Tag: Easy To Use CRM Software

Recent Trends in Customer Retention Programs to Implement This Year

Excelling at retaining your existing customers is no easy task. Therefore, if retaining the customers is a part of your job, then it must be difficult to keep both your customers and your boss happy. This is because even if you are using easy to use CRM software to assist you with the job it is not easy to give your customers the attention and help that they need to maintain a sustained relationship, while at the same instance maximize sales opportunities and decrease customer churn. Therefore, here is a tried customer retention program that will help you to achieve both and thereby find business growth.

Excelling at retaining your existing customers is no easy task.
Therefore, if retaining the customers is a part of your job, then it must be difficult to keep both your customers and your boss happy.
This is because even if you are using easy to use CRM software to assist you with the job it is not easy to give your customers the attention and help that they need to maintain a sustained relationship, while at the same instance maximize sales opportunities and decrease customer churn.

Customer retention by as little as 5% can grow your profits by 95% Click To Tweet

Therefore, here is a tried customer retention program that will help you to achieve both and thereby find business growth.

What is a customer retention program?

In simple words, a customer retention program is your best means to keep your customers happy. Since, when you keep holding on to more customers, you can easily decrease your businesses’ churn rate, boost company revenue and thereby increase profitability.

According to a popular statistical report, customer retention by as little as 5% can grow your profits by 95%.

However, to make your businesses’ customer retention program really work, you need to make it a part of your businesses’ daily routine.

Therefore, to let us get started here we have put together a few key customer retention programs that you can implement immediately for decreasing churn and find rapid business growth .

  1. Create a onboarding program

The very first program for customer retention that you must have in your checklist is implementing a customer onboarding strategy into your daily routine.

Customer onboarding is the process you require to make customers use your products and services in the easiest possible way in order to make them achieve their goals.

To conduct a proper onboarding of your new customers, primarily thank the customer for coming on-board and choosing your brand.

Apart from it during your onboarding calls you can also cover the following points mentioned below:

  • Discuss with your customer as to how they want to get started and line up your efforts to match their expectations.
  • Offer your customer additional services to start-up.
  • Make your customers familiar with all your community websites, videos, and webinars that you can offer and also help them to overcome the common obstacles faced by others.
  • Send a welcome mail to your new customer after the primary onboarding conversation, with a small picture of yourself, so that the customer has a face to go with your brand.
  1. Create customer follow up programs

According to a survey done by Econsultancy, more than 82% business organizations acknowledge that customer retention is less labor-intensive and cheaper than closing a new deal, which makes it the main driver of any company’s revenue.

Now, do not be worried thinking that you have to use up all day calling each and every customer in your CRM database.

According to the Pareto principle, which most of us are aware of, only 20% of your customers generate 80% of your organization’s revenue.

Now, if you are using easy to use CRM software it can create clear indicators that can aid you in identifying the customers those that must receive most of your attention, and help you to spend your time on the right customers efficiently.

To do this set up your CRM software solution to segment your customers into three basic groups.

  • A customers or large accounts
  • B customers or medium sized accounts
  • C customers or small accounts

Now, while for large accounts you can schedule face-to-face meeting with the customers or follow up with the customer once every month with medium-sized and small accounts, you can provide them a half-yearly follow up, send newsletters and keep them updated on seasonal price offers or any other campaigns your company is having for the consumers of your offerings.

  1. Identify risk customers

In most cases, customers will stop doing business with you because they are not satisfied either with your products or your support services.

Therefore, to retain customers and prevent churn it is crucial that you must identify risky customers as a part of your daily customer retention program.

According to Forrester, it cost 5 times more to acquire new customers than retain your existing ones.

Here are some of the ways you can identify the risky customers in your business:

  • Be proactive and create an overview of customers with too many open tickets, which is a red flag and should be managed with proper follow up.
  • Create an overview of customers that shows disruptive buying patterns. If a customer has bought every month over a year and then all of a sudden do not order any product for the next six months, pick up the phone to check out what is going on.
  • Create an overview of customers who are calling up regularly with questions and complaints. These demanding customers most often need training or another services to get them up and running.

Easy to use CRM software be it Salesforce for enterprises or Salesforce Alternative CRM mostly used by startups and small businesses, CRM is a tool that can easily create this overview so that you can provide better support after identifying your risky customers to reduce churn and grow your business.

  1. Win back lost customers

Why spend your resources on winning new customers when you can use those efforts to win back lost customers in your CRM database.

According to Jill Griffin’s book “Customer Winback: How to Recapture Lost Customers-And Keep Them Loyal” most businesses have 20-40 percent chance of selling to their lost customers, whilst the chance for selling to new customers are only 5-20 percent in this competitive marketplace.

Here are some of the key reasons why you should focus on winning back lost customers:

  • Lost customers have once shown that they are interested in your offerings, and so they are superior prospects than arbitrary leads on your cold calling list.
  • Lost customers already know your brand, and so you require lesser time to educate them.
  • You can use technology to keep track of customers that you already know, follow their past buying patterns and create tailor-made offers to win them back.

Winning back lost customers can have a snowball effect, whereby when you succeed in winning lost customers, and they become satisfied with your brand, it might generate word of mouth advertisement, which will help you to boost your chance of winning new prospects, as 91% of B2B customers are influenced by word-of-mouth and referrals when they make their buying decisions for new products and services.

Wrapping Up

Therefore, stop managing your customers in an ad-hoc manner, since retaining customers not only requires hard work, but it also requires the right customer retention program that you must implement in your daily routine to see an increase in customer satisfaction score, revenue growth, and productivity.

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How to Transform from Good to Great Customer Support Progressively

In the modern scenario, customer experience and customer satisfaction have become the most important factor for any organization, brand or an enterprise. Companies today strive hard to make their Customer Experience (CX) as smooth as possible using easy to use CRM software to help them in the process, a recognition that is the product of globalization and consumer awareness. Hence, the Voice of the Customer (VOC) is more vocal now than ever as they are dictating the policies of most companies be it big or small across the globe.

In the modern scenario, customer experience and customer satisfaction have become the most important factor for any organization, brand or an enterprise.
Companies today strive hard to make their Customer Experience (CX) as smooth as possible using easy to use CRM software to help them in the process, a recognition that is the product of globalization and consumer awareness.

Hence, the Voice of the Customer (VOC) is more vocal now than ever as they are dictating the policies of most companies be it big or small across the globe.
Many companies nowadays even take up social stances to support overwhelming public opinions on several issues.

80% of businesses use customer satisfaction scores to analyze customer experience and improve it. - Harvard Business Review Click To Tweet

Therefore, in such a consumer conscious marketplace, it is important and most necessary to understand the process and strategies you need to handle your customers while providing solutions to their issues.

Here are some of the ways you can provide world-class customer support to your customers:

  1. Chat Integration

Chat integration with your easy to use CRM software platform helps to store previous customer interactions in the CRM database so that the information lets your support team instantly access relevant customer data while resolving customer-facing issues.
Moreover integrating chat application with CRM software helps support agents to recognize the customers and thereby be more productive while providing solutions to their problems.
Additionally, as the chat application automatically greets the customer while a support agent is assigned to provide human-touch, it keeps the customer engaged until they are attended.

  1. Self-Service

CSS or Customer Self Service is an important feature that exists in most easy to use CRM software platforms be it Salesforce or any other Salesforce Alternative CRM.

CSS is a functionality that allows your customers to perform standard actions like creating an account or a payment method without the presence of a customer support executive.

Hence, CSS is a feature that not only saves a lot of time for the support agents but the data that is entered also gets updated in the CRM database instantaneously.

  1. Interactive Voice Response

IVR or Interactive Voice Response is an extremely effective and convenient means for routing the call to specific departments in your organization.

Using IVR the customer calls the company and thereafter chooses from a series of options from the prerecorded voice prompts in the system.

IVR provides customers with the options which are categorized into sections so that they can find the appropriate department or agent with the necessary knowledge to solve their issues.

Therefore, IVR as support functionality accelerates the process of customers getting solutions for their questions and issues.

  1. Service Level Agreements

SLA or Service Level Agreement allows support and service reps to track their time spent to solve an issue.

The SLA factor is set up in such way that any unattended or unresolved support ticket gets automatically escalated, and are passed on to higher level support representatives who are well-equipped to handle the situation and solve the issues.

This is because; in SLA the support tickets keeps repeating unless the ticket gets resolved effectually.

Therefore, using SLA for resolving customer complains promotes a sense of responsibility and accountability within the support teams.

This way by assuring the customers that every question or support tickets are attended to, improves customer satisfaction for your brand drastically.

  1. Social Media Integration

With leads being tracked from all social media websites like Google, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and others, easy to use CRM platforms allows the users of the software to segregate leads generated from these websites and thereafter organize them based on priority so that support agents are capable of providing solutions at the earliest.

Conclusion

Nowadays, customers recognize the ease of doing business with a company and if they are satisfied with their services remain grateful for it.

Therefore embedding these features in your easy to use CRM software will not only improve customer relations speedily but also your enable sales and support teams to work seamlessly with each other to provide world-class customer experience and thereby find business growth rapidly.

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How Can You Manage An Underperforming Sales Team Using Easy To Use CRM Software

Your business is using an easy to use CRM but your sales teams are not meeting their goals, is a tale which as old as time. When you hired your sales reps you thought they are the right fit for your organization, so why are they not exceeding their quotes now? While at times the problem lies with the employees themselves, nevertheless many times even something beyond their control is to be blamed for a dip in their performances. Therefore, here are a few best strategies for boosting your sales team’s performance based on case studies and real-world results, so that your employees can get back and hit their benchmarks in no time.

Your business is using an easy to use CRM but your sales teams are not meeting their goals, is a tale which as old as time.

When you hired your sales reps you thought they are the right fit for your organization, so why are they not exceeding their quotes now?

46 percent of sales teams report widespread use of CRM systems - Entrepreneur(2018) Click To Tweet

While at times the problem lies with the employees themselves, nevertheless many times even something beyond their control is to be blamed for a dip in their performances.

Therefore, here are a few best strategies for boosting your sales team’s performance based on case studies and real-world results, so that your employees can get back and hit their benchmarks in no time.

  1. Create a formal system for qualifying your leads

It is a common saying in organizations whose backbone is customer relationships and sales is that “you can never close an unqualified lead”.
Therefore the most prevailing factor as to why sales teams underperform is a breakdown in their formal prospect qualification process- or an absolute absence of a sales process in the team.

A sales process is most essential for any organization as having a workflow in place for qualifying prospects does away with the guesswork of who your sales reps should track and who to say “no”.

To do this you can start by:

  1. Finding the ideal customer for your business

Understanding exactly the kind of person you are selling to and thereafter passing on that vision to your sales reps is the primary step in the lead qualifying process.
Therefore never fail to remember to regularly update your customer persona(s) with a change in tends and market dynamics over time.

Capturing leads

By creating a lead generation funnel through your social media channels and website that captures contact info, you can turn cold calls into warm leads for your sales.

Consulting a lead score

Several easy to use CRM platforms can aid you clearly and quickly identify quality prospects. Many do this by analyzing the behavior of the visitors on your website and generating a lead scoring method based on parameters you set for making a lead ‘sales qualified’ by your marketing team.

This is because, once you have an automated process in place using easy to use CRM software that is capable of identifying who is most likely to get converted, your sales teams can follow-up speedily and keep their sales pipeline full.

  1. Optimize By Documenting Your Follow-Up Process

On top of qualifying leads, keeping a well-documented follow-up process bars a rep from wondering what to do next. An easy to use CRM software platform is capable of automating much of this process and remind your salespersons who they need to contact and when.

Easy to use CRM platforms also make it possible for the management to analyze and track data around all the team’s accounts so that they can find which follow-up strategy is working and which ones do not.

Therefore by developing a clear process at every stage of the sales pipeline, your sales team can find a better chance of performing consistently and meet their goals.

  1. Rethink Your Compensation Strategy

In a study done by Associate Professor Doug J. Chung an eminent faculty of Harvard Business School he suggested that several compensation strategies such as increasing sales quota for high performing sales reps, caps on commissions, may actually hurt any businesses’ long-term revenue generation goals.

Therefore, Prof. Chung suggested big companies should use a pay system that is tailored for each individual, with different components and bonuses in place to keep average, low-performing, and high-performing salespersons engaged.

Do you want to tailor sales incentives for individual members of your sales teams? Here are a few ideas to get you started:

Physical prizes

Offering latest technology-based products or accessories has the added bonus of reminding the sales reps of their achievements each time they look at it.

Recognitions

Mention at a company-wide function or in a newsletter may be just another way to remind the sales team members that their work has been appreciated.

Extra time-off

Providing bonus vacations to the performing sales reps keeps the sales reps feel refreshed and also ready to jump back fully engaged at work.

Expenses-paid vacations

This idea is for long-term motivation for your reps as they are more expensive prizes, or you can also adjust for smaller budgets by offering a sumptuous dinner or other similar experiences to team members that meet their quotas.

  1. Prioritize Cooperation Over Competition

One common and most popular strategy for increasing productivity is sales gamification. However, it must be remembered that outright competition is not always the best technique to boost your sales team’s productivity.

Therefore, instead of investing in gamification models that pit salespersons against one another prioritize on collaborations in order to win more deals.

This is because, a sales culture that is cooperative in nature is not only essential for maintaining an enjoyable, healthy work environment but it can also help in enhancing the overall productivity of your sales teams.

  1. Refine your product

Your salespersons most likely hear a lot of both good and bad feedback from the customers.

Now let us face it, no amount of sales finesse can really make up for an imperfect product or services.

Therefore, in this situation, you need to invest more for developing your offerings and streamline the operations of your customer support teams.

It might also be wise if you can take a step further and ask your sales team members for their sincere feedbacks during the product development process, as they have a deep understanding of the customer’s opinions and the current market trends.

LITTLE IMPROVEMENTS CAN MAKE A BIG DIFFERENCE

Employing an underperforming sales team can be really frustrating. However, this is also true that turning things around can be much easier than you can think.

Therefore get to the root of the problem and use a creative approach to fix lacunas and pitfalls for your sales teams that can quickly deliver the results your sales teams are looking for.

Remember, exploring the reasons for your sales team’s underperformance will not only pay dividends in the long haul, but it will also lay the foundation for creating better processes and foster a company culture that will remain even long after your current reps have moved on and new sales reps have joined your organization’s sales teams.

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How Data Science Can Boost Customer Experience For Rapid Business Growth

While content marketing may still remain the number one means to reach out to the customers on the internet, but in 2019 making use of data science is also the number one way to keep your customers around once you have caught their attention on the web. Data science which is also synonymous to big data or machine learning helps businesses that are already using easy to use CRM software platforms to develop a kind of customer experience or CX that leave consumers of your offerings satisfied and looking for more. We all know by now, that building customer loyalty is the golden key to longstanding success in any market, irrespective of which industry you are in. Therefore, in this article let us explore different avenues as to how you can use data science to help your business succeed over time, and provide exceptional customer experience.

While content marketing may still remain the number one means to reach out to the customers on the internet, but in 2019 making use of data science is also the number one way to keep your customers around once you have caught their attention on the web.
Data science which is also synonymous to big data or machine learning helps businesses that are already using easy to use CRM software platforms to develop a kind of customer experience or CX that leave consumers of your offerings satisfied and looking for more.

When assessing the most important CRM features, 18% of organizations stress the ability to see a clear snapshot of their data- Smart Insights Click To Tweet

We all know by now, that building customer loyalty is the golden key to longstanding success in any market, irrespective of which industry you are in.

Therefore, in this article let us explore different avenues as to how you can use data science to help your business succeed over time, and provide exceptional customer experience.

Personalize Services to Net Rewards

While it is equally true that consumers get bothered when services are too customized, recommendation services that are geared towards advocating new products and services to the customers, and are of high quality have the potential to rapidly improve sales per customer and price point per order for any brand in the present competitive marketplace.

Spotify, Amazon, Netflix are all benchmark examples of business and services that do a great job recommending the customers about their new products that entrance and excite the customers.

Give Customers What They Need

One reason that Uber faced recently is that potential customers of this transportation network company might avoid using its services for not being able to know how much their fare will be at the end of their rides.

Therefore, to address this grave issue company like Uber nowadays creates fair price calculators that allow the customers to find the best guess of what their fare might be even before they book their rides.

This can be considered as a great example of two ways that big data can be used.

Firstly by aggregating data, Uber apprehended that one of the main reason customers were restraining their need instead of booking the rides was the uncertainty they were facing about what the price of the ride might be at the end of their journey.
Secondly using a fair price calculator, customers can get a near-to-the-actual estimate of what their rides may cost even before they book the ride, and can make sure that what they end up paying is not too far-off from their expected rates.

Although after all, it is impossible to determine the cost of any single ride before it is complete. But calculators like this that uses big data technology to look over thousands of customer-related data of riders who have traveled similar distances at analogous times, found that they can be fairly accurate while providing their customers with their fair price suggestions.

Fix Issues Even Before They Happen

As a negative story about any brand nowadays can spread like wildfire on the social media platforms, therefore it is extremely essential that businesses must avoid issues with their customers, more important than ever to keep away from meting out unpleasant customer experience whenever it is possible, while selling their products and services in this competitive marketplace.

One way big data technology with the help of easy to use CRM software can improve customer experience is by spotting issues that the average human simply cannot see.

For example, several disconnected customer support representatives for a brand might all get separate service calls from customers complaining about a minor issue with their offerings, which can go unnoticed and disregarded for its simplicity.

However, an intelligent system dedicated to machine learning technology can easily identify that problem across an array of call logs in easy to use CRM software and instruct the CRM to send automated alerts to someone higher-up in the organization to investigate the issue immediately.

Optimizing Product Locations

In both online retailing and brick and mortar stores, organizing products and services in an optimal pattern is always necessary and an interesting thing to do.

For example, if a customer is browsing laser printers, having refill cartridges and other accessories for the printing device nearby may seem logical.

But big data is a technology that can perhaps even tell you that someone purchasing a laser printer might also need a new chair or table for their office, or a laptop that perfectly matches that specific customer’s needs.

Therefore big data when used with easy to use CRM software that has all the customers data in its CRM database , can allow your business to better arrange your offerings online and also in brick and mortar stores by creating product association, which greatly increases the amount of customer purchase per visit.

Conclusion

However, businesses also need to careful of the extent to which they should use big data technology for boosting customer experience and consumer satisfaction for their business growth .

In the modern times, there are even many customers that do not trust companies with too much information about their leads, prospects, and customers, and so will opt out of cookies and other collection options whenever they visit your brand’s website.

Therefore the best way for brands to improve customer willingness to share their information is to act responsibly towards their customers, which means companies should protect their customer’s information in their CRM database , never sell their customer-related data to other third-party sources, and use the information they have in their easy to use CRM platforms carefully, only for the benefit of their consumers in the days to come.

Now, if you are further interested in knowing how your organization can engage technology for rapid business growth; continue reading our “Business Growth Manifesto”.
Since even the best CRM software and big data technology in the world will not improve your business if your business process is in shambles, your workflow is disjointed, or your employees do not feel the necessity of using the software.

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Recent Trends and Developments in Chatbot Customer Support Strategies in 2019

The developments in Chatbot services have traveled a long way and have also achieved huge success and milestones since its beginning that started back in the 1950s. During the initial years after the launch of this technology Chatbots were only used as an interface for web development services to enhance business interactions, however times have now changed and technology has also evolved greatly over the last few decades just like it has happened with easy to use CRM software in the CRM marketplace.

The developments in Chatbot services have traveled a long way and have also achieved huge success and milestones since its beginning that started back in the 1950s.
During the initial years after the launch of this technology Chatbots were only used as an interface for web development services to enhance business interactions, however times have now changed and technology has also evolved greatly over the last few decades just like it has happened with easy to use CRM software in the CRM marketplace.

80% of businesses want Chatbots by 2020- BusinessInsider Click To Tweet

Now, if we look at the Chatbot technology we will certainly accept the fact, that although Chatbots were their all along, however, this technology has gained unseen momentum and popularity over the last few years. Especially in 2018-19 the trends in Chatbot technology has shown some amazing runs that portrays several tweaks to its traditional technology as it is becoming more and more useful for rendering support to the customers and prospects in small and medium-sized organizations that are using best small business CRM software platforms to enhance the customer experience associated with their offerings and find rapid business growth.

This is happening because, the recent development in the field of Big Data and AI (Artificial Intelligence) has significantly improved the level of technology usage in Chatbot development, helping Chatbots to evolve from simple answering applications to the advanced Chatbots that are smart and intelligent enough to effectively interact with prospects and customers in the CRM database .

Hence there are many organizations that are looking to hire app developers for implementing Chatbots in their business websites and integrate its functionality with an easy to use CRM for leveraging its power in providing world-class support to their prospects and customers.

Advancements in Chatbots nowadays are allowing the implementation of AI tools which is the main reason for Chatbots to gain this large consumer base, like small organizations with limited resources those that are most essentially in need of remaining online 24/7 using Chatbots.

Since Chatbot technology aids in providing instant response to the requirements and questions of prospects and customers living in completely different time zones across the globe.

According to the Harvard Business Review and InsideSales:

“A five-minute delay can result in your chances to attract lead decimation. In ten minutes the delayed answer will reduce your chances to get the effective contact up to 400%.”

Therefore, it can be easily said that with the extensive area for development, Chatbot technology just like easy to use CRM software, has a boundless unrestrained space and future to thrive and grow, but what seems to be the trend for this year provides us the picture as depicted below, as according to BusinessInsider:

“80% of businesses want Chatbots by 2020.”

Replacement of Legacy App Interfaces

There are several web and app development services in 2019 that have already adopted the trends with legacy app interfaces replaced and interchanged by unique interfaces, which results into using Chatbots for making interactive conversations with a customer instead of simply navigating through the UI of the app.

This way it has been found that businesses using Chatbots gets high-level of engagement with their customers, as irrespective of whether your customer is a Baby Boomers (age 55+) or a Millennial (age 18-34), people are looking to Chatbots for providing them on-demand answers to their questions in real time, since 55% of people in the USA believe the top benefit of interacting with a Chatbot is getting instant responses to their inquiries.

Follow-line of Google Duplex

Built on an RNN (Recurrent Neural Network) using ‘TensorFlow Extended’, a general purpose Google machine learning platform, Google Duplex is an AI (Artificial Intelligence) chat agent that can perform definite verbal tasks.

It has been recently observed that small and medium businesses that use best small business CRM software is using this innovative tool to book appointments and orders on the command of the users, which in the years to come can also be followed by other similar ideas, because technology never waits to evolve, which is more so pertinent in the present times.

Human-like Chatbot Experience

The entire race in the Chatbot technology is for rendering human-like experiences to the users of the application. Therefore, business establishments that are working on Chatbots are also slowly becoming smarter to deliver human-like experience through Chatbots, using technological advancements in AI, Big Data, Machine Learning, and Deep Learning.

Additionally, in an HBR survey, it showed that decision makers and business leaders are turning towards the broader umbrella of business automation technologies that also most importantly includes CRM integration with Chatbots, for things like marketing, sales, and customer support services.
According to the HBR study:

“Forty-two percent of participants believe automation technologies in these areas will mostly improve the customer experience. And 48% said that they already use automation technology for these business functions, with 40% planning to implement some form of automated technology by 2020.”

Chatbot powered UI

It has been found that UI or User Interfaces that are Chatbot enabled helps the UI to deliver information quickly, as interacting through Chatbots is a lot more simpler than using app-based UI tour.

Automatic Customer Support Center

The most advanced artificial based voice and other devices are the server-less technology that is currently deployed Over-the-Automated-Call-Center.

In the present times smart Chatbot development companies can help you to set up the automatic call center and infuse them with the deep domain knowledge base to serve the customers 24/7, and that too without any reduction in efficiency.

In-depth Customer Data Analysis

In the present times as AI is helping data mining and analysis activities that are most necessary for finding customer insights for businesses, hence Chatbots in 2019 are getting integrated with Machine Learning which is aiding Chatbots to solve even technical tasks.

Moreover, this effective analysis of Chatbots about customer insights and pattern recognition using Big Data and Machine Learning technologies integrated with the app along with data collected inside the CRM database is helping Chatbots to gain an advantage in real-time scenarios over the human mind.

Conclusion

As the ultimate goal of almost all businesses is to engage the customer, show them their plans, sell the customers their offerings, and provide world-class support services an innovative and futuristic Chatbot technology will definitely help businesses to achieve these goals.
Since looking at the trends in Chatbot technology although friendliness and approachability” are not areas where consumers believe Chatbots are particularly strong, according to a Drift report 15% of consumers in the US have used Chatbots to communicate with businesses in the past 12 months and this number is on the rise steadily.

To know more on how you can use technology to find massive business growth read our “Business Growth Manifesto”, to identifying areas that can be optimized or automated in your organization and then implement technology that will optimize, automate and improve your business processes.

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Key Customer Experience Metrics That You Must Measure and Cannot Leave Behind

In this modern era of data analytics, most businesses have enough information, metrics, data, and dashboards in their easy to use CRM software platforms to deal with. However, unfortunately, when it comes to Customer Experience or CX, most organizations do not always keep a track or measure and report the right metrics for their organization. In a report published in 2018 by NPX & CX Benchmark states: “One-third of businesses (especially small and medium organizations) do not measure their Retention or Customer Churn.”

In this modern era of data analytics, most businesses have enough information, metrics, data, and dashboards in their easy to use CRM software platforms to deal with. However, unfortunately, when it comes to Customer Experience or CX, most organizations do not always keep a track or measure and report the right metrics for their organization.

By 2020, more than 40 percent of all data analytics projects will relate to an aspect of customer experience- Gartner Click To Tweet

In a report published in 2018 by NPX & CX Benchmark states:

“One-third of businesses (especially small and medium organizations) do not measure their Retention or Customer Churn.”

Well, this is indeed an irony since businesses spend a considerable amount of their time and resources in sales and marketing but ultimately they do not keep a track of how many of those acquired customers have been retained or try to find what were the reasons for their attrition.

Hence, how big or small your business is, and in which sector your company belongs to, here are key 4 top of the line Customer Experience metrics that you should track and measure at all times using your best small business CRM software.

What are the CX top of the line metrics?

Top of the line metrics in CX are those that bear minimum stats you should measure which are outcome indicators and lag measures that can be easily found in your easy to use CRM platform’s dashboard. These metrics help to keep us tied to our organization’s long term visions and goals for strategic business growth . Therefore, to show an improvement on these metrics, we need to improve other independent or lead Customer Experience (CX) metrics in your CRM database.

The most vital top line CX Metrics that you should always measure are:

  • Net Promoter Score
  • Customer-Lifetime-Value/Cost-of-Acquisition-of-Customer
  • Customer-Churn
  • Customer Effort Score

So let us talk about each of them now briefly.

  1. Net Promoter Score (NPS)

Possibly, there is no need for a detailed explanations since NPS has gained tremendous popularity in the recent times, as in a report published by Forrester it indicated that more than 70% of both big and small organizations listed in the Fortune 1000 companies use Net Promoter Score to measure the loyalty of their brands.

The biggest advantage of this metrics is its simplicity (you can use a single question format) to evaluate the customer’s intentions to recommend your offerings to their trusted ones, like friends, colleagues, and relatives.

The uniqueness of the NPS question lies in its 11 point survey, which is scaled from 0 to 10, with 0 to 6 as detractors, 7 and 8 as passive, and 9 and 10 as promoters of your brand.

In order to calculate your brand’s NPs, detract the percentage of Detractors from this percentage of Promoters.

For an example, if 60 percent of your respondents in the Net Promoter Survey (which you can perform using email campaigning functionality in your easy to use CRM) are Promoters and 10 percent are Detractors; your brand’s NPS is 50.

The importance of NPS is that it provides an insight into the customer loyalty spectrum for your business so that you can identify the weak points in your customer experience that needs improvement.

  1. Customer-Lifetime-Value/Cost-of-Acquisition-of-Customer (CLV/CAC)

What is interesting and we are looking for in these two metrics is the ratio of CLV to CAC that can be easily measured in all best small business CRM software platforms.

What is Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)?

CLV (Customer Lifetime Value) which is also known as LCV (Lifetime Customer Value) is the net economic or financial value associated to the relationship between the customer and the brand or the company.

CLV is an ideal metric that illustrates and lets us know how much revenue we are making from each customer. Additionally, when CLV is averaged out, any organization can easily generalize it for its entire customer base.

CLV is an important measurement that you must measure using your easy to use CRM software since if you are not making enough money from your relationship with your customers, it is no brainer that you may sooner or later seize to be in business.

Calculating net contribution (profit margin) or net financial value from an ongoing relationship with your customers will definitely involve the contributions that your buyers have made in the past and an ongoing estimate of their future contributions for your brand. Therefore, CLV or LVC is estimated metrics.

Hence, to explain it in its simplistic form, Customer Lifetime Value is the average sum of purchases made by your customers till they retire or churn.

Therefore, CLV takes into consideration the “average contribution from each customer per period” and the expected number of periods that the customer remains with the company.

For an example, if the average revenue of a CRM company like ConvergeHub is $59 per user/ month for its Premium Edition billed yearly, and if the cost of offering the service is $40, then its average customer contribution is $19 per month. Now, if the customer stays with the organization for 24 months before churning out, then the CLV for that customer is $456 ($19 x 24 Mt.)

This calculation takes into consideration, the Customer Retention Rate (or in a reverse way the Customer Churn Rate) and average contribution per customer.

We all know that the future value of cash flow is at all times less than its present value, therefore, this formula can be improved or adjusted also to include this aspect.

As Customer Lifetime Value engages an economic value to Customer Relationship strategy, CLV is considered as an excellent metric for the following:

  • Evaluate if your delivery model is viable
  • Helps to refine your customer support strategies, so as to increase your CLV
  • Sensitize your team members about economic value and inculcate ownership into their actions

Apart from this, evaluating each customer individually as against average CLV, to find out whose relationship is more precious for your brand can also help in customer segmentation for up-selling and cross-selling your other offerings.

What is the Cost of Acquisition of Customer (CAC)?

CLV alone may aid you to a certain extent to refine your organization’s operations and service delivery models; however, we all know that Customer Experience (CX) begins right from Marketing.
Therefore, now you need a metric that considers an end-to-end impact, and that can only be measured by considering the Cost of Acquisition of Customer for your brand.

Cost of Acquisition of Customer (CAC) is the average cost of acquiring a customer which can include right from marketing and sales expenses to offers and discounts that your organization (if required) provides to its customers.

CLV/CAC

The ratio of CLV to CAC is extremely important and useful to evaluate the complete business model and its viability for any organization.

We say this because, when the CAC is greater than CLV, it clearly indicates that the business model is not a viable proposition at all.

Therefore, as a thumb rule, your Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) must be 3 to 4 times more than your Cost of Acquisition of Customer (CAC).

There are several factors which drive this; however, CX professionals can play a significant role in optimizing this ratio using different levels of Customer Experience strategies to the purchasers of your offerings.

Apart from this tacking the trends of CLV and CLV/CAC ratio can also aid CX professionals to gauge the impact of CX initiatives that have been implemented in your organization.

  1. Customer-Retention or Customer-Churn

Over the course of time, Customer Churn rate has become one of the other most popular metrics as most CX professionals talk about it while assessing ‘Customer Experience management’ of any organization.

Nevertheless, according to the NPX and CX benchmark report published in 2018, it states that:

Only one-third of companies proactively track their Customer Retention Rate (CRR) in their organization.

In simple language Customer Churn is the percentage or proportion of customers those who have discontinued or left after using a brand as against the total base of its active customers in the list.

In fact, the Customer Retention rate is just the inverse of Customer Churn rate, for which the math is:

1/Customer Churn Rate

Although apparently, it might look extremely easy, however, in reality, there are several scenarios such as non-recurring business models, pure subscription models, businesses with lock-in periods and without lock-in periods, and others that needs to be taken into consideration while measuring CCR. Therefore calculating CCR (Customer Churn Rate) for a brand is actually a very tricky process, which is one of the major reasons as to why businesses do not most often like to calculate their Customer Churn.

Nevertheless, we have found that base-lining an organization or brand’s historic churn rate is a far superior way to access the efficacy of that company’s Customer Experience initiatives as even lack of accurate data for benchmarking across industries is not a matter of concern to perform this calculation, which is a good metric to know the effectiveness of an organization’s Customer Experience strategy.

Revenue Churn Rate

Revenue Churn Rate is a variation of Customer Churn Rate since this metric portrays how much revenue got lost within a given period of time.

In other words, Revenue Churn Rate as the name suggests is a very pertinent economic and financial indicator of customer loyalty in ‘subscription-based business models’.

The math over here is, if $100 K is the recurring revenue of last month and if that has decreased to $90 K in the present month, there is a revenue churn of $10 K this month. Which means the Revenue Churn Rate is 10% [=100-90/100].

However, it must be most essentially remembered over here that you should take only into consideration the base of installed customers and should never add new acquisitions to the current month. Moreover, another simple version of the Revenue Churn Rate also ignores customers who have upgraded their subscriptions (a refinement that is not cover in this article).
Therefore RCR (Revenue Churn Rate) is as good as CCR (Customer Churn Rate) for all types of subscription-based business like Cloud Based CRM software solutions, except that downgrading a subscription would impact the RCR but not CCR.

  1. Customer Effort Score (CES)

This is a CX metric that is mostly neglected by several organizations across the globe. According to an NPX & CX Benchmark report published in 2018, only 15% of businesses use CES and hence it is one of the most under-utilized metrics by the CX Management fraternity.

However, it must be acknowledged that Customer Effort Score has a greater statistical correlation with both repurchase and enhanced spending rates than NPS.
That implies CES is a better metric to predictive repurchase and spending behaviors of your customers than Net Promoter Score.

For example, most of us would cherish to use a web-based check-in facility rather than stand in a check-in queue while boarding flights in an airport. This reduction in the customer’s effort by helping the customer to “get their job done” can radically increase brand preferences.

Much like NPS, Customer Effort Score (CES) is also measured through a single question but with a 5 point scale.

Another advantage for measuring CES is that the same question can be asked to the same customer times and again after every transaction as it obviously makes sense to find out if the customer has found it effortless to transact after each and every deal.

 Conclusion

There are also many more metrics such as Turnaround Time, Service Levels, Compliance Percentage, and others that can also be tracked to measure CX of a brand, which we shall discuss later on.
So subscribe to our blogs for learning more or read our Business Growth Manifesto, which is a definitive guide on how to use technology to fuel massive business growth.

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Marketing Trends- That You Cannot Ignore This Year For Your Business Growth

Since you are using best small business CRM software for helping your organization accomplish its sales and marketing plans, it is equally important that you must remain aware of the evolving marketing trends and changes ahead, those that predict to alter the shape of the marketing world in 2019 and beyond. Hence, understanding these new trends in marketing this year will enable you to adjust your marketing strategies accordingly and remain ahead of the completion in your marketplace, once you keep these trends in mind and formulate your strategies to ensure optimum success in your businesses.

Since you are using best small business CRM software for helping your organization accomplish its sales and marketing plans, it is equally important that you must remain aware of the evolving marketing trends and changes ahead, those that predict to alter the shape of the marketing world in 2019 and beyond.

94% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn as part of their content strategy. Other popular platforms include Twitter (87%), Facebook (84%), and YouTube (74%) - Content Marketing Institute Click To Tweet

Hence, understanding these new trends in marketing this year will enable you to adjust your marketing strategies accordingly and remain ahead of the completion in your marketplace, once you keep these trends in mind and formulate your strategies to ensure optimum success in your businesses.

Marketing Automation

Now that you know what is CRM, as a user of the best small business CRM software, it is apprehended strongly that this year and going ahead AI-powered technological advancements will take personalized marketing a step further.

Marketing automation and lead generation that is supported by AI (Artificial Intelligence) will help organizations using best small business CRM software to enhance their customer profiling strategies, which, in turn, will aid in facilitating the development of more sophisticated and refined customer-centric marketing strategies, leading to enhanced customer satisfaction and a decrease in churn rates.

According to research published by Forbes, it has been suggested that more than 50% of present-day marketers will adopt AI by 2019, for accomplishing their business growth.

So choosing the best CRM for small business like ConvergeHub , which is already working on developing such technologies for its all-in-one easy to use CRM platform , will help you to stay ahead of the game.

Chatbots

In 2019, most of us are aware of chatbots that we deploy on our company websites for business growth.

Actually, chatbots are interactive software applications that are created to mimic normal human conversations.

Apart from websites, chatbots can also be incorporated into apps, emails and SMS platforms.

This year and going beyond it is predicted that the use of chatbots will increase, as according to a study published by Gartner, it is prognosticated that 85% of all customer support interactions will be powered by chatbots by 2020.

Therefore, marketers in 2019 using the best small business CRM software should start leveraging on chatbots now by having them answer frequently asked questions online, or walk the customers through their buying processes.

Video marketing

It is also predicted that video ads will be on a rise this year.

In a recent study published by Cisco, it has been projected that more than 80% of all internet traffic will be videos by 2021.

As in the present times with the stellar growth in social media 90% of digital markets are already making use of videos as a key element of their online marketing strategy, it is no brainer to expect that live video feeds will continue to grow.

Video marketing is not only an excellent way to tell customers and prospects your brand’s stories but it can be also considered as a better way to share testimonials with leads and prospects, whereby you can broadcast your  happy customers talk about their experience with your company, or which of your offerings has helped them in their business growth .

Influencer marketing

The consumers in all industries will be putting even more trust in relationships and people they know, as well as high-quality contents.

In other words, in modern times, consumers are becoming more and more difficult to impresses with sordid sales pitches from company reps, as they are becoming increasingly resistant towards being sold.

Consumers in 2019, especially the Millennial(s) group of consumers who are gradually moving into decision-making positions in several organizations, just want brands to help them buy.

Now, when it comes to influencer marketing, present-day tech-savvy consumers are more aware of influencers who openly endorse numerous brands. Therefore you need to adopt a more transparent and subtle approach by building long-term relationships with selected influencers, who may not be a big-name celebrity, but someone who has a  following of more than 10,000 followers on social media to foster more organic endorsement with transparent communications leading to your business growth.

Semantic SEO

According to ComScore, it has been predicted that 50% of all search on the internet will be voice searches by 2020, credits to virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa.

In recent times with new updates on Google’s search algorithms search engines have started showing a preference for cluster of contents around topics instead of keywords.

This change in part on SEO requirements has happened due to the rising popularity of searches being implemented verbally, instead of typing on keyboards.

Therefore, voice search marketing and Semantic SEO that provides more value and depth around a topic are expected to become increasingly important in 2019 and beyond.

Mobile marketing

According to an article published by Google in 2017, it stated that more than 89% of online consumers are likely to recommend a brand after a positive brand experience on their mobile devices.

In another statistics revealed by Statista:

In 2018, 52.2% of all worldwide online traffic was generated through mobile phones, up from 50.3% in the previous year.

Since mobile users view contents in short intervals, contents generated for mobile marketing should be pithy, and easy-to-understand as possible.

Therefore, remember to optimize your landing pages and your website for mobile viewing so that you can engage your potential and existing customers, and evolve over time the contents that you share with your consumers for developing their brand awareness and scale up your business growth.

Conclusion

Although there are no best marketing strategies and no one can for certain predict the future with unflinching accuracy, nevertheless preparing yourself and watching out for these marketing trends will obviously help you as a user of best small business CRM software like ConvergeHub to achieve your goals this year and remain competitive in your marketplace for your business growth.

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Increase Brand Loyalty: Key Ideas For Generating Devoted Customers

Brand loyalty is just what it sounds like. However still then, here is our definition of brand loyalty: “Brand loyalty relates to the sense of loyalty your consumers feel for your brand.” Loyalty towards a brand can be generated in several ways, some of which we shall cover below. This is important, as by maintaining customers who are loyal to your brand can significantly affect your business’s bottom line, your brand’s reputation, increase customer satisfaction, and decrease customer churn. The value of focusing on keeping your customers loyal and happy towards your brand over the long run is often ignored by many businesses.

Brand loyalty is just what it sounds like. However still then, here is our definition of brand loyalty:

“Brand loyalty relates to the sense of loyalty your consumers feel for your brand.”

Loyalty towards a brand can be generated in several ways, some of which we shall cover below.

This is important, as by maintaining customers who are loyal to your brand can significantly affect your business’s bottom line, your brand’s reputation, increase customer satisfaction, and decrease customer churn.

Highly-engaged customers buy 90 percent more often and spend 60 percent more per transaction - Rosetta Consulting Study Click To Tweet

The value of focusing on keeping your customers loyal and happy towards your brand over the long run is often ignored by many businesses.

Nevertheless, as in a recent survey done by Forrester Research determined that 60% of consumers in the US marketplace tells their friends, families, and colleagues about brands and companies that have earned their loyalty, this amount of free word-of-mouth advertisement is worth considering and hard to beat.

Therefore, now that the significance of creating brand loyalty is clear to us, the pertinent question is how you can create brand loyalty among your customer base.

We have observed as a vendor of best CRM for small and medium businesses that companies build their brand loyalty through various means.

These tactics consist of delivering robust and faultless products. Devoting extra time to the customer’s requirements, treating the customers like partners instead of numerous faceless generators of revenue …and the list goes on.

Here are some of the key ideas for maintaining and generating brand loyalty.

Provide a world-class customer experience

Customer experience is an ever-increasing critical element for generating brand loyalty. In a report published by Walker Information, Inc. it has been predicted that by 2020 customer experience will overshadow price and products as the key driver of the purchase decision making process.

Now how can we define Customer Experience?

Actually, customer experience consists of all the interactions that a company or brand have with their customers.
These myriad interactions with the customers encompass everything from sales calls, customer support calls, how well your brand’s offerings serve your customers, the amount of time that your representatives devote to their requirements, and also the frequency of emails that you send them for updating their knowledge base.

Since when your customers’ feels valued and understand that you are proactively looking for their suggested opinions and conducting changes to enhance their experience with your brand, they start feeling loyal to your company.

Therefore, once you treat your customers as your partners, and involve them in your decision-making processes, it becomes a mutually beneficial relationship which makes their brand loyalty for your organization climb up to new heights.

Stay in constant touch with your customers

Although this seems to be obvious, but still this is an easy win that most companies overlook. Therefore, if you really want to make your customers feel that you want them to feel like your partners, it is beneficial to keep your customers informed of all new changes that are happening in your organization, as an when they arise. If you are a user of best small business CRM software like ConvergeHub, you can easily do this by sending quarterly or monthly newsletters to your loyal consumers using sales force automation in your easy to use CRM platform.

These periodic email updates to your customers can include news like changes in management, product and service updates, new contents that you have published, and others.

Another great tactic to keep your customers loyal to your brand is to reach out to each of your customers directly in a regular basis (once in every quarter), listen to their feedback and then take actions on common grounds that evolve out of these conversations.

Conduct a robust and thorough onboarding

The best time to start building up loyalty for your brand is when you acquire a new customer. This is because the first impression is always the most important impression that you leave with your new customers that heralds the tone for your relationship in the future days to come.

Never just sign-in a new customer and then let them fend for themselves.

Rather create and implement a very useful onboarding program that can train your customers how they must use your products or services, demonstrate to them the best practices for using your offerings, and allow them to ask questions that relates to their unique use cases.

Remember, once you help your customers from day one, they will even start to display loyalty towards your brand right from the beginning and stick around longer as your offerings are meeting all their needs.

Conclusion

Therefore, to put it bluntly, all the best practices above for creating brand loyalty depends cent percent on customer experience and customer satisfaction and it help create brand advocates, which is one the most powerful sources that drive businesses and escalates revenue growth.

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New Trends to Boost Your Best Small Business CRM in 2019

With the arrival of 2019, different kinds of easy to use CRM software (even Salesforce Alternative CRM software solutions) are predicted to go through substantial overhauls and renovations- in terms of better intelligence, enhanced automation, new integrations and much more. Hence, the transformation in the cloud based CRM industry for small businesses is as good as its ability to gear up with the latest trends in the software industry, which consequentially makes us look at a number of new features that will surely revolutionize the way we use easy to use best small business CRM today.

Best small business CRM software solutions in modern times are all about better supporting and serving the customers during their journey.
Modern CRM for small businesses software platforms empower startups and small business establishments to form an emotional bonding with their prospects and customers by looking out for their best interests as a consumer of their offerings. Additionally easy to use CRM software solutions also ensures the customer-facing employees of an organization to find the right information and data from their best small business CRM software about their customers at the right time, so that they can better focus on nurturing relationships.

The Service Desk Institute has found that more than 80 percent of IT departments are using self-service as a way to meet this need. Click To Tweet

Just like any other advancements in technology with every passing year, easy to use CRM software is also undergoing futuristic transformations, bringing new innovations and simplifications to this three-lettered workplace, within an entire organization.
Therefore, be it marketing, sales, accounts, operations, or even event management and collaborations, modern best small business CRM like ConvergeHub can only get better and smarter.

With the arrival of 2019, different kinds of easy to use CRM software (even Salesforce Alternative CRM software solutions) are predicted to go through substantial overhauls and renovations- in terms of better intelligence, enhanced automation, new integrations and much more.

Hence, the transformation in the cloud based CRM industry for small businesses is as good as its ability to gear up with the latest trends in the software industry, which consequentially makes us look at a number of new features that will surely revolutionize the way we use easy to use best small business CRM today.

  1. Automatic Workflows and Intuitive User-Interface Reconfiguration

Using AI (Artificial Intelligence), modern best small business CRM software platforms will be able to adjust workflows more effectively and perform with lesser turn-around time.

This will be done by using technologies like AI and machine learning- two of the most advanced technologies that can simulate human behaviors using a non-human entity.

By learning and understanding the usage patterns and trends of the users, easy to use CRM software for small businesses and startup organizations will automatically take over mundane repetitive tasks and even adapt the user interfaces to individual usage based on their usage patterns.

Manash Chaudhuri (CTO of ConvergeHub- The #1 Easiest Converged CRM for SMB) remarks:

“At ConvergeHub, we are in the process of incorporating AI and Machine Learning into the future of our sales and marketing tools. Using AI in the sales and marketing processes creates a more tailored and user-specific experience for the buyers and can help small business organizations get found by more prospective customers, convert more new leads and thereby sell their products and services to more customers.”

  1. CRM at the Center of an Omni-channel Approach

Nowadays, more than six touch points are needed before any typical sale, which happens across several channels.
According to us as small business CRM vendor and consultants, we have realized that simply initiating touch points across multiple channels is not enough- rather the consistency of customer experience is what that really counts as much as the breadth of engagement.

Therefore, the fewer touch points that you use the better will be your sales process as a small business organization.
Hence, in 2019 easy to use CRM platforms will proactively look towards ramping up their integration algorithms and API with the objective of attaining leaner and tighter integrations with external services and tools.

In the modern times, easy to use cloud based CRM software systems are therefore evolving to serve as the never center for this omnichannel approach, unifying mobile marketing, landing pages, social campaigns, customer support ticketing, sales calls, accounting processes and other channels into a coherent whole.

In the recent times in 2018, ConvergeHub has integrated QuickBooks online, with its CRM systems, and is now one of the most popular QuickBooks CRM in the small business CRM marketplace, offering QuickBooks CRM integration free.

  1. Self-Service via easy to use CRM platforms

One particular channel that will witness a stellar growth and deeper integration with CRM for small and medium businesses- is self service.

While Gartner predicts that by 2020:

“A customer will manage 85% of the relationship with an enterprise without interacting with a human, so make sure to give your customers the direction and tools they need to accomplish tasks themselves.“

In another whitepaper published by ZenDesk states:

“50% of customers think it’s important to solve product or service issues themselves and 70% expect a company’s website to include a self-service application.“

In 2019 it is predicted that more than half of the modern consumers are likely to abandon an online purchase if they cannot get an answer to their questions quickly.

According to Forrester Research:

“The Service Desk Institute has found that more than 80 percent of IT departments are using self-service as a way to meet this need.”

Therefore, the link between easy to use CRM and self-service is a natural one as CRM application when integrated with ChatBots is capable of customizing self-service interactions and render a customer care feedback loop that sales, marketing, and support teams can also tap into in real-time as and when it is needed.

Hence, small and medium business CRM software vendors like ConvergeHub have also taken into notice the need for customer-service integration and self-service in particular, which is on a rise.

  1. From CRM to Social CRM

The transition to easy to use social CRM is imminent. Engaging customers by creating virtual communities is a more pertinent way that will be the new trend in social media marketing.
Therefore, it is predicted that in 2019 and beyond these communities and social media as a whole will take a greater shape as an important element within all best small business CRM software platforms.

Since being social will not only help businesses interact more closely with their consumers, but it will also provide hitherto unseen insights into customer’s buying patterns and their behaviors, which in turn will enhance to the lead nurturing capability of the easy to use CRM for small business in a big way.

  1. Enhanced Mobility

Customers of easy to use CRM for small businesses are no longer bound to their PCs and are constantly accessing data on the go. Therefore, customer support resources and front line sales and marketing employees will be increasingly empowered by mobile devices for support.

In 2019 we should also see NLP (Natural Language Processing) making its way into best small business CRM software platforms as a precursor to adding functionalities such as recording minutes of the meetings, updating records, and several other voice-based interactions that can revolutionize the way we interact with cloud based CRM software technology today.

Finally- On-premises CRM has become the exception

Adoption of cloud based CRM for startups and small and medium businesses used to be a tough sell.
However, that is no longer the case.

According to our research, we found that 80 percent of all new CRM purchases are in the cloud.

This is because not only finding sufficient talents and vendor support to maintain these on-premise legacy systems will become more difficult to find over time but the increasing need to access the CRM software from multiple locations and devices has also led to the rise of using cloud based CRM solutions in small businesses.

Therefore, if privacy protection was an obstacle to cloud based CRM adoption in the past, after the enforcement of the GDPR rules, this year may be the time to look again for cloud based CRM in the market for better and deeper interactions with your leads, prospects, and customers.

Do you want 2019 to be the year where you achieve massive revenue growth?

Then start planning NOW.

Create your revenue growth strategy for 2019.

If you would like to get some ideas or brainstorm on how ConvergeHub can provide the right technology to achieve your company’s marketing and sales goals, and retain your existing customers by enhancing customer’s experience with your brand, you can reserve a confidential consultation with one of our experts.

On this 30-45 minute call we will:

  • Take a deep-dive into your business process
  • Pinpoint areas with most growth potential
  • Discuss how to implement an effective marketing automation system that lets you focus on the most important tasks

Click here to check out how you can achieve your sales growth plans in 2019!

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Reasons Why Customers Will Rush To Do Business With You In 2019

Before pressing on the ‘reset’ button for scaling up your business, understand the simple truth quoted by Simon Sinek, the author of the book Start and Why: “People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it.” A quote that will make you think differently now, behind why a consumer of your offerings chooses to do business with an organization. Although there are plenty of reasons to consider, however as the award-winning vendor of one of the best small business CRM software solution, here we are putting together a very short list of some of these ‘Whys’.

If you wish to reach your business goals (who does not?), do not get seduced into making New Year’s resolution once again in 2019.
Why?
This is because researches say that resolutions do not work.
Nevertheless, paradoxically, if you do not make them, chances are there you may be more likely to achieve and maintain your goals.

According to Statistic Brain Research Institute based in California, USA:

“41% of Americans make New Year’s resolutions in the first place. But here’s the thing — only 9.2% of us are successful in achieving them.”

Therefore, before pressing on the ‘reset’ button for scaling up your business, understand the simple truth quoted by Simon Sinek, the author of the book Start and Why:

“People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it.”

A quote that will make you think differently now, behind why a consumer of your offerings chooses to do business with an organization.

People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it.- Simon Sinek Click To Tweet

Although there are plenty of reasons to consider, however as the award-winning vendor of one of the best small business CRM software solution, here we are putting together a very short list of some of these ‘Whys’:

1. Price

Let us clear this factor out of the way first. There are several individuals those who chose pricing as a primary factor before deciding on their purchases.  However, those companies that get customers just because of low price will lose customers when someone else has a cheaper price.
Therefore, the loyalty of these customers to the company is because of price, not the brand itself.

2. Convenience

Who does not want a frictionless and easy buying experience? Moreover, customers are often willing to pay higher prices if their customer experience is convenient.
Therefore, if you know what is CRM, use an easy to use CRM software like ConvergeHub to enhance your customer experience and skyrocket your revenue this year.

Here is the good news, by signing up for a FREE 30-minute Rocket Launch 2019 session you can take the first step towards creating massive growth for your company in 2019.

During the Rocket Launch session, Team ConvergeHub will do a deep dive into your business along with you, and brainstorm how ConvergeHub can help you acquire leads, automate your sales process, improve your conversion and get more referrals from satisfied customers.

3. Customer Service

When your employees are friendly, quick to respond, and knowledgeable, your customers will like the way you treat them.
They will understand that like they are there to take care of your brand, you are also taking care of them by doing business with them and providing them service as per their unique needs.

4. The Culture

Every organization has its own culture, whether by default or by design. The culture is the personality of your brand and your company. It is the sum of your organization’s beliefs, expectations, ethics, values, mission, and goals.

According to an article published in Forbes, it states that a great corporate culture that engages employees is a drug for improving customer experience since customers want to remain affiliated with organizations when their values are congruent with their brands.

5. A Cause

You should believe in what your customers believe in. At a level this ties into your organization’s values and culture. However, this is also about giving back and your company’s community involvement in events which can be your organization’s participation in a charity event or any other cause that is important to you, everything from saving Rhinos to alleviating world hunger.

6. Trust

Trust your customers and do what they say, every time. This is because if your consumers do not trust your brand, they would probably not be doing business with your company anyway.

7. Reputation

Your consumers may have heard good things about your organization. Maybe it is just from their colleagues at work or friends, or maybe there are plenty of good reviews about your brand on the internet. Whatever be it, your company’s reputation plays a big part in securing the decision of your customers.

8. Consistency

Consistency is most often tied with reputation and trust of your customers for your organization. Outside of lying, if there is something that erodes the trust of your consumers quicker than anything, isyour businesses’ lack of consistency.

Therefore, if you want your customers to use the word ‘always’ to describe their customer experience with your brand, like ‘They are always knowledgeable, helpful and friendly..’ remain consistent with your good behavior with the customers.

9. The Way

The way you do your business is one of the many reasons why customers chose to come back. This is all about your business policies, processes, the hours you remain open, your location and more. Although these are mostly tangible reasons, nevertheless, these factors count to get a customer in your door.

Finally- The Why

Let us end this article where we started with Simon Sinek’s quote, “People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it.”

Although all these reasons (and more) may contribute to the decision as to why a customer may choose your brand over others this year, figuring out a customer’s ‘Why’ and scaling it to meet their reasons can help you bring customers back again and again in 2019 and for many more years to come.

Using a small business CRM software like ConvergeHub that provides a 360-degree view of your customers stored in its CRM database, is an ideal tool for measuring your customer journey and thereby increase CLV (Customer Lifetime Value) as it is often quoted that:

“Acquiring new customers costs 5 to 10 times more than selling to a current customer, and current customers spend 67% more on average than those who are new to your business.”

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Upcoming Marketing Tactics For Achieving Massive Revenue Growth In 2019

Marketing is evolving rapidly, and so are the tactics and strategies that marketers must engage to lure prospects and customers for their business. This is because; you must always remain ahead of emerging marketing trends to remain utterly competitive in your respective industries. Here in this blog, we will cover a few selected marketing trends that we anticipate seeing in 2019 to make you remain proactive and stay ahead in the game.

Marketing is evolving rapidly, and so are the tactics and strategies using easy to use CRM, that marketers must engage to lure prospects and customers for their business.
This is because; you must always remain ahead of emerging marketing trends to remain utterly competitive in your respective industries.

Here in this blog, we will cover a few selected marketing trends that we anticipate seeing in 2019 to make you remain proactive and stay ahead in the game.

Account-based marketing will stay

ABM or Account Based Marketing has grown quickly in its popularity in startup organizations and small businesses.
ABM involves identifying real prospects who are the best fit for your offerings and thereafter performing extensive research on those prospective customers before you reach out to them.

This research most often includes the pain-points of the prospects along with their challenges, needs, interests and more.

If you are a user of an easy to use CRM software solution, you can use information in your CRM database to create buyer personas for your brand which is particularly helpful in leveraging the tactics used for account-based marketing.

ABM assists your marketing teams to focus and target on fewer but higher-value prospects, which proves far more effective than firing marketing campaigns in the dark to leads from a purchased email list and then keeping your fingers crossed, hoping for the best.

87% of marketers across the US, who measures marketing ROI, say that Account Based Marketing will outperform all other types of marketing investments. Click To Tweet

In fact, according to Information Technology Services Marketing Association, ABM is the future of B2B marketing across the globe.

Since 87% of marketers across the US, who measures marketing ROI, using an easy to use CRM software say that Account Based Marketing will outperform all other types of marketing investments, which easily indicates the reason for its growing popularity.

Chatbots will pave the way

You may know by now what is CRM , but do you know what is a chatbot?

Well, to put it simply, chatbots is a program feature, which is most often found in easy to use CRM software platforms that use AI (Artificial Intelligence) to interact with prospective leads and customers. These interactions take place in the form of a conversation, and so typically chatbots are implemented on the businesses’ websites.

Chatbots ‘learn’ over time, using data stored in the CRM database and so are able to provide required answers to the visitor’s questions, without any human interference, to coordinate the conversation.

Mostly chatbots appear as pop-ups on the company’s websites and it seem to the visitors that they are conversing with a real person, whereas in reality, any chatbot is a robot.

In a recent survey done by a major market research firm that provides advice on existing and potential impact of technology, to its customers and the public revealed that even more than 60% of the respondents in the survey have interacted with a chatbot in the last 12 months, which is a clear indication that the use of chatbots will further increase in 2019.

Native advertisement in social media will be on the rise

Native advertisement in social media is the act of putting an ad in a format that lines up with the normal experiences that the users get when they browse their preferred networking websites.

Unlike uploading a banner ad on related web pages that resonates with your offerings, native social media advertisements resemble a normal social media posting and appears on the social media feeds of your followers and their friends (like the rest of your posts), which makes it less intrusive.

So in 2019 do not ignore this big social media marketing trend, which is not only more engaging than traditional advertisement tactics but is also way cheaper and produce better results than legacy ads.

Mobile responsiveness will increase

Let us face the reality of the digital age looming upon us. Therefore, it is no brainer that nearly every one of us uses a mobile device today to check or send and receive emails, check social media platforms, view websites and others.

Therefore, if your marketing teams do email marketing or your company does have a website, it is a critical need of the hour that your email contents and your website must be mobile responsive.

Since you will lose your email reader’s and website visitor’s interest and attention in a flash if they have to do excessive scrolling or zooming to read your emails or view your website, rather to say, even any other contents that your audience cannot read on their mobile device.

Adoption of all-in-one CRM will rise

CRM software is widely used in all businesses today, since most businesses that know what is CRM, also accepts the truth that no business can remain competitive without the use of an easy to use Customer Relationship Management software.

Although traditionally CRM software platforms, just managed contacts and automated basic sales and marketing processes, like moving deals through the sales pipeline, however with the rise of all-in-one CRM software solutions like ConvergeHub the popularity of CRM platforms are steadily climbing high.

Modern-day best small business CRM software solutions like ConvergeHub not only includes the above-mentioned components of traditional CRM software platforms, but it also comes with inbuilt sales enablement, marketing automation, customer support, accounting, help desk,and collaboration modules- all in the same platform.

Therefore,all in one CRM software like ConvergeHub allow startups and companies to manage nearly every business activities from one easy to use system and even store all the resulting data in the same CRM database.

Moreover, cloud based CRM software solutions are also way cheaper than traditional on-premise CRM systems and provides a plethora of additional functionalities.

Hence it is no wonder that in 2019 small and growing business organizations will increasingly opt for adopting all-in-one CRM software systems.

Millennial(s) are taking over this year

In 2019 and beyond it is predicted that Millennial(s) are going to overtake the Baby-Boomers as the largest consumer demography in Canada and the USA.

This means companies will need to adapt their marketing efforts to cater to the growing needs of the Millennial(s) and change their marketing approaches in the following ways:

  • Millennial(s) prefer to buy from brands those that bear a strong sense of corporate social responsibility
  • Millennial(s) expects more from brands when it comes to responsiveness and engagements
  • Millennial(s) prefer communicating with chatbots, and messages over telephone calls
  • Millennial(s) use social media insanely, so brands need to strengthen their social media presence
  • Millennial(s) prefer viewing ‘how-to’ video over written contents

Conclusion

Therefore, to stay ahead of the curve, modern-day marketers must pay immediate attention to these marketing trends in 2019 and incorporate them in their marketing strategies for the growth of their businesses.

Do you want 2019 to be the year where you achieve massive revenue growth?

Then start planning NOW.

Create your revenue growth strategy for 2019.

If you would like to get some ideas or brainstorm on how ConvergeHub can provide the right technology to achieve your company’s marketing and sales goals, you can reserve a confidential consultation with one of our experts.

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  • Take a deep-dive into your business process
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2018: The Year in Review

When the year-end arrives, all of us find the incessant urge to recall the various things that happened, going down the memory lane and refresh the timeline to view the goals that were fulfilled with the passing year. We live in the age of the customer, where consumers (not business executives) decide on how customer-centric companies are. Since in 2018, among many other things, we understood that good customer experience can help to control cost, and so business executives in both small and large B2B organizations are presently more interested in their potential to fuel sustainable top-line growth

When the year-end arrives, all of us find the incessant urge to recall the various things that happened, going down the memory lane and refresh the timeline to view the goals that were fulfilled with the passing year.

We live in the age of the customer, where consumers (not business executives) decide on how customer-centric companies are.
Since in 2018, among many other things, we understood that good customer experience can help to control cost, and so business executives in both small and large B2B organizations are presently more interested in their potential to fuel sustainable top-line growth.

Nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads.- The Annuitas Group Click To Tweet

Easy to use CRM software platforms like ConvergeHub is the foundation building block of an organization’s customer experience strategy to win, serve, and retain their customers, enabling organizations to integrate many new technologies and business strategies, which are constantly being rejuvenated by new trends.

Nowadays, consumers across all industries want to connect easily with companies to interact, make a purchase, or get services from organizations.

In a recent survey done by Forrester, it was found that:

More than 72% of consumers say that they value their time and consider it to be the most important thing that an organization can do to provide them with good service.

Therefore 2018 showed organizations that they must offer customers means to easily engage with them to foster an ongoing relationship based on omnichannel dialogue that can enhance loyalty and strengthen retention.

Here are a few notable trends that we saw in the B2B industry using CRM software in 2018:

CRMs Have Split Out By Vertical

In the past CRM has been largely kept as its own category of software, more like a separate companion to whatever other business systems, you are already using for your industry.
Implying, when you purchase an easy to use CRM platform, it does not necessarily mean that the software will have all the compatibility and functionalities for what you do every day.

However, over the last few years and more so in 2018, CRM companies have realized that there is a critical need for highly specialized CRM software platforms. Therefore, 2018 has been a year which showed the mushrooming growth of vertically specialized CRM solutions, which are specific to such B2B industries like Real Estate, Merchant Cash Advance business, E-commerce, Field Services, Legal and others.

It has been predicted by renowned CRM vendors and stalwarts that it is extremely likely that within the next 5-10 years CRM platforms will no longer come as a standalone solution, but will be a part of industry-specific requirements.

Personalized Workflow Automation Through AI Technology Platforms

Another most important and prominent advances that this year has shown, is that Artificial Intelligence will power up our CRM platforms to learn from our sales, marketing, and support rep’s interactions by analyzing data, helping AI to find answers to our questions, predict our requirements, or take care of forgotten and tedious tasks so that we can focus on more important issues.

2018 has been the take-offyear which illustrated how AI-powered CRM systems can access untapped and unseen activity patterns to uncover insights on leads or an existing customer, predict trends, and make critical decisions which will significantly reduce cold calls and save hours of work.

For example, in 2018 we have seen how B2B organizations will continue using AI-powered analytics to prescribe the right action for customer-facing employees and use prescriptive advice to identify high-quality leads, send relevant sales collaterals to the buyers, or use optimal discounting to maximize revenue per contract to enhance business growth.

This year has shown us how AI-powered rules can help pinpoint the right prospect, recommend issue resolutions, use machine learning and predictive analysis to uproot guesswork out of critical marketing decisions, help create appealing and innovative campaigns, and route leads to appropriate resources in the organization.

Businesses Are Supporting Digital Customer Journeys Evermore

The present year has seen a sporadic growth in personalized product recommendations, automated product configuration, price negotiations, and order taking. Even for post-purchase support, we have seen more B2B companies offering customer facilities for online issue submission, tracking and scheduling for service technicians, apart from exploring the value of offering automated conversational interactions with chat-bots and virtual agents.

Hence, small business CRM software platforms like ConvergeHub has taken a step ahead in 2018 for providing the right customer experience for the right customer at the right time in his or her customer journey.

Tighter Integration With External Tools

Another noteworthy trend that we have visualized this year is the improvement of tighter integrations of CRM software with external tools and services to improve the usage of small business CRM software systems.

CRM developers in 2018 are keen on understanding the need for industry-standard interfaces to connect multiple B2B solutions and services, integrating new technologies across sales, marketing, business accounts, and customer support.

For example, successful collaborations with accounting application like QuickBooks CRM that allow intelligent synchronization across platforms using REST-based APIs are the key to winning collaborations by permitting systems to effortlessly communicate with one another privately and securely for enhanced user productivity of the CRM software.

In the days to come, the future of CRM technology will definitely see the need for the growth of integrating mobile and web-based solutions with a CRM for using information from different but tightly related sources to generate meaningful relationship intelligence.

Social And Mobile CRM Are Flying High

This year has witnessed a surge in social CRM technology as CRM vendors have realized that the key to keeping your customers engaged lies in harnessing the power of social media channels for marketing and customer support.

This surge in the growth in social CRM technology and increasing emphasis on customer sentiment analysis and social influence in B2B organizations are factors that not going to determine where your business is today, but where you want to be a year from now, once the pace of sales and customer acquisition has gained its speed.

Moreover, in this time of change, CRM companies in 2018 have also recognized the need for enhanced mobile CRM technology as they have recognized most of their B2B customers want to be able to take their CRM system with them everywhere, as this year we can see creation of CRM brands that are solely available via app, focusing on mobile-first.

Big Data Is Getting Into The Legal Weeds

In the present times, B2B companies are now having an insane amount of information about their customers, data that could (in theory) be used to really invade someone’s personal life.

Therefore, governments across the world have started paying attention and growing interest in protecting their citizens from businesses’ interests in their personal lives.

The European Union, in particular, is interested in setting up laws surrounding adoption of Big Data in CRM technology, and so this year CRM users and vendors have started learning how they should be storing and collecting personal data of their customers, now that General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has come into effect to support the collection and management of personal data in a secure way.

Finally- CRM Adoption Will Rise

Looking for technology to help the CRM industry to overcome the adoption challenge (that has long been one of its greatest obstacles), 2018 has seen the rise of ‘Gamification’, by which several CRM vendors are making it more enjoyable for the B2B users to easily adopt this excellent and unparallel business tool.

By stimulating competition and participation while using the CRM software among employees, this year B2B organizations are driving engagement across the board, by applying easy to use gaming procedures to non-gaming business applications, which is the latest elements to motivate and inspire employees, praise their accomplishments, improve their performance and eventually maximize returns for business growth.

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Do you have any other ideas of new trends that we saw in the B2B industry using CRM software in 2018? Share it with us in the comments section below!