliferated with the growth of Salesforce Alternative CRM software solutions for small and mid-sized businesses, many SMBs began collecting data only to become overwhelmed with how they can manage and apply that information for their businesses.

However, by centralizing marketing and sales activities in a well-integrated CRM database, you can even easily merge artificial intelligence through CRM integrations and recognize opportunities and intersections for sale, operation, and customer support reps once you are using all in one CRM software for your business growth.

This centralization of information not only allows enhanced personalized and accurate up-selling of products and services but it even aids in better and faster resolution of customer-facing issues that helps in building long-term relationships and trust between businesses and their customers.

2. Eliminate bottlenecks to better customer sales and service

No customers like to reply to the same question(s) times and over again. Conversely, no organization likes to deploy different resources to serve its customers because their internal business process discourages or prevents effective internal communications.

This is exactly where an integrated customer data in a CRM database solves both of these above-stated issues by aiding to eliminate or reduce internal barriers between siloed business responsibilities.

For example, an easy to use CRM software that enables all team members to securely input data make sure that at every step customers are treated with non-redundant and relevant interactions.

With the help of a small business CRM software, SMBs can not only note customer details which includes email communications, key conversations, customer preferences, project requirements, and more, so that every internal touch-points gains a comprehensive and holistic view of the customer, but it also helps to make the employees know their place in the process.

Hence consolidating information about the customers in a business CRM software solution’s database helps in streamlining the delivery of services which results in maintaining appropriate follow-ups when required which makes the customers feel that they have a cohesive team working on their behalf.

3. Encourage long-lasting relationships

Like any relationship, communication is the key for all businesses. However, maintaining an ongoing understanding of your customer’s requirements (and truly relate them with your business) is what helps in nurturing and maintaining long-lasting and meaningful relationships.

Now, customizing features in easy to use CRM software enables businesses to build these more productive (and more profitable) relationships with their customers.

This is because by using all in one CRM you can easily collect and use key data, such as customer interests, and also payment and financial information, if you are using a QuickBooks CRM and other relevant information, with available technologies like CRM and email integrations, mobile CRM apps, web forms, as these tools, ensures that all data in the CRM database are accurately tracked and reported throughout the pipelines.

Hence information in your CRM database not only aids in delivering custom offering(s) to your consumers but also makes them feel like they have a partner they can count on, which results in loyalty, referrals, and most importantly rapid business growth.

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Time-Tested Steps For Finding Accurate And Quality Data In Your CRM Database

Your easy to use CRM database is home to some of your businesses’ most important and valuable information, like selective information about your leads, customers, prospects. The information stored in a CRM database is invaluable for your company’s marketing, sales, and customer support teams- but only and if only it is of high quality and is up to date. According to a research done by Gartner in 2018, it was found that: More than 25% of information and data within a given organization is likely flawed. Therefore, what are these vital things you can do to help clean and improve the performance of your CRM database?

Your easy to use CRM database is home to some of your businesses’ most important and valuable information, like selective information about your leads, customers, prospects.

The information stored in a CRM database is invaluable for your company’s marketing, sales,and customer support teams- but only and if only it is of high quality and is up to date.

According to a research done by Gartner in 2018, it was found that:
More than 25% of information and data within a given organization is likely flawed.

It is a known fact that most employees in any organization across the globe probably do not particularly cherish entering data and even reflects on it as a total waste of time, but inputting data (and the entire data) into your CRM database upfront will definitely help to save resources and time in the future days to come.

64.2% of companies rate CRM tools as impactful or very impactful- LinkedIn (2018) Click To Tweet

Therefore, what are these vital things you can do to help clean and improve the performance of your CRM database?

  1. Input your data in real-time (or as close to it as possible)

Never let your employees wait until the end of the day to log information and interactions that they had with their customers and prospects. This is because, it is absolutely normal for many people to overlook and not remember things, and so it is only by entering information in real-time, can stop the potential threat of leaving out valuable information on the table.
Since, with the growth in mobile CRM technology, your employees nowadays can even feed in data into the CRM database on the go.

  1. Remove duplicate records

Finding multiple records for the same contact can not only distort important information, but it can also easily cause inconvenience for salespersons and customers alike. Therefore, to stop this error, try to identify duplicate data and merge them, and thereby create one single record for each customer.
Performing this exercise will help ensure the insights that you have gathered inside your easy to use CRM software platform’s database are accurate and effective.

  1. Missing data? Add it!

Be sure that you always remember to include complete data in your CRM platform. Therefore, fill in all the fields in your easy to use CRM solution without leaving behind any information about your leads, customers, and prospects.
Since, once you are lacking information, the efficiency of your CRM data will instantly become less important and valuable to your employees and your visibility into your leads and customer’s profiles will also become blurred and incomplete.
Therefore, if you are using lead capture forms for sustaining your marketing efforts, be sure to collect all the information that you need to fill into your CRM database.

  1. Keep CRM data up-to-date

Once more we reiterate, this is absolutely critical for optimal performance of any easy to use CRM platform. Since, outdated data in the CRM database can cost sales, marketing, and a support person’s time and at times even a sale.
It is a natural phenomenon that individuals and businesses often relocate or alter their contact information, which can make the data stored in your CRM database inaccurate.

Therefore, it is always a good idea to continuously monitor and update your CRM database with the most up to date information you have for the growth of your businesses’ sales and revenue.

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The Ultimate Benefits Of Keeping A Centralized and Clean CRM Database

Still, in the present times, there are many businesses that maintain different databases for their customers and thereby often find it becoming a nuisance to keep everything well managed and synchronized. Exporting data from one software platform to another and trying hard to resolve dependencies and conflicts can become really cumbersome, especially when you are dealing with a very large amount of data. Therefore, it is recommended that you should practice keeping one centralized database, a repository to maintain all your useful data, as we find in a CRM database. Here is how a central database can help you in making your business operations more efficient in the long haul.

Still, in the present times, there are many businesses that maintain different databases for their customers and thereby often find it becoming a nuisance to keep everything well managed and synchronized. Exporting data from one software platform to another and trying hard to resolve dependencies and conflicts can become really cumbersome, especially when you are dealing with a very large amount of data. Therefore, it is recommended that you should practice keeping one centralized database, a repository to maintain all your useful data, as we find in a CRM database.

Here is how a central database can help you in making your business operations more efficient in the long haul.

Bad data sources result in 30% of all leads failing- Cyber Sphere(2017) Click To Tweet

Inbound marketing strategies have altered the fate of hundreds of business establishments (for the better) all across the globe. However, this is also true, that not all the leads generated are useful. Moreover, in addition to your prospective leads and customers, you will also find many competitors filling out your forms, just to find the feel of your services and eventually try to bulwark a way into your customer database in your online lead management software system.

Additionally, vendors those who have the singular objective of promoting your company something may also break into your CRM database and remain there without ever thinking of being your customer.

Therefore, over a span of time, if you do not periodically clean your customer database, it will eventually accumulate unsought for data that can become a problem in the long haul.

Here are a few steps that you can take in the attempt to make your CRM database cleaner and therefore more optimized.

  1. Delete Inactive Contacts

Implementing an easy to use CRM solution is indeed a step in the right direction, however, in order to maximize upon customer relationships, and productivity, you should always keep a tab on your customer database in CRM. Contacts, that have remained inactive and silent for an extended period of time should be essentially pruned, if and when it is viable to delete their records. Since, hopelessly following leads that are clearly not interested in your offerings can be very damaging for your company’s reputation over time.

  1. Identify Duplicates

Your marketing database software is the golden key to your company’s success, and that is why it needs to be kept clean and efficient at all times. Therefore, it is most needed that you must ensure that every single duplicate identification is removed from your CRM database. It is a common fact that as soon as your business grows and gains a reputation, it is inevitable that duplicate information will start piling up in your customer database in CRM.

Therefore, it is advisable that you must run a periodic check on your CRM database to find and remove duplicate entries or scrutinize both the lead and customer records and after finding out which entry has better information, merge both the records for optimal performance of your customer relationship software system.

  1. Set Up Alerts

Any good easy to use CRM database software allows its user to set up alerts that trigger when certain actions take place so that you keep everything under check. For example, with ConvergeHub CRM you can use time-saving tools like “Manage Duplicates” and “Merge Duplicates” that can prove to be essential in a scenario where two customers or leads have the same name, last name but different phone numbers or emails.

  1. Uniformity Is Key

A CRM database cannot remain clean if uniformity is not maintained- and by no means is it a child’s play. For an example, let us assume that you allow your leads to type their country where they reside instead of allowing them to choose from a drop-down list. In this case you will eventually find a lot of inconsistency in your database, as people hailing from the United States of America, will provide you entries like “USA”, “US”, “U.S.A”, “U.S” and others which will be a sucker blow to your CRM database’s uniformity that can only be rectified by manual correction of data.

  1. Say No-No to Junk Contacts

Your CRM database will inevitably have anonymous leads that will enter fake email addresses like asdfglkjh@gmail.com or blahblah1234@hotmail.com. These junk lead data often pollutes the CRM database, which a good CRM software can run a search and identify and thereafter remove or suspend the information from the online lead management system.

  1. Monitor Email Campaign Results/Feedback

Lastly, it is also recommended that you should keep a close watch on your email campaign’s results and look for opt-outs and, bounced emails. Because based on your findings and observations, you can clean your CRM database after every email campaign is fired for optimal utilization of the resources in your CRM database.

Now that we have learned how to keep a CRM database clean, let us talk about some of the tangible benefits of why you must do so, and what payback a clean CRM database can offer for the growth of your business.

  • Cut Costs

One of the most pertinent benefits of having a clean CRM database is that it saves your business a lot of money. No one wants to send emails to addresses that do not even exist. Therefore, when you run a periodic check on your CRM database to maintain a clean repository, your email list delivers positive results.

  • Precise campaign stats

If your contact database in CRM contains erroneous email addresses, several emails that you send will never be opened, or engaged, which as a result will never be able to paint an accurate result of email campaign’s statistics or your marketing efforts. Whereby, a clean database in CRM, which is devoid of any unwanted lead and customer records, will go a long way in ensuring that your campaign stats are authentic and thereby help you to create your business strategies accordingly.

  • Sender reputation protection

Spam complains, and bounce rates determine how good your reputation is as a sender of your emails, which plays an important factor in email deliverability. Therefore, keeping a clean CRM database ensures that your sender reputation remains protected and trusted by email marketing services.

  • Elevate Revenue And Conversion Rates

Finally, a clean CRM database helps in avoiding a bad sender reputation whereby the chances of emails being placed in the spam folder (instead of the inbox) more frequently is reduced to a lot extent. Therefore a clean database, which engages people, is bound to increases conversion rates and thereby revenue which is the bottom-line for the growth of any business today.

Conclusion

Therefore, implementing an easy to use CRM system, which ensures that the customer database in CRM remains devoid and clean of any unwanted errors can be a real asset to the organization. A Converged CRM like ConvergeHub can easily bring an end to all data management worries as ConvergeHub is the one-stop-solution for online lead management that can save your resources by targeting the most deserving leads.

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A Comprehensive Checklist for Auditing Customer Database in CRM

In this modern world of big data and ever-increasing data availability with respect to its volume and variety the challenge to understand, which customer database in CRM is valuable for your organization’s growth is the key for starting a revenue generating marketing solution. When we talk about customer database in CRM, the most often cited response is that “all data in the CRM database is important”. Although this may be true, but to help you in deciding which data elements are most important in the initial phases of building your customer relationship management software solution, can be illustrated as a method to evaluate and identify the value of each type of data for your businesses.

In this modern world of big data and ever-increasing data availability with respect to its volume and variety the challenge to understand, which customer database in CRM is valuable for your organization’s growth is the key for starting a revenue generating marketing solution.

When we talk about customer database in CRM, the most often cited response is that “all data in the CRM database is important”. Although this may be true, but to help you in deciding which data elements are most important in the initial phases of building your customer relationship management software solution, can be illustrated as a method to evaluate and identify the value of each type of data for your businesses.

Bad data sources result in 30% of all leads failing- Cyber Sphere Click To Tweet

After several implementations of online lead management software solutions, we have seen many types of data including “favorite color”; “pet names” and even “number of car doors” all have potential value to different markets for buyers of best small and medium business CRM software.

While “pet names” can be an important data for pet supply retailers using easy to use CRM, “favorite color” can be an essential data field for retails in the clothing industry and “number of car doors” for users of best small business CRM in the motor insurance industry.

Therefore, when you first consider the importance of each data element of the customer database in CRM, the ability to classify the data can help in determining how valuable the data is or in which phase of a solution it should be delivered, if at all.

This following list provides examples of the data elements that can quickly identify the critical pieces of information, which are needed to accomplish your business goals from an array of different data sources.

The priority order of this data is as follows:

#01. Identity Data in CRM Database

In the heart of customer database in CRM lies the individual, so knowing the customer or the individual and to view and maintain that information in a single customer view provides the primary data type which is known as identity data.

Identity data can be any information about an individual that enables the individual to be uniquely identified, which include:

Name Information: Title, First Name (Forename), Last Name (Surname), Designation, and others.

Postal Address Information: Building Name, Building Number, Town, County, Zip/Postal Code, Country, and others.

Person Information: Date of Birth, Gender, and others.

Telephone Information: Home Telephone, Work Telephone, Mobile, and others.

Emailing Information: Personal Email, Work Email, and others.

Social Network Information: Twitter Address, Facebook Identifier, LinkedIn Identifier, and others.

Account Information: Details of your customer’s account ID or User ID.

Professional Information: Company Name, Department Name, Job Title, and others.

Permission and Suppression Data: Although this not essentially an identity element of data, but it is important for finding information concerning permission to communicate and the reason for not communicating (suppression).

#02. Quantitative Data in CRM Database

Now once you recognize who these individuals are in your customer database in CRM, the next element is to find focus on the measurable operational data that enables you to find how the customer behaved,  reacted or has transacted with your business. This data includes any info, which describes the activities completed between the customer and your business.

Transactional Information (Offline and Online): Quantity of products purchased, Subscription/Order Value, Renewal/Order dates, Abandonment rate (abandoned shopping), Product Returns, and others.

Online Activity: Product views, Website visits, Online registrations, and others.

Social Networking Activity: Twitter interactions, Facebook likes, and others.

Customer Support Information: Customer complaint details, Customer query details, and others.

#03. Descriptive Data in CRM Database

Knowing your customers and the type of activities they have completed with your brand provides a good starting point for any marketing activity for up-selling and cross-selling your products. Therefore, to find a fuller perspective of your customer’s additional information, beyond the identity and quantitative details, you must include any info, which may include:

Family Details: Marital status, number of children, age of children, and others.

Lifestyle Details: Car type, Property type, Pet ownership, and others.

Career Details: School name, College/University name, Education level, and others.

#04. Qualitative Data in CRM Database

The concluding type of data, (which you will come across apart from the one, already mentioned) will provide additional description of your customers and their potential behaviors. It is the data acquired by questionnaire type of information captured, where your customers provide data on motivation, attitude, and options that include:

Attitudinal information: How do you value our product, How do you rate our customer service, How likely you are to purchase our products and services again, and others.

Opinion based information: What is your favorite holiday destination, What is your favorite color, and others.

Motivational information: Why was the product purchased (personal use, a gift for someone), What was the key reason for purchasing our product (quality, price, locality), and others.

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Takeaway

Using this simple CRM data classification process and relating them with your business goals, will not only enable you a quick identification of which data is vital for the success of your business, but it can also help you to understand the value achieved from each of this data element.
Therefore, combining the most advanced customer modeling, micro-segmentation, and analytics technologies with an easy to use CRM platform you can really grow your revenue by  using data classification process and associating them with your business goals.