How CRM Can Humanize Customer Engagement

You already know that CRM is pivotal for any successful business, and that a successful CRM strategy can quickly accelerate sales cycles and improve customer care. But what you may not know is exactly how CRM is actually being used by businesses, and how it’s really affecting the bottom line.

Here’s what you should know:

Once implemented, most organizations use their CRM system for contact management or as an address book.

These same businesses blame the CRM system for uninspiring results, but it’s the under utilization of the system that’s causing less-than-desired outcomes.

CRM is about better customer engagement, improving productivity, and increasing sales. It helps infuse pro-activeness and keeps new and existing customers happy. In addition, as CRM integrates different processes and operations, it enables the user to see and hear customer feedback and activities from multiple touch points.

But technology alone cannot succeed. CRM is about adopting the platform fully, and embracing its capabilities across your organization.

“I think there is one underlying, fundamental reason for the poor implementation of CRM. Ready? It's intention. That's it. One word with a huge meaning.”
-Adrian Davis, “Human to Human Selling”

A tool-based approach to CRM is not enough. To improve performance and generate more leads, organizations must adopt a customer-focused CRM strategy. This outlook expands the opportunity to humanize a brand and It provides significant customer insights. Here’s how.

Flexible Personality

CRM is flexible enough to scale to align with your unique business needs, and can integrate seamlessly with third-party applications to bridge any remaining gaps.

It makes data capture effortless. You can alter its personality by automating processes, adding predictive analysis and performance measurement. It can play different strokes for different folks.

A modern CRM system is robust enough to cope with changes in business environments and help solve problems in novel, creative ways. It can better anticipate changes and help support your business through new challenges.

Analytical Thinking

Today’s CRM's are more than just tracking and reporting. They give you deeper capability and flexibility to do more.

CRM analytics give a 360-degree view of your customers; who they are, where they are, buying behaviors, and how productive they can be for business.

Easily evaluate patterns and predictions in customer data gathered from various operational CRM systems. With this information you can identify and target prospects, and then deliver them the right offer, at the right time.

Easily predict, scale, and optimize customer relations in an intelligent way. You can build specific campaigns based on customer values, spending habits, affinity, segmentation, and more.

Interactive UI

A successful sales strategy consists of interacting with customers in multiple ways, even after a transaction is made. Be it customer support, social media, or email, your team is expected to deliver a solid customer experience at every touch point. To make your job easier, your CRM system can act like an interactive canvas; keeping you updated with important customer information and interactions in real-time. This enables you to stay ahead of the curve with your customers, and see more profitable results.

With this feature, your team is capable of creating a more personalized experience with every interaction. This approach helps you set your business apart and could be the key ingredient that turns a new prospect into a loyal customer.

Responsive Nature

Success in today's business environment requires that you are consistently responsive no matter when and where your customers contact you.

Today’s CRM enables you to keep customer information, buying history, and other critical information updated and accessible across different devices. With this type of access, you can act with more agility, making the customer’s experience consistent and relevant.

The anywhere, anytime power of a CRM system empowers businesses to make the right decisions and provide the best answers during customer interactions; it makes it possible to respond quickly when new opportunities appear or when old conditions change.

After reviewing the benefits of a fully integrated CRM system, it’s clear that unmet business objectives may often be the result of unclear requirements, lack of collaboration between departments, and failing to adopt the CRM system fully.

The true key to CRM success is the human element. When beginning your CRM project, make sure the first step includes aligning the needs and desires of all potential users. Next, invest the time required to gather a complete set of requirements. Finally, plan for proper training and support, to simplify the learning curve and gain universal adoption.

You’ve put a lot of time and effort into your CRM implementation — don’t lose customers by not utilizing its full potential. Humanize your CRM.