Tag: Salesforce Alternatives CRM

A Checklist Of Six Indisputable Features Of An Effective CRM Software Solution

The customer is the lifeline of your brand, which in turn makes CRM (Customer Relationship Management) the catalyst for the success of your business. This is because easy to use CRM software solutions mostly have simple to use interfaces that are backed by robust algorithms which makes it easier to run businesses by creating active engagements with your customers. Therefore, here are 6 checklists of an effective and great CRM solution for your business growth.

The customer is the lifeline of your brand, which in turn makes CRM (Customer Relationship Management) the catalyst for the success of your business.
This is because easy to use CRM software solutions mostly have simple to use interfaces that are backed by robust algorithms which makes it easier to run businesses by creating active engagements with your customers.
Therefore, here are 6 checklists of an effective and great Features Of An Effective CRM Software Solution for your business growth:

56% of companies targeted their audiences based on CRM data such as purchase transactions, postal address and customer service information. This is expected to rise to 69% in 2020.- SFDC Click To Tweet

1. All Functionalities Within One Single Window

Without jumping between windows, your easy to use CRM must have the ability to aid your team members to view every detail of the actions taken by the customers in a single window.

Easy to use CRM is a solution that is capable of capturing all available information about the customers, leads, and prospects from all sources that include call centers, branches, emails, SMS, web integrations and more in order to offer the best possible personalized service to the customers.

Therefore an effective all-in-one 360-degree CRM view of the prospects and customers in the CRM database creates a unified destination for all customer-facing information that eliminates the requirement for hopping between different silo software platforms.

2. Complex Yet Simple

The success and growth of any company do not hinge on how advanced a technology is that they are using for the success of their business. Rather to say, it depends on how the technology is acting as an enabler to the workforce to make them more productive in their workplace.

Hence right from the start, efficient easy to use CRM should have a simple interface, irrespective of the complexities that are involved in the making and working of the software.

This is because the complexity of the CRM software mostly affects the user’s experience of the solution which can very easily lead to loss of efficiency of the CRM solution even before proper adoption of the software.

3. Easy Integrations

Irrespective of the legacy software solutions that you use, an easy to use CRM that you choose should be able to retrospectively integrate with your businesses’ core IT infrastructure.

In other words, the features and tools of your CRM, be it an enterprise-level robust CRM solution like Salesforce or any other Salesforce Alternative CRM for startups and small business, should actually integrate seamlessly and optimize the operations in your business, rather than create new investment headaches for your organization.

4. Guarantees Customer Satisfaction

Now that you have invested in your easy to use CRM software, the solution should be actively beneficial to fulfill the targets of your business and also the expectation of your customers.

In other words, your easy to use CRM solution should create a customer service platform that addresses proactively all the pain-points of the customers.
It must be a solution that can motivate and persuade your support staffs to cater a more professional service to your customer base.

In fact, right SLAs and quicker resolutions along with defined metrics help in rendering delightful and world-class customer experience.

5. Evaluation and Projections

All business big or small survives under evaluations in terms of their failure and success, upon which companies strategize their very best next moves.

Monitoring tools in an easy to use CRM helps in recording the activities and interactions of customers and employees that relates to their business.

Therefore effective CRM solutions with the aid of this historical data can make digital predictions about demand spikes, market trends, customer sentiments for your brand and more, that can help in shaping a better tomorrow for your company.

6. Flexible, Scalable And Efficient

Finally, for any entrepreneur, their ultimate aim is to grow in capacity and scale in their business.
Therefore, if you know what is a CRM, then what good is a solution if the cost of its upgrade gets in your way?

As the features of any effective CRM are important on a long-term basis, so the easy to use CRM software that you are interested in investing for your business should also expand and be scalable in proportion to your businesses’ growth.

However, this scalability of the software should never compromise the efficiency of the software, as we should always remember that investing in CRM is a long-term commitment that should not be looked through a prism just for bring short term sales and revenue growth.

Conclusion

As we all know a great easy to use CRM translates to greater opportunities in business by providing delightful and happy customer engagements, therefore we suggest all business owners should most essentially consider these six most important factors before finalizing on choosing their CRM system for rapid business growth .

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Why Use CLM CRM For Implementing A Customer-Centric Strategy For Your SMB

There is nothing new about customer-centric organizations. This is because ever since the creation of the Customer Lifetime Management CRM technology or CLM CRM software, the thought that all product decisions should be related back to the customer is like a no-brainer. Nevertheless, this idea feels as vague and unappreciated as ever, as most of us just offer mere lip service to it but do not always honor what we preach. Therefore, it is high time that we must begin thinking of customer-centricity as an objective and not just a principle and better use CLM CRM to enhance the customer lifetime with your brands.

There is nothing new about customer-centric organizations.  This is because ever since the creation of the Customer Lifetime Management CRM technology or CLM CRM software, the thought that all product decisions should be related back to the customer is like a no-brainer. Nevertheless, this idea feels as vague and unappreciated as ever, as most of us just offer mere lip service to it but do not always honor what we preach.

When you create a customer-focused company, you create products or services that your customer enjoys and so wants to repeat that experience again. - Nucleus Research Click To Tweet

Therefore, it is high time that we must begin thinking of customer-centricity as an objective and not just a principle and better use CLM CRM to enhance the customer lifetime with your brands.

What is CLM in a CRM?

Plainly speaking by the books Customer Lifecycle in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a term used that describes the succession of steps a customer goes through when taking into consideration, buying, using, and thereafter upholding their loyalty to a company’s products or services.

Hence, although you and your employees are always pushing yourselves hard to satisfy your customer’s needs, nevertheless being customer-centric requires taking actions, rather than simply making a desire to appear conscientious.

Why is customer-centricity so important?

Keeping buzzwords and business jargon aside, irrespective of whether you are a user of CLM CRM, customer-centricity makes sense in this present digital world.

According to Bill Macaitis, CMO/CRO of Slack:

“The voice of the customer so far has never so strong as it has been now with the growth of social….businesses are increasingly acknowledging the power of word-of-mouth marketing strategies today, and how that starts and ends by providing a great experience for the customers. ”

But how does this translate in the scenarios of our real world? Let us look at the plea from Randy Garutti CEO of Shake Shack to his employees:

“I would like to challenge you to put our company out of its business…because we are so damn generous with what we offer the people who walk in through this door.”

Therefore, his words illustrate a bigger effort to empower his staff to do whatever it takes to build optimal customer experience. Rather it is just not, giving a ladle of custard to an unruly crying kid.

Hence, the big picture is when you create a customer-focused company, you create products or services that your customer enjoys and so wants to repeat that experience again. Customer centricity, therefore, looks at the lifetime value of the customer using different metrics found in CLM CRM, which increases customer satisfaction and reduces churn rate over a period of time.

Common pitfalls of customer-centricity

Now, if acting customer-centric is so easy and understandable, why then it is so challenging?

There are three major challenges in being customer-centric that Forrester sited in their Vendor Landscape report (2015):

Lack of clarity: Not all in an organization understands the definition of the experience that their company is willing to deliver to its customers.

Failure to affect company culture: No organization can implement a customer-centric culture in an organization without embedding it in all parts of the establishment.

Loss of interest: Cultural transformation is not the end goal; rather employees need to practice customer-centricity with unsuppressed intentions and focus that should be a perennial process and not just as a temporary fad.

The biggest issue with customer-centricity is that cannot be classified as a singular project. Since being customer-centric is a collection of all the actions and activities that an organization performs- right from mundane everyday decisions to company-wide initiatives.

How can you implement a customer-centric strategy?

Therefore how can you make the practices in your business reflect all about the customer in this consumer-obsessed market?

So underneath are a few researched tips to make your business more customer-oriented in this present world:

  1. Truthfully consider that the customer always comes first

You cannot fake caring about your customers; you need to employ passionate and genuine employees who want to view your business through your customer’s eyes. For this, you need to make your company’s core value the heart of any onboarding practice, and continually support your commitment to these tenets.

  1. Measure the customer experience

It is important that you must always measure the success of your customer-centric in order to practice what you are preaching to your employees in your organization. Using a CLM CRM software platform, you can gauge your rate of churn and even NPS (Net Promotion Score) as a baseline.

NPS is calculated and measured in one simple and straightforward question: Would you recommend this company to a relative or friend?

  1. Let feedback drive your improvement

Once you are gauging your customer’s experience and going after your customer’s ever-changing desires and needs, let that feedback lead to real changes in your products, services, and your company.

Conclusion

Businesses are not going to shut down this customer-centric trend anytime soon, so what does that signify for consumers and their competitors?

Well, it implies more of digital marketing (including interactive materials like blogs, newsletters, eBooks, and videos), and automated marketing, with the help of business growth technology like CLM CRM software solutions, which can be even found in best small and medium business CRM software platforms for SMBs.

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Three “Not” Easy To Use CRM Features That Can Overcomplicate Your Small Business

In a world of Walmart(s) and Amazon(s), startups and small businesses are ever-wondering how they can compete against million dollar establishments if they are incapable of spending more on marketing, sales and customer service for the growth of their business. This is because; enterprise companies can easily afford to throw in thousands and even millions on finding the right customization, and spend on robust CRM software solutions, while on the other hand small businesses, are always on tight budgets and therefore cannot afford to spend on CRMs like Salesforce but look for same feature-rich solution in Salesforce Alternatives CRM solutions like ConvergeHub and others in the easy to use CRM space.

In a world of Walmart(s) and Amazon(s), startups and small businesses are ever-wondering how they can compete against million dollar establishments if they are incapable of spending more on marketing, sales and customer service for the growth of their business.
This is because; enterprise companies can easily afford to throw in thousands and even millions on finding the right customization, and spend on robust CRM software solutions, while on the other hand small businesses, are always on tight budgets and therefore cannot afford to spend on CRMs like Salesforce but look for same feature-rich solution in Salesforce Alternatives CRM solutions like ConvergeHub and others in the easy to use CRM space.

More than 13% of startups and small businesses plan to augment their spending on cloud based CRM software solutions in 2019- Keap Click To Tweet

Now, it might seem like increasing the budget on your CRM software will also increase the benefits of the software, which explains as to why according to Keap (a private company that offers an e-mail marketing and sales platform for small businesses) more than 13% of startups and small businesses plan to augment their spending on cloud based CRM software solutions in 2019.

However, SMB establishments should be cautious of buyer’s remorse, especially when it comes to adopting costly CRM software like Salesforce, as according to Amazon Web Services nearly 50% of its CRM licenses remain unused.

Hence, where is the disconnect?

Why is it that so many startups and small businesses are leaving their hard earned money on the table?

This is because, more often than not, small businesses are using a piece of software that was not built with them in mind.

The Power of Simplicity

In the past, CRM vendors sold feature-rich and pricy CRM software platforms because at that point of time Customer Relationship Management software solutions served only large organizations that needed the complexity.

However today’s CRM solutions are accessible to all businesses of all sizes, but nevertheless what works for an enterprise does not necessarily translate to the SMB space.

For example, there are CRM companies that started by marketing their products to small businesses, since the early versions of their CRM software solutions were too simple for enterprise needs.
However, with the passage of time it is not uncommon for these CRM companies to move up-market as their CRM platforms became more complicated in order to acquire those enterprise level sales, which when happens makes the CRM that once fit a small business just right becomes excessively expensive and complicated, and ultimately unusable for the initial users of their software.

Admittedly, bleeding-edge CRM features are not going anywhere. Large establishments can afford more complex software solutions as organizations of their stature demands high-tech solutions, but it must also be remembered that a product is only valuable as long as it meets your needs.

Therefore, here are three CRM features that are usually not needed by small businesses and so indicate that these features might be designed for a business having a bigger budget and different needs.

  1. AI and Machine Learning

Over the next couple of years, we will see more and more business software companies promoting AI (Artificial Intelligence) and Machine Learning in their cloud based CRM software solutions with the promise of delivering dead accurate forecasting in sales, lead scoring and for predicting the future health of a company.
However, the question that immediately comes to our minds is how much of this is a marketing hype with very little payoff for startups and small businesses?

Considering that Machine Learning is capable of combing through massive data-sets in order to find patterns, ML and AI might be valuable for big enterprise-level organizations; however, SMB(s) do not have enough data in their CRM database to justify this investment.

This is because, as a startup or a small business, you simply do not need a CRM with ML to understand which lead to focus on and which ones are most likely to close.

In fact, what you need for your SMB setup is a bird’s-eye 360-degree view of all your deals, with a customizable sales pipeline feature that permits tacking of existing customers, prospects, and projects which is readily found in most easy to use Salesforce Alternative CRM software and so using easy to use CRM solutions like ConvergeHub and others that are exclusively designed for small businesses you can use its sales pipeline to sort or filter your leads by priority and glean other insights from reporting.

  1. AI Powered Automation

Large organizations require AI-powered automation since they are trying to turn their processes into an assembly line and they need to make sure that their individual employees is adhering to a specific procedure.
However, heavy automation is not only expensive but it is also most confusing to many and most importantly it eliminates the human touch that is required for the growth of small businesses.

This is because startups and small businesses require personal interactions rather than lightening-speed efficiency to provide them with a competitive edge.

Therefore, instead of relying on your AI-powered computers to tell you when and how you should interact with your leads, prospects, and customers it is more pragmatic to rely on simple reminder feature in the CRM software to schedule purposeful and effective follow-ups.

According to a study by a leading Salesforce Alternative CRM platform on lead management studies, sales reps should call their leads and prospects at least 6 times before giving up and therefore by staying on top of the reminder tool in your easy to use CRM, most small businesses will be more likely to close their deals more effectively.

  1. Advanced Reporting

In large establishments, executives, departmental heads and managers require a plethora of sartorial and customizable reporting dashboards in their CRM make sure that they hit their business goals.

However, in a small business, managers and entrepreneur(s) often do not require complex reporting, but just need a quick snapshot of all the prospects and leads, a summary of their last month’s deals, each support and sales rep’s activities, which are not vanity metrics but data that you can actually work on.

Conclusion

Therefore, as a startup or a small business, you need to invest in an easy to use CRM that works for your business, and not against you.

It is natural that companies like Salesforce and others will never stop from developing CRM solutions that are bloated with features (it is how they make money), but you as an entrepreneur of an SMB you need to understand and evaluate what you require out of your best small business CRM software and what you do not for rapid business growth .

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