One of the most important tools you’ll need to implement is a customer relationship management (CRM) system. A CRM gives you a centralized platform to store customer information and manage every interaction regardless of the touch point. While you may not have many customers right now, you are growing. A CRM is essential to satisfying customers, and it is easiest to implement earlier rather than later.

In this post, you’ll learn what you should look for in a CRM for a startup and why Insightly is the best solution for getting your business off the ground.

Why your startup needs a CRM

Your new startup doesn’t come with customers. As such, it may seem like a waste of capital to invest in a platform for managing customers when you don’t have many. It is natural to believe that you can wait until your business is established with a solid number of customers before you can see tangible rewards from a CRM. 

However, every startup can benefit from a CRM. The reason is that the success of every business, regardless of industry, is based on providing the best possible customer experience. By taking on a customer-first approach early in your business, you establish a strong precedent and ensure that every customer you add has the experience that will allow you to move forward in the market.

Here are some of the things you can achieve by adopting a CRM for your startup:

Prioritize and organize your work

In a startup, there is no shortage of responsibilities to juggle. How do you know what is important enough to merit your utmost attention? And, how do you keep track of everything so that your business can operate efficiently?

A CRM tool gives you a centralized place to store all your important tasks and the information about leads and customers. When you have all your customer data in a single place, you get a clear picture of where to spend your time and energy. Founders, managers, marketers, and sales teams will all be on the same page, regardless of location or time zone, and your team can act quickly to foster your business’s growth.

Generate new leads and customers 

A strong sales pipeline is key to gaining your first customers. A CRM system helps you capture leads and move them through your sales process while automatically routing leads to the best sales rep. You get a detailed understanding of how effective your sales pipeline is. You can see where you are losing potential customers in your sales process and which activities are yielding the best results.

Manage contacts and partnerships

In the digital world, organizations rely on a variety of communication methods to engage their customers and business partners. A CRM connects all interactions across touch points for you so that you can manage your contacts from a single platform. Sales, marketing, customer support, and any other team working to build strong relationships will have this information at their fingertips.

You don’t have to worry about losing track of a conversation. CRM software can store details from every conversation in one place instead of spreading them out in spreadsheets and notebooks. You can also use a CRM to set up automatic reminders to ensure you regularly check in with your valuable contacts.

What to look for in the best CRM for startups

Now that you know why your startup needs a CRM, let’s look at some of the key features to look for in CRM software for startups:

Affordability

First, you should evaluate CRM platforms on affordability. Every dollar counts in the early stage of your business, and you don’t want to overspend on any of the tools. A CRM price should reflect the level of functionality the platform offers. 

Many CRM providers scale their pricing based on the number of users you enroll. As a new business, your initial costs should be on the lower end as you won’t need spots for many users.

Be sure to keep an eye out for hidden charges. Some platforms don’t make their key features available unless you purchase additional add-ons. Others will charge for integrations if you want to connect the CRM to your other tools.

It‘s also beneficial to look for a tool with a free trial (or even a free plan for 1-2 users). This will allow you to try out the platform before committing to paying for the software.

Flexibility

No other business is quite like yours. The intricacies of your operation are what makes it special. The right CRM will be flexible and customizable to add fields, pipelines, processes and the like to fit to your organization – not the other way around. 

Task and email automation

In the fast-paced startup environment, making the most of your time is critical. Everyone on your team can benefit from reducing the amount of tasks needed throughout their daily activities.

A good CRM for startups lets you set up automated workflows to handle routine tasks. Generating reports, sending email follow-ups, and scheduling tasks are some of the common functions you can automate with a CRM.

This automation helps everyone on your team increase their productivity so that the startup can move with greater agility.

Reporting

Visual reporting gives you a real-time overview of the current state and success of your business. This helps you understand the number of deals you have open, the value of opportunities in your sales pipeline, how well you convert deals to sales, where your best leads come from, and more.

Integrations

A CRM gives you a powerful tool for managing many parts of your business, but it is not the only tool you will need to use. To extend the efficiencies afforded by a CRM to every area of your business, you want a platform with ready-made integrations for other popular tools. For example, integrating your CRM with accounting software like Quickbooks can streamline record keeping and invoicing. Or integrating your CRM with Slack can improve communication throughout your organization, allow you to act on new leads fast or share wins in real time.

Scalability

Your business may be small now, but it won’t be forever. As your startup grows, you will have bigger teams, more leads, and more contacts. You need a CRM solution that can grow with you as your business expands. You’ll want to map out the features you’ll need down the road and see if you can get them now while staying within your budget. Even if you need to pay a little more upfront, it could end up being less of a hassle than needing to migrate platforms in the middle of more extensive operations.

Ease of use is a key part of scalability. When you need to onboard a lot of sales reps, you want to get them up and running quickly so that they can spend time engaging customers. Plus, you don’t want to add more work for your experienced team to take the time to train new team members.

CRM first 

There is a distinct difference between a platform designed for managing customer relationships versus one that is designed for marketing as a whole. There are many marketing platforms that were built as a marketing tool that retroactively added CRM functionality.

Two good examples are Hubspot and ActiveCampaign. One was designed as a more generic marketing platform, while the other originated as an email autoresponder that eventually added more traditional CRM features.

A ‘CRM first’ platform that was built around the needs of sales leaders and is much more effective in building quality relationships with your customers. It prioritizes pipeline management and visualization, so you always know exactly where you stand when it comes to winning new deals. Plus, it will provide you with unified profiles for each contact so that you can engage them in a more meaningful manner, all from a single platform.

Insightly is the best startup CRM

Insightly is a powerful CRM for startups of all sizes. The platform is easy to get started with, customizable, and it provides you with a single, comprehensive tool for managing every aspect of your customer experience. Here are some of the key reasons Insightly is the best CRM for startups.

Highly customizable

Your business is unique. You should have the flexibility to create and name fields that work just for your business without writing lines of code or hiring an integrator. Insightly lets you tailor the CRM to your business (read: geeks love us). You can add unlimited custom fields to your records, and you can customize each stage of your pipeline to match your sales process.

The interface is highly customizable, allowing you to apply various views and filters to make the platform easy to navigate. You can create stunning data visualizations with simple drag and drop builders so that the information you need is always at your fingertips.

Start for free

You cannot overstate the importance of affordability for a startup CRM. Insightly removes any worry from a potential purchase by letting you use the platform for free for up to two users. Your free account includes all the CRM’s key features for you to get a real understanding of the platform’s capabilities before you buy. No commitment or payment method is required.

As you add teams, don’t add more vendors

You shouldn’t have to complicate your startup with too many vendors as it will inevitably slow down your growth. When you add a marketing team and a customer service team, Insightly has you covered with Insightly Marketing, a full-featured marketing automation solution, and Insightly Service, a help desk ticketing solution to service your accounts.

Insightly unites these functions so all of your teams can work from the same tool. Data is centralized to provide a complete 360-degree view of each lead, contact, and customer to keep everyone on the same page.

The AppConnect integration suite lets you seamlessly connect the CRM to the tools that you already use (e.g. HR, accounting, and communication apps). With the no-code integration engine, you can create automated workflows between apps without the need for technical expertise.

Grow faster with Insightly

The right CRM can help your startup find early success and set the stage for future growth. Insightly understands the unique needs of startups and has created a fully customizable platform that can be tailored to your business.

Don’t wait until you’re no longer a small business to make the most of a CRM. Get started with a free trial today to start your business on the right foot.

The post Best Startup CRM: Launch Your Business with Insightly appeared first on Insightly.

One of the most effective ways to ensure the best experience for your customers is to use a customer relationship management (CRM) system designed to handle the complexities of financial organizations.

In this post, we will look at why your company needs finance CRM software and what you should look for when selecting the best CRM for companies in the finance industry.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

• Why you need a CRM for your financial organization
• How to improve customer relationships with a financial services CRM
• What to look for in the best CRM for finance companies
• Why Insightly is the best financial services CRM
• How to grow your financial business with Insightly

Why you need a CRM for your financial organization

There are two keys to the success of your financial organization; expanding your customer base and maintaining long-lasting relationships with each individual customer. To build meaningful relationships, you need to provide efficient services along with the solutions that are most appropriate to them. This requires understanding their unique needs, knowing the ins and outs of their industry, and showing how you can help them achieve their goals.

With an ever-increasing number of options available, customers have no shortage of places to go to for their desired financial services. The quality of your products and services matters. But, it is the companies that provide seamless, thoughtful, personalized experiences to customers that stand out. Those that fail to create top-notch experiences risk falling behind their competitors.

There are many tools financial companies use to manage their customer experience. Some are new and some are ripe for replacement. Like any customer-focused industry, financial companies today know that CRM systems are a necessity to meet sales and marketing goals while exceeding customer expectations.

A CRM helps you keep track of all your customers to ensure that you always have essential information and communication history at your fingertips. It can streamline the process of managing customer relationships, giving teams more freedom to provide great service. CRM software is also integral for winning new clients by organizing lead capture, follow-up and close. 

How to improve customer relationships with a financial services CRM

Now that you know why a CRM is critical to your financial business, it is important to understand how you can use the right platform to improve customer relationships and ultimately grow your revenue. Let’s examine some key finance CRM use cases and how they can help your business:

Streamline your processes

With a single system for managing customer relationships, your team can access client information swiftly to gather essential knowledge on any account. Details for any communication between a customer and an employee, whether online or in-person, can be added to the CRM in real-time. When the customers need assistance in the future, your staff will see the notes from all prior interactions allowing them to be better suited to help the individual. This helps eliminate duplicate conversations that can easily frustrate customers and make them feel you are indifferent to their needs.

Improve sales and marketing with unified data

Data from your CRM  helps you gain a better understanding of your customers. The best CRM solutions let you create detailed reports and charts to highlight key data points. This makes it easy to share valuable information across your team. You can use these insights to improve future marketing efforts by identifying trends from successful campaigns.

Better collaboration between teams

Having to hop between multiple apps to get customer information is a hassle. By creating a single unified profile for each customer, the whole team can quickly get any piece of information. This makes collaboration effortless and reduces the amount of time needed to provide great service to customers.

Boost customer retention

Financial businesses need healthy relationships with their clients if they hope to retain them long term. This can prove challenging in today’s world, where in-person interaction is no longer the norm, and most contact happens digitally. A CRM serves as a vital thread to connect your business with your customers. It gives you the data necessary to proactively create personalized services that meet customer expectations. When your clients feel that you listen to them and understand their needs, there is less reason to move along to another service provider.

What to look for in the best CRM for finance companies

Finding the right CRM for your financial business is vital to your success. Just as sales processes differ between organizations and industries, so will the specific needs for a CRM. That said, there are some core functionalities every financial services company should look for when evaluating CRM options. Below are the key features to look for:

Data security

Data security is critical in the financial industry. In addition to guarding clients’ personal information and records, the entire system needs to be well protected against malicious attacks. The best CRM platforms understand these concerns and provide world-class security measures. This includes encryption, role-based access control, security protocols, and data backups, among others.

Automation

The best finance CRMs include workflows to automate business processes. This eliminates the need for your team to manually complete repetitive tasks and therefore enhances their productivity. You can use automation to streamline various tasks, such as sending email follow-ups or onboarding a new client.

Ease of use

All the features in the world won’t do much good if the platform is difficult to use. Your team may be great at consulting, but that doesn’t mean they are software gurus. For this reason, choosing a CRM that you can understand and that is easy to use is one of the most important things to consider when evaluating different solutions.

Customization and integrations

While it’s important for your CRM to be easy to use, it is also important that you can customize it to fit your particular needs. Do you have a specific process that may necessitate a custom field? Perhaps you have an extra step in your onboarding? The best CRMs let you easily customize views, workflows, and dashboards, according to your business without hiring expensive experts or paying exorbitant fees. They also come with plenty of integrations with other applications in your tech stack. These integrations boost efficiency even more by reducing the need to juggle multiple apps perform crucial tasks. However, the integrations must be easy to implement with little or no code required to again avoid expenses. 

Why Insightly is the best financial services CRM

The best financial services CRM covers more than just the basics. It makes it easy to mold your approach for each particular client’s needs so that you can plan their economic future effectively.

Insightly stands out as a user-friendly CRM built to create unforgettable experiences while enhancing your team’s productivity. It’s customizable and scalable, ready to support your business as you attract more and more customers.

Here are some of the key features that make Insightly the best CRM for finance companies:

Automated emails

Whether it’s pitching new leads or following up with prospects in your pipeline, email is the fastest and most trusted way to communicate with your audience. You can create and send emails from within Insightly in a few clicks, or send out bulk emails to a list of contacts or leads with ease. Insightly tracks email delivery to customers in real-time and monitors open and click statistics for all email templates—it even notifies you when emails are opened.

Contact management

Managing tons of clients on different platforms or in spreadsheets is not efficient. Insightly connects a wide range of data points to consolidate all your clients into one unified solution. You can save notes for each contact so that your team knows the details from every prior interaction. Insightly also maps and links customers based on their emails and other records to help you understand relationships and visualize an organization’s structure.

Workflow automation

Monotonous processes like data entry and scheduling repetitive tasks are not the best use of time. Whether it’s planning events, updating records, or assigning tasks, Insightly automates your workflow, enabling you to simplify complex multi-step business processes. Save your valuable time to better engage with and serve your clients, find new opportunities, and increase revenue generation.

Grow your financial business with Insightly

Financial services today are driven by the customer experience. Companies that make the effort to understand and serve the individual needs of their customers will create the long-lasting client relationships needed to sustain success. Doing so is next to impossible without a high-quality CRM to build unified customer profiles and streamline business operations.

Insightly is designed for mid-sized businesses seeking to align their teams while creating world-class experiences for their customers. Try out Insightly CRM today with a free trial or a personalized demo to see how it can help your financial organization.

The post Best CRM for Financial Organizations: Build Client Loyalty With Insightly appeared first on Insightly.

As technology converges and start-ups grow, businesses and consumers have more choices than ever. Smart executives know that the customer experience is what is going to win in today’s crowded marketplace. 

But you’ve got this, right? You’ve mapped the customer journey and you’ve analyzed the customer experience (CX). Customer support is the pride and joy of your company. Your execs think that customers are thrilled with your service. 

But are they?

According to a recent survey commissioned by Insightly and conducted by Zogby Analytics, there is a disconnect between what consumers say and what companies believe. 

Only 6% of consumers say a company’s customer support always exceeds expectations but 35% of business decision makers believe that their company always exceeds customers’ expectations.

Ouch.

There’s a CX disconnect  

Maybe your CX team isn’t killing it? Check out these stats:

About a third of Americans (31%) would rather wait in line at the DMV than try to resolve an issue with a company or service. They would also learn a TikTok dance with their kid (18%), get a tooth pulled (14%), or stay with their in-laws for a month (10%).

Why would anyone choose these awful alternatives to simply placing a call with customer service? According to the study, they say they fear being ignored (30%), having to repeat oneself to multiple departments (30%) and length of time to get the issue identified (27%).

How does your customer support process work? Would your customers ever feel ignored during the process, get stuck in ‘a phone tree of frustration,’ or spend an unreasonable amount of time on the phone? 

When was the last time you tested it? Listened to calls? Sent in a social media message to see the response?

It’s always a good time to examine your processes and look for incremental improvements. 

Appreciating your customer support team

Don’t ever underestimate what it takes to answer support calls. You need a deep understanding of your product and your customers, plus a whole lot of empathy. These team members start each day knowing that every time they pick up a call, they may be dealing with an irate person. 

Business decision makers on the same Insightly survey don’t seem to have the personality to perform the functions that their support teams do. 

For example, 44 percent of business decision makers surveyed said they’d rather enter data in a spreadsheet than deal with a call from an angry customer, while three in 10 said they would do almost anything other than take an angry call, like sit on an 8-hour Zoom call (13%) or sit next to a crying baby on a cross-country flight (15%).

How do we show this team how awesome they truly are? First off, put National Customer Service Week on your calendar. It’s typically the first week in October. Use this as an opportunity to recognize your team’s hard work. But don’t wait for a special occasion; check in on the team and ensure they have the leadership, tools, and bandwidth to make every engagement a successful one. 

CX shows up on the bottom line

There is good news here, too. Unlike the external threats to your business like emerging competitors, market forces, economic downturns and the like, customer experience is something you fully control.

Data from the same study reveals just how powerful this can be.

When customers are unhappy, businesses worry that they will complain to customer service (23%), complain on social media (56%) or, even worse, choose a different provider (21%).

However, when happy, American consumers are most likely to tell all their friends (27%), tell the company (25%), write a comment on review sites (23%) and post about it on social media (15%).

These actions should sound familiar since they are all characteristics of brand advocates. According to Entrepreneur.com, brand advocates are super fans and brand loyalists who engage with the brand because they truly love it and will take action if asked.

If you reframe calls and outreach to customer service as an opportunity to create brand advocates, you start a cycle that fills the top of your funnel with new leads. 

Feed the top of the funnel with successful CX

After seeing these statistics, what are some action steps that leaders like you can take today? 

• Examine closed tickets. Don’t just read them. Look at the time stamps. Look at the length of the calls. Listen to the calls if possible. How can each interaction be studied and improved the next time?
• Reframe your mindset on support. Every time the phone rings or an email is submitted is an opportunity to create a positive experience and produce a brand advocate. Think about the things that people said they would rather do than talk to you (e.g. learning a TikTok dance), and then elevate their experience by delighting them.
• Some people will never be happy. Ensure you have ‘no blame culture’ from the top. Frame those negative customer interactions as learning experiences for the team without blaming team members, product, sales, etc.
• Encourage leadership to personally call random customers regularly and check-in to see how they are doing. They could potentially intercept a problem before it snowballs, but they will also gain an understanding of what’s going on daily on the front lines.

Manage relationships with Insightly Service

Your customer service team needs a powerful tool to meet the needs of your customer base. Wouldn’t it be ideal if your tool for customer service was part of the same suite of products as your CRM and marketing automation platform? So the sales, marketing and customer service teams are aligned on a single, powerful platform?

Built on Insightly’s platform, Insightly Service is a customer service and support ticketing product designed to work seamlessly across the business applications that companies are already using. With Insightly Service, critical data is shared across departments and in real-time, so that all customer-facing teams are aligned and empowered to have more relevant conversations that drive customer satisfaction and success.  

Insightly Service can be bundled with the entire Insightly suite of customer relationship management applications and is also available for purchase as a standalone customer service and support product. 

Get a demo of Insightly Service today.

The post CX survey shows companies overestimate customer support satisfaction appeared first on Insightly.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) implementation is an essential ingredient for a successful CRM project. Our team has helped more than 25,000 businesses successfully implement their CRM system to meet their unique business needs, and we’ve done so with companies of all sizes, across many industries. 

Here is the CRM implementation process developed over years of onboarding new customers. Read on and see how you can optimize it for the best CRM rollout at your company.

Why you need a CRM Implementation Plan

Up to 69% of CRM projects fail because of poor implementation. If done incorrectly, your users will be frustrated or worse. A poor experience could lead to lost customer trust and even lost revenue as customers move away from your business solutions. 

A successful implementation of your CRM makes all the difference in user adoption, customer data integrity, and, ultimately, ROI and your bottom line. It ensures your team will be productive and happy with your system. It also ensures your new CRM software will have enhanced functionality and contribute to customer retention. 

13 Steps To Successful CRM Software Implementation

Whether you run a small business, are heading a start-up, or planning a new CRM system for a large company, your CRM implementation strategy matters. 

Not only will it streamline your sales process and make life easier for different end-users on your team (especially your sales reps), but the right CRM will improve customer satisfaction and enhance workflow for salespeople and managers alike. 

Despite the compelling reasons to switch, organizations continually find themselves settling for what’s familiar. The simple truth is that CRMs can feel risky and costly at first glance – which means staying put feels like a safer choice than taking this leap into uncertainty. 

Here are the 10 steps Insightly takes with every client to maintain our unbeatable customer satisfaction track record. 

1. Gather Your CRM Implementation Team

Before starting the process, you’ll need two key elements to build your team: a CRM owner or sponsor and a CRM implementation team that includes cross-functional specialists and advocates. 

Choose an owner

By choosing an owner, you not only gain a crucial resource to help communicate business needs throughout the organization, but you also get someone committed to its success. Shared ownership for multifaceted CRM implementations can result in no ownership at all, leading to poor and ineffective implementations.

Structure your team

Below is a typical CRM implementation team with cross-functional specialists and advocates.

• Owner: This person will guide and offer organizational perspective and own its success.
• Project Manager: This person will act as the leader throughout the CRM planning process. 
• Application Developer: Their role will be to oversee system customization. 
• Application Analyst: Responsibilities include data cleansing and migration. 
• QA Test Engineer: This person will lead testing efforts. 

Involve stakeholders and future users

Additionally, you’ll need to gather a sampling of representatives from all essential user groups to ensure everyone’s voice is heard. 

• Sales Managers
• Sales Team
• Delivery Managers
• Marketing Managers
• Marketing Team 
• Customer Service Reps 
• Project Managers 

As you gather your team, it’s crucial to think about each member’s role within the CRM implementation project. They are there to help your company meet the goals and KPIs set when you decided to choose a CRM system. 

Pick team members who believe in CRM, can get others on board, and will work to make it a success. 

2. Benchmark your current CRM performance

What are you currently using for a CRM or in place of a CRM (e.g. spreadsheets) Take some time to document what is working with your current system and where there are gaps. Many of these may be the exact reason you started looking for a new system. This data will come in handy post-implementation as a way to see if the major pain points were resolved with your new system. 

3. Assess Your Needs And Define Your Goals/KPIs

The next step is to figure out what solutions your CRM technology will offer your company. Identify goals you want to achieve by outlining how you expect your team to use the CRM system. 

After you run a CRM needs assessment, you are ready to set goals. Your goals for the new system need to include tangible, specific results that are measurable by your business performance within a particular time frame. Established goals will help you identify an actionable plan. 

How to define your CRM goals

Take a look at some examples of measurable goals you can use to design your own. 

Consider CRM pricing at this stage since it may expand or contract the providers you can consider. For instance, Salesforce is a high-priced CRM for the Fortune 500. Microsoft Dynamics is as well. Are those in your price range? Likely not. Does your organization have an ERP? Do you have an ecommerce platform? These considerations may limit the pool of CRMs from which your team can choose. A tool like HubSpot may be appealing, but keep in mind that it was a marketing automation platform first, so it’s CRM function isn’t its strength. Plus, it’s on the pricer side as well. Should it be considered?

When you create goals from your company’s unique needs, you will improve your CRM implementation plan by designing the most useful CRM solution. 

4. Collect And Prepare Your Data

Data management is a big headache that is often overlooked during the CRM implementation process. If not done correctly, it can result in higher implementation costs. Manipulating data once it’s been imported is challenging because the new CRM will use it in a new way. With this in mind, you’ll want to strive to get it right the first time.

Collect existing customer data

It’s important to determine ahead of time what customer data needs to be brought over to the new CRM system and where it is currently located. Your team will also need to identify how they will use it in the new CRM. While bringing over everything may sound like a good idea, you don’t want to clog up your new system with non-actionable data. Be selective.

Build your data model

Once you’ve decided what will be migrated, build a model and see how that data maps from your old system to your new system. Take time and put a lot of detail in this step. It will save you many questions down the road.

Choose the right CRM fields

Your team can transfer company, contact, and contract data from your existing business systems by simply using a CSV file generated through a spreadsheet. Ensure that the data goes into the right fields using the model you set up in the previous step. If custom fields are in order, now is a great time to create and populate them.

Most CRMs have a tool that will automate the import process. Since every solution handles data migration differently, you’ll need to evaluate what is required from the get-go. This will depend on your CRM vendor and can impact your implementation costs drastically. Insightly makes it easy to cleanse your data and migrate all of your data. 

5. Setup Your CRM Properly

Your new system is shiny and clean…yay! You’ve determined how to load your data so it’s all in the right place. Now it’s time to think through the administrative functions. Who needs access to what? You want to provide as much information as possible to users without jeopardizing security and opening yourself up to issues with personally identifiable information (PII). Giving someone too much access is typically worse than giving someone not enough access, so err on the side of caution here.

6. Connect Your CRM Integrations

The beauty of CRM integration is that you connect apps you already use into the new technology, allowing your team to access unified data from a singular platform. It saves time and makes your team feel more interconnected. 

You’ll also want to integrate any program known to enhance the customer experience and automate business processes.

Here are some of the most popular integrations: 

• Communication Platforms
• Accounting Packages 
• Social Media Management Tools 
• Lead Generation Programs 
• Email Applications and Automation Programs 
• Analytics Tools 
• Live Chat Programs 
• Project Management Tools 
• Help Desk Applications 

The downside of integrations is that, with some systems, they can be complex and expensive. For example, legacy CRMs like Salesforce typically require you hire an integration partner or use your dedicated Salesforce team to create an integration. Newer, modern CRMs make integrations significantly easier.

Insightly has endless integration possibilities that are low-code/no code via AppConnect. AppConnect offers customized integration that will align all of your teams and processes to eliminate the need for time-consuming manual tasks. This will allow you to close deals at a faster pace. 

7. Import And Verify Your CRM Data

You’re getting closer to success with your new CRM system. You’ve done the prep work above to model out and plan your data migration. You’ve isolated the data that will be brought over. Now, it’s time for one last cleansing session. 

Clean up your CRM data

It’s vital to cleanse your data before transitioning to a CRM platform. You know the types of data you want to bring and the data you want to leave, but within the data you want to bring, you should be critical. Your team should review it to ensure unnecessary data is removed and data that you will transfer is formatted properly. This last cleansing step will ensure your new system is top notch. 

It’s time!  Now it’s time to make the move; it’s time to import it to your new CRM system. 

Once the transition is complete, verify that the data has been imported successfully by testing a few processes against the old system. This will make the rest of the implementation process much smoother since you can identify and fix any issues before you get too far into the project.

8. Test Your CRM Implementation 

As you near the end of your implementation process, you’ll need to test your CRM software to verify it’s fully functional and works according to the requirements of your business needs. 

As you test, you’ll see how each component works, and evaluate customer touch points connected to the CRM to ensure they work properly and will not impede the customer experience. 

Here are the key elements you need to test:

• Contacts: Ensure all data fields assigned are fillable and recognizable. 
• Pipeline Tracking: Check management systems to see if deal columns match the sales process. 
• Automated Tasks: Look to see if triggers for automated tasks work correctly. 
• Email Capture: Email exchanges should be connected to the proper contact, and dual email sync works as it should. 
• Website Forms: Ensure all forms display correctly, all present fields are fillable, and a completed form is routed to the proper channels. 
• Migrated Data: Double check that all imported records match the appropriate fields and no duplicate data exists. 
• Integrations: Review all of your company’s integrated apps to ensure they are correctly connected. 

No matter your level of experience, CRMs are typically simple to set up and maintain. Insightly offers support for all aspects of your new CRM features to ensure a smooth integration. 

9. Onboard And Train Your First CRM Users 

Now that you’ve tested your new CRM and rolled out all components, it’s time to offer CRM training to your first users. While onboarding for all new tech is an important step, the onboarding for a CRM is likely the most critical process your business will face.  If this process doesn’t go well, the CRM will be useless and the implementation will likely fail.

How to onboard your first CRM users

Starting with a beta group is a good approach. Identify this group and put them through your planned onboarding training sessions. Then, sit back and listen. What went well? What areas are they struggling in? What were the common questions? Use this intel to bolster your training program before rolling it out to all teams.

When showing people how the system works, follow a hybried approach: allow them to watch a live demonstration, followed by some hands-on training. 

Be sure to collect your team’s feedback to discover critical insights on improving the system and making it work for your company. This will minimize roadblocks and system issues down the road. 

10. Built the right CRM dashboards and reports

Dashboards are data visualizations used to discover insights and chart progress towards your goals. You want to have your CRM create dashboards and reports to share among your team, with other team members and with leadership for a top-level view of what’s going on in the organization. As users are onboarded, ask them what types of dashboards they need and find valuable. Follow-up to ensure they are being used. For example, a CRM dashboard could include data on new leads, what’s in the pipeline, team KPIs, and recent activities and and upcoming events and activities.

11. Actively Look For Bottlenecks And Improvement Opportunities

Even those most dynamic implementation processes can yield trouble spots and areas that need improvement. This typically happens when users input workloads too quickly for a team to handle. They create costly delays for your company and cause issues with team members who may already be skeptical of the new CRM. 

Common CRM bottlenecks

Where is information being held up? Examine these areas and look for ways to make improvements. For example, there is a bottleneck in the change from lead to opportunity. Do you need to add an additional step or two in that area to clarify and better communicate the state of the lead?

Build a feedback loop with your users

Take the time to keep a close eye on your CRM to identify these bottlenecks in the sales process, as well as areas that you can improve upon. Keep asking users for their input and make improvements that make sense for your unique situation. This could take many forms, like sending an email, hosting a regular meeting, creating a Slack channel for suggestions, and more. 

Iterate often

Re-evaluate requirements and improvements in your CRM. Choose a cadence and stick to it. For instance, you may plan to make changes and updates ones per month, every other month, or every quarter. This lets the team know that you are committed to responding to their needs and that the system is an ever-evolving part of your organization.

12. Scale Your CRM Implementation as You Grow

A successfully implemented CRM solves your immediate needs, but new needs always arise. Therefore, try not to see the implementation as being “done.” Instead, view it as a continuous effort to evolve and align your current state to the ever-changing marketplace. 

Maintain your growth and business goals as the driver for flexible and scalable enhancements. Gather stakeholders and power users often to identify, update, and prioritize your CRM roadmap. By doing this, administrators can ensure an implementation grows to meet any needs or challenges as they evolve. 

Scale Your CRM Implementation

The scalability of your CRM determines how easily it will be to use your CRM software with a much larger or smaller group of users and locations. 

The chances are that you onboarded critical members of your company whose buy-in you needed to make the CRM a success. Now it’s time to scale your CRM software for the entire team. 

Regular meetings can help your team scale CRM implementations. These meetings allow teams to prioritize features so system administrators can make changes in real-time. This approach offers flexibility and scalability for your team.

13. Measure User Adoption And Implementation Success

You’ll need a customized dashboard that pulls out critical data to target and track consistently to best measure implementation success. 

Pay close attention to critical metrics and whether or not your CRM is meeting the goals you initially set at the start of the implementation process. Here are some key metrics Insightly uses to evaluate the success of our CRM implementation projects. 

Quality of Inputs: An audit to assess whether the quality of all system inputs will be beneficial. It’s best to check inputs that have the most significant possible quality variable. 

• Business Metrics: It’s a good idea to look at broad business metrics and see if you can find connections to your new CRM software. 
• Record Updates: Check to see if users engaging with the CRM are updating records as expected. 
• System Activity: Review the number of actions completed by a specific user in the system. This high-level check will see which users are logging in and actively engaging with the system. 

By evaluating user engagement and the overall implementation process, you can be more confident that the new CRM adds value to your company. 

CRM Implementations Made Easier with Insightly

Implementing CRMs are not simple one-and-done initiatives. While most CRM systems can technically work as purchased, to maximize your investment, you need to make sure that the implementation, configuration, and Go Live phases have all been properly planned and deployed.  

The experts at Insightly are highly trained in integrating, testing, customizing, training, and gathering feedback on your CRM solution. They take the guesswork out of CRM implementation and free up your valuable time to focus on other business processes that need your attention. 

Test out the Insightly CRM free of charge with a free trial. Sign up today to see all the great features!

FAQs

How long does the CRM implementation process take?

The timeline varies depending on unique business and technology needs, though with Insightly CRM customers can begin to become productive and see benefits within 35-45 days. Whereas platform implementations take between 60-90 days. However, depending on the complexity and number of integrations needed, or the platform’s flexibility, the CRM implementation process can take several months.

Does my business need CRM and marketing automation? 

Yes, your business needs both CRM and marketing automation to effectively engage customers at all steps of their journey. Insightly Marketing is native to the CRM platform and enables your marketing and sales team to leverage the same view of customers and provide the best experience for customers.

The post CRM Implementation: Steal this proven process appeared first on Insightly.

Single customer view (SCV), also called a unified customer view, is the process of presenting a single, accurate record for each customer. SCVs allow cross-functional teams and organizations to use aggregated data to drive higher value business outcomes and provide high-quality customer experiences.

Single customer views are imperative for organizations looking to maintain a competitive edge and provide superior customer experiences. In many organizations today, customer data is stored across several different platforms, accessible by individual teams and access is limited or non-existent for many others. This decentralization and inaccessibility leads to missed opportunities, poor customer satisfaction, and lower value business outcomes. 

A 360-degree unified customer view often includes the following data:  

• CRM and customer data
• Behavioral data
• Marketing channel interactions
• Sales representatives’ interactions
• Support tickets
• Project status

Next, we’ll discuss what types of data you’ll want in your single customer view, and the six core benefits you’ll experience once you put yours in place.

What types of data should be in your SCV?

The single customer view is crucial for business success. Data can no longer be stored piecemeal in one platform or another and isolated from the rest of the organization. Instead, data must be shared and instantly accessible across your organization. Single customer views allow you to make critical business decisions with a full picture. The types of data that make the biggest impact are listed below.

Behavioral Data 

Single customer views aggregate a customer’s behavioral data, including website interactions, form submissions, and time on site data (among many other metrics) to allow marketers to make split-second decisions on their audiences’ preferences and buyer’s journey. This data is typically isolated to marketing. With a SCV, sales reps benefit when they know what content piece or pages a prospective customer viewed that prompted them to talk to sales. 

Sales Representatives’ Interactions

SCVs include the most important driver of revenue in a business: sales representatives’ interactions. Pre-sales follow-up and high-quality interactions with customers (driven by background information and superior customer intelligence) are some of the major reasons customers choose one brand over another.   

While most organizations believe they win or lose on price, it’s often service that is the bigger factor, according to recent research from DoubleCheck. In one of DoubleCheck’s recent new win/loss program client onboarding sessions with a midsize enterprise software vendor, the CMO stated, “We felt like the pre-sales support we received wasn’t great, so we didn’t think the solution was worth the extra price.” 

Flaws in pre-sales support can be a major reason C-suite execs or Product Managers often pass on one particular solution in favor of another. SCVs expose this interaction data to your entire organization to create a complete picture of how all teams share in the sales process. For instance, marketing and customer service can get better insight into the sales process when they see phone call frequency/notes, email chains, or in-person interactions (events or quick meetings) that the sales team conducts. Perhaps a customer success rep can better serve a client with a support question if he or she knows that the client is in talks with a sales rep about upselling to the next level of service on your platform.

Customer Service Representatives Interactions

The support tickets that customers submit give insight into how they are using your product or service.  Your technical support team can field hundreds of support tickets per day. Having customer service interaction data at the ready for all teams helps improve understanding across the organization when all teams can see the most common concerns coming in. 

For instance, if a sales team member is on an upsell call with a customer, it’s helpful for that person to know that the client has three open support tickets. Engineering may be interested in seeing what’s causing concern within the user base in real time. Marketing, the team most likely to be monitoring social channels, can benefit from knowing if there are issues with a feature that may come up in social posts.

Marketing Channel Interactions

The number of MarTech applications has risen astronomically in recent years. Chances are, your marketing team has a sizable MarTech stack with tons of valuable information on various platforms. 

Single customer views allow your organization to consolidate fragmented marketing channel interactions into actionable data. It is essential for marketers to clearly understand what is happening across social platforms, SEO tools, ad platforms, SMS tools, marketing automation platforms, and more.

With single customer views, marketers in your organization will no longer be required to waste time and effort logging into multiple platforms to monitor campaign data and conversions. SCVs simplify the work for data analysts by providing a holistic, easy-to-customize view of a customer’s journey across channels, providing a window into the customer’s behavior – tracking their journey from search, to clicks, and ultimately helping you better understand how, when, and why they purchase your product. Better yet, this data is shared across teams like sales and customer success for better communication.

6 Single Customer View Benefits

1. No more data duplication

SCVs eliminate the widespread issue of data duplication across your organization. When data is duplicated, there is a strong likelihood of errors.

2. A better understanding of every single customer

SCVs combine all of the random decentralized fragments of data collected across your organization and then build a true roadmap that clearly presents a holistic view of how your customers interact with your brand, make purchases, and interact with your customer service teams. SCVs allow you to:

• Instantly view each customer interaction and get up to speed on ticket statuses to avoid going into a conversation unprepared or ill-informed. 
• Avoid the frustration of working in standalone service applications.
• Access multiple data points in a single platform – communicate faster, deliver better experiences, and resolve customer issues faster.

3. Improved personalization opportunities

A 360-degree view allows customer service agents and marketers the ability to custom-tailor solutions and interactions as they track each and every touchpoint your customer has with your brand. 

• Understanding your customer’s behaviors allows your organization to build 1:1 relationships and rich, personalized experiences.
• Improved personalization increases brand credibility and enhanced authenticity.
• Better customer experience and more opportunities for customer engagement result from a deeper understanding of customer intent.

4. More efficient marketing campaigns

SCVs allow your team to improve targeting and reach customers at their decision point rather than dragging out marketing campaigns due to poor understanding of each segment’s customer journey. 

• Single customer views ensure better audience segmentation and improve campaign performance.
• Enriched data allows you to improve your ad spend and laser-target your marketing messages to ensure they reach the right audience at the right time.

5. Faster customer service inquiry resolutions

A 360-view of each customer enables you to empower your teams to quickly solve customer challenges.

• Mission-critical customer data is available to all your teams, in real time, empowering them to have more relevant conversations that drive customer satisfaction and success.
• Your team can close tickets and share information across your organization faster than ever.
• Understanding churn rates and churn risk tells you where and when to intervene, re-engaging customers throughout the renewal cycle.

6. A better user experience

Rich user experiences increase the likelihood of future purchases and ensure customer delight across all segments. Delivering world-class experiences will set you apart, drive growth, and improve your brand’s positioning as a leader in your industry. 

Get a 360 degree Unified Customer View in a Unified CRM

Your SCV can be a reality; choosing the right CRM is a first step. Insightly’s Account Plan feature is a great way to set the vision for your SCV. If you’re ready to choose your first CRM switch from your current platform, it’s time to check out Insightly, a unified CRM that combines sales, marketing, project management, and service into one platform to unify your teams. Plus, with Insightly AppConnect, you can build low-code or no-code integrations to connect Insightly with all of the other tools you use throughout your organization. 

Know your customers. Build stronger relationships and unify your fractured data with Insightly’s unified CRM. Schedule a free needs assessment and a demo today.

The post Single Customer View: What it is and why you need it appeared first on Insightly.

A CRM solution is an essential part of your company’s digital transformation. You can eliminate redundant interactions, departmental silos, and customer frustrations. You can maintain all your customer data on one central platform. And you can create new assets like dashboards, visualizations, and apps with incredible speed.

For example, your sales team leads can view individual interaction maps and know exactly where prospects are in your funnel. You can track each prospect’s unique paths through your marketing and sales pipeline.

Most importantly, you can use a CRM to develop and maintain long-lasting customer relationships.

Define your CRM needs

Before committing to a CRM solution, identify the business needs it should address. Determine the aspects of your current sales and marketing system you want to maintain. Next, ask yourself which goals you’d like to accomplish. And finally, answer these critical questions: 

• How do you currently track marketing prospects and sales leads? 
• How do you manage ongoing customer/client relationships?
• Do you use the same CRM software for all front-end operations? 
• What redundancies exist between your current systems? 
• What will it take to switch CRM platforms?
• Which new technologies do you want to leverage? Consider customized dashboards and visualizations, app development and deployment, and AI data analysis, forecasting, and machine learning.

Once you’ve answered these questions, here’s what you need to do next to get started. 

1. Assemble a cross-functional team

Because your CRM software will affect a wide array of stakeholders, you need a cross-functional needs assessment team. This group should represent senior leadership, middle managers, and the front-end staff who will use your new CRM every day. Invite specialists like IT people and CRM admins – as well as generalists and creative thinkers.

Choose a leader for this group who has an excellent understanding of all your customer-facing operations. This person will take responsibility for the project, ensure team member accountability, and deliver a data-backed decision. Consider operations or data managers, sales leaders, or IT leads for this position. Most of all, this person should balance details with general perspectives and have excellent communication skills.

2. Collect feedback from future users

Your new CRM software will integrate all your front-facing operations into one system, so touch base with everyone who will use it. Have leaders ask their teams what functionalities they value in your current system, what customer experiences they wish you could offer, and what workflows and interactions they wish you could track?

Create a comprehensive needs list like this:

• Secure customer data management
• Lead management
• Project management
• Workflow automations, integrations, and customizations
• Sales automations like product and price catalogs, quote books, territory management, etc.
• Marketing automations like campaign management, email marketing, lead scoring, etc.
• Data analytics and reporting
• Mobile CRM access
• Data management during the transition to this new CRM
• User training and ongoing support
• Implementation requirements and total cost of ownership

3. Analyze and synthesize feedback

Meet with a small group of stakeholders and parse your feedback data.  Look for similarities between  ideas, issues, and feature requests that may signal important trends. Group these into categories such as important features, cost and licensing, scalability, integrations, and support.

4. Prioritize your CRM needs and wants

Choose a CRM solution that meets the needs of your customer-facing teams. As you review your analysis, differentiate between each department’s “must-haves” and “wants.” Look beyond the needs of any single group to be sure your new CRM is easy to scale up as your business requirements grow and change.

Assess CRM vendors

To properly assess all the CRM solution vendors available, consider some key questions, including: 

• Which one offers the right mix of features for your organization of all the CRM companies out there?
• Which CRM tool allows access to real-time customer relationship data?
• Which contact management suite tears down the invisible barriers between your marketing, sales, and support teams? 
• Does your CRM software map interactions in real-time so your team members can speak with confidence and relevance? For instance, your sales manager may want to follow up with current customers to track relationships.
• And most importantly, how will your new system protect your customer’s personal information?

5. Identify solutions that fit your needs

Every department will need different features from your CRM. For example, your: 

• Marketing teams may want CRM features like custom dashboards and detailed lead management visualizations. 
• Sales managers may want to know how far prospects have progressed through your sales pipeline. 
• Content creators may require clearer perspectives on the email and workflow builder, and its content creation interface.

By determining all the features your company needs, you can compare CRMs and make the best decision for your company. 

6. Keep an eye out for CRM costs

Big names don’t mean big savings and every feature you require. Some legacy CRMs may include features that don’t meet your business needs. Alternatively, these older CRM solutions may not have the new technologies necessary to increase your market share.

CRM providers typically offer tiered pricing per user that facilitates scaling. However, look out for hidden fees and ensure the features you want are in the tier you choose.

7. Hop on trials and demos

After comparing the benefits of the CRMs on your list, pick two or three to examine in depth. The most efficient way is to schedule live demos and sign up for free trials.

Have your tech team test out integrations, customizations, and add-ons. Ask your marketing team which CRMs provide the conversion statistics they need to get the most from your ad budget. Have sales teams test out custom ticket automations and role-based permissions.

8. Remember these essential CRM characteristics

As you’re testing potential CRM solutions, consider the following essential factors that may matter most for everyday use:

• Implementation—Choose someone who understands team workflows and tech logistics to create a new CRM implementation plan. Although you probably want a CRM software suite with comprehensive functionality across many departments, you also need a CRM system that integrates with your existing software and data.
• Adoption rate—While a CRM software suite with comprehensive functionality across many departments is a wise choice, you also need a CRM system people will actually use. According to this 2019 report, experts differ on the causes of low adoption rates, such as bad experiences, poor onboarding, and negative preconceptions. However, the data shows that users engage more with systems that are easy to use, and include mobile apps.
• Customization and workflows—Even though a particular CRM software package may look like the right one on the surface, be sure to dig deeper, so have your teams test the limits of dashboard customizations, email design tools, and analytics.Make sure your new CRM can handle everything your teams throw at it during their daily workflows. Do a few test runs with salespeople playing the part of customers. That way, you’ll know you’re making the right choice.
• Support—A CRM system is only useful to your organization if users can quickly and easily get the help they need. From salespeople to tech people, everyone eventually needs help. Be sure the CRM you choose provides comprehensive customer service and support.
• Integration: A unified platform—You can save big bucks with a single, unified CRM solution that eliminates redundancies and helps you create efficiencies. However, integrating all your client-facing operations into one system can be difficult. So have your tech teams work closely with team leads to ensure your CRM can deliver on its all-in-one promises long before deployment day.
• Scaling and growth—Your CRM is the central hub of your customer-facing operations. Adopting new CRM software can put a massive strain on your teams. Be sure the platform you choose will easily scale to your growth. That way, you’ll avoid massive headaches by not having to change CRMs every time you expand.
• Smooth transitioning—Your new CRM software should seamlessly integrate with a wide array of third-party applications. Make sure your CRM works well with the tools you use now and the tools you’ll rely on as you scale up.Of course, your CRM will also need to integrate with your existing system. It’s crucial to preserve your current customer relationship data as you transition to a single, unified CRM.
• Compliance—Your organization needs to show it meets all current digital privacy requirements for the countries in which you’ll be operating. Be sure the CRM software you choose has powerful and up-to-date customer information protections. Nothing matters more than building and maintaining customer trust, so your CRM should be able to support those goals.
• Ease of use —Although your team needs to feel comfortable using your new CRM platform, consider how it looks to your customers. Find out if their experience is pleasant? Does your CRM software feel intuitive? Have team members play the role of the customer. They’ll learn a lot about each CRM’s UX by opening emails, clicking through funnels, and filling out forms.

9. Choose the best CRM system

Ultimately, you need to discover what feels right for your workflow and your teams. Take your time, test potential new CRMs, and check in with your colleagues. Together, you’ll find a set of tools that supports all your organization’s front-facing teams.

Marketing, sales, and support teams love a unified CRM

Insightly provides the versatility you need to quickly and easily scale your operations.

With Insightly, integration and dashboard customization are a snap. Our users appreciate our massive suite of relevant and powerful tools. Insightly’s adoption rates are incredibly fast because people enjoy using our tools.

Rely on Insightly for everything from broad-scope analytics to single-customer views. Our CRM software gives you unparalleled perspectives on your most precious asset: customer relationships.

Make us the nerve center of your entire customer service infrastructure. Click here for a free trial of Insightly.

The post 9 steps to choose the best CRM appeared first on Insightly.

A unified CRM is what’s required to thrive in a competitive landscape. The tools and data integration that it provides enable all of the company’s teams to seamlessly achieve synergy. They enable you to gain more insights and deliver a better experience.

Let’s dive deeper into the ways Insightly’s unified CRM software can have a transformative impact on your business.

What is the CRM process?

The CRM process can be best described as a business strategy that enables companies to better identify and interact with current and potential customers. 

The idea here is to improve personalization for every customer interaction for enhanced customer experience and loyalty through data analysis and segmentation tools.

The same approach is also leveraged for prospects to convert them into paying customers. The five core steps of the CRM process signify a collaborative effort between the key departments in a company.

The 5 steps of the CRM cycle

1. Increase brand awareness

Typically the marketing team’s domain, the first step in the customer relationship management process involves introducing prospects to the business. It requires in-depth research on the audience’s demographics and interests.

Audience personas are created based on this market research to launch marketing campaigns that will theoretically have a greater chance of resonating with the audience.

2. Acquire more leads

The lead acquisition step is generally handled by the sales or marketing teams, or in some companies, both. This is essentially an effort to get prospects to engage with the business. 

For example, the marketing team might offer downloadable content as a lead magnet to website visitors if they provide an email address. The sales team could then pull that data from the CRM to proactively target prospects to convert them into customers.

3. Convert leads into paying customers

Reps nurture leads to get them to convert to paying customers in this part of the sales process. They usually rely on lead-scoring data in the CRM to identify prospects that may have the highest probability of a sale and follow-up diligently with the lead.

Converting prospects into new customers is more of an art than a science. Sales reps must be skilled at building trust to inspire confidence in the leads to convert them into paying customers.

4. Retain customers with customer support and customer success

The job doesn’t end when the lead converts into a customer. Providing them with exceptional customer service is key to ensuring that they remain loyal customers.

The most widely used metric in customer service is CSAT or customer satisfaction. This data is used to track trends and identify and fix any issues impacting customer service.

5. Extract more value per customer with upsells/cross-sells

Upselling and cross-selling are great opportunities to proactively meet the needs of your customers by utilizing the data in the CRM. Companies should be mindful of the fact that customers’ needs may change over time. 

This can be achieved by leveraging purchase data to provide personalized recommendations on the products and services that would provide further benefit to the customers.

Why the CRM process is flawed

Not all companies are created equal. The customer journey will always be different for every company. What works for one may not necessarily work for the other. This crucial fact tends to be overlooked by the CRM process. 

What ends up happening is that the data gets compartmentalized in different tools. It turns into a mess as data discrepancies inevitably occur when all teams are not entering data into the same system.

This causes friction between various teams, including sales and marketing, since they effectively work in silos with complex ad hoc data sync processes.

Employees thus end up not trusting the data as it doesn’t provide them with a holistic view to make empowered decisions. They come to question the integrity of the data because it doesn’t appear to be cohesive and comprehensive.

They also find it difficult to achieve synergy with colleagues on other teams. Alignment across teams is crucial to close more customers and to improve retention.

A real-life CRM process example

A legacy CRM is effectively used as a suite of apps by a company. All of the sales, marketing, and service data is collected and managed in separate silos. 

Thus, in reality, these so-called “integrated” CRMs are actually “assembled” CRM software where features and functionality were added over time in response to customers’ needs. 

These solutions don’t fit the customer journey, particularly for companies that offer multiple products and services. The many teams that work on them use different tools that all do the same thing but don’t allow for seamless data integration. It’s impossible to have confidence in the data when it’s scattered everywhere. 

There’s no continuity between the various tools in the CRM system, which prevents them from having an up-to-date and comprehensive view of the customer journey.

This will prevent, for example, the hardware and software sales teams in a company from leveraging the upsell/cross-sell opportunities that may exist with their customers simply because their data is all over the place. 

Trying to fully integrate the scattered data is an expensive and time-consuming proposition, often making efforts to achieve that futile.

A better, adaptive approach to the CRM process

1. Start with the customer journey

The customer journey is a vital part of any CRM integration. Most solutions go about it the wrong way by forcing the customer journey to adapt to the CRM process. 

Think about it, what works for a customer who wants to buy hardware might not work for someone who’s buying software. The same CRM strategy can’t be used for both.

It should be the other way around. The CRM process needs to be flexible enough to adapt to the customer journey. This increases the potential of converting leads and enhancing retention regardless of what stage of the sales pipeline they’re in.

2. Integrate with your existing tools

A single customer view that centralizes all customer data is a powerful tool to achieve synergy. Its integration with all of the existing tools that a business uses is also of vital importance. 

Insightly AppConnect is a tool that allows for integration automation. Companies can use it to link and integrate Insightly’s unified CRM system with the other apps they use in their organization. 

This allows for powerful new workflow automation between applications. AppConnect also features over 500 pre-built connections to popular business apps.

Even non-technical users can build seamless integrations by using its simple drag and drop interface without writing a single line of code.

3. Take a unified approach

Companies can both extract the most from their CRM implementation and improve customer service by adopting a unified approach that no longer relies on redundant tools and the compartmentalization of data in silos. 

They can achieve synergy and data integration by unifying the marketing, sales, support, and project management on a single platform. All of the teams work together with a holistic view of the customers’ needs and expectations.

​​One of the biggest benefits of a unified solution for teams is that they can complete many tasks in one single system. They no longer have to switch between multiple applications to use various tools just to access data, a task that unnecessarily slows them down. 

Insightly puts this unified approach at the heart of its CRM solution. Teams’ productivity increases through automation. With business intelligence built in, Insightly can also be used to create data visualizations and real-time data dashboards for unmatched visibility.

Insightly unifies your CRM process

Insightly empowers organizations and even small businesses to align sales, marketing, and support teams so that they have complete visibility over customer relationships. They can use that insight and knowledge to improve customer service. 

Automatic lead routing ensures that leads are routed to the right person in real-time. With workflow automation, companies can create complex, multi-step business processes to better serve their customers. It can even execute custom business logic to sync with external systems from the likes of SAP and Oracle.

AppConnect ensures that the ecosystem of tools that a company uses every day isn’t disrupted; rather it’s integrated seamlessly with the CRM. AppConnect comes with more than 500 pre-built connections to the most popular business software apps. This makes establishing seamless integrations between the CRM and apps very straightforward.

Interested in learning more about how a real single customer view can enable you to improve customer retention and to better connect with them? Try Insightly for free to feel the unified CRM difference for yourself.

The post The CRM process is flawed. Here is why. appeared first on Insightly.

This is part 2 of a customer service blog series based on conversations with members of Insightly’s client services and customer success teams.

In part 1 of this customer service blog series, we discussed five important skills for building great relationships. Continuing on with my discussion with Zeke Silva, Sr. Director Client Services at Insightly, today we’ll discuss a few challenging situations in customer service—and how agents can apply their skills to overcome them.

1. Getting to the root of the problem

“It just doesn’t work.”

If you’ve spent any time in customer service, you’ve probably heard customers make general statements like this. Deciphering what the customer actually means can sometimes be more challenging than fixing the problem at hand. Is your product or service actually broken, or does the customer simply not understand how to make something work? Is this a support issue, or does it have more to do with training?

The customer’s level of technical expertise is a key factor to keep in mind when trying to get to the root of the problem. “You have to be very careful with word choice, especially if you’re working with someone who isn’t tech-savvy or familiar with your product,” says Zeke Silva, Sr. Director Client Services at Insightly. Newbies aren’t the only ones who can cause challenging situations for customer service agents. “On the flip side, you also have to be ready to help that super-technical customer, too,” says Zeke.

Try this: Avoid jumping straight into the weeds and making incorrect assumptions. According to Silva, a better approach starts with asking general questions. “You have to treat it like a funnel and slowly—or quickly—work towards more pointed questions,” says Zeke.

2. Dealing with seasonal fluctuations and other growing pains

Answering dozens of similar support tickets can lead to a numbing effect that quickly erodes an agent’s ability to empathize with customers. That’s especially true when your company experiences a period of rapid hypergrowth or a seasonal uptick in demand. Focusing too much on average handle time, time to resolution, and other performance metrics at the expense of the customer journey will only compound the problem.

Experienced customer service teams seek a balanced approach that focuses on efficiency and effectiveness without losing touch of the bigger picture. For Insightly’s support team, this means reminding agents that each new quarter is an opportunity to serve an entirely new batch of customers—many of whom may have similar questions. “Having agents ready for that prepares them to be in the right mindset for responding appropriately,” says Zeke. “Preparing the team for an influx enables them to offer a great experience, especially for brand new customers who may be switching from a competitor.”

Try this: Re-examine your company’s revenue patterns and identify periods that tend to yield large influxes of new customers or support requests. Proactively communicate this to your customer service team and make sure they’re amped up to handle the surge.

3. Advocating for the customer when things break

Not every customer service issue can be resolved with a simple email, phone call, or screen share. Sometimes things break and require a considerable amount of effort to identify, replicate, capture, and fix the underlying problem.

Training front-line support staff to diagnose and escalate tickets is the first step. However, escalating a ticket will do no good unless there is a reliable infrastructure in place to deal with bugs and other unexpected problems. “You don’t just throw a baseball at someone and hope they’re ready to catch it,” says Zeke. “They’ve got to be ready to receive it, and the same is true for dealing with escalated tickets.”

Solving complex problems may require input from multiple stakeholders across customer service, operations, engineering, and other teams. And, that’s no small task in a business environment that’s still dominated by remote work. It’s difficult to be an effective advocate for the customer when information is spread across multiple inboxes, threads, and systems. That’s why having all of your essential customer data in one, easily accessible location is particularly important.

Try this: Audit your existing ticket escalation workflow and look for ways to improve it. Where does information tend to get lost or overlooked? How does communication break down across departments? How can you consolidate overlapping systems and make it easier to advocate for your customers?

4. Holding other teams accountable

Streamlining ticket escalations, reducing overlapping systems, and eliminating data silos is a major step forward, but doing so doesn’t guarantee accountability from the rest of your company. To ensure timely resolution for your customers, it’s best to establish cross-departmental service-level agreements (SLAs) that are backed by leaders from each team.

Tying internal SLAs to customer-facing SLAs is another strategy for creating urgency throughout the organization. For example, Insightly users on the Ultimate success plan can expect to receive a response within one hour of sending an email. “That builds confidence with customers that they’ll get a first touch within a certain amount of time,” says Zeke. Once an issue has been validated, Insightly’s engineering team sequences the work based on previously agreed to SLAs, which gives the support team—and, in turn, the end user—a specific time frame for achieving a satisfactory outcome.

Keeping the lines of communication open is essential for avoiding misunderstandings. Insightly’s support team also sends a bi-weekly email to engineering, which contains additional context for prioritizing customer requests. “We’ve created multiple avenues to prioritize and elevate,” says Zeke.

Try this: Formalize the working relationship between your customer-facing and back-office teams, perhaps through one or more SLAs. Gain buy-in from leaders from across the organization and look for ways to tie agreements back to customer expectations.

Next up, tips for becoming even more customer-centric

Stay tuned for the next article in this series. We’ll be moving beyond customer service issues and focusing our attention on proactive strategies that ensure a customer-centric experience.

The post 4 customer service challenges (and how to solve them) appeared first on Insightly.

Experienced support professionals are at the center of your company’s ability to delivery exceptional experiences, generate loyalty, and ultimately, drive retention. Successfully guiding customers through stressful circumstances is the mark of a talented customer service representative. But what skills do you need to deliver amazing experiences that lead to long-term customer relationships?

According to Zeke Silva, Sr. Director Client Services at Insightly, it comes down to five important skills:

1. Showing empathy
2. Being honest and transparent
3. Steering the conversation
4. Slowing things down
5. Identifying creative solutions

Let’s explore how these skills enhance customer service and lead to strong customer relationships.

1. Showing empathy

Skilled support employees are fast, efficient, and inquisitive. Another imperative for great customer service is empathy. “Customers are coming to you at a very vulnerable moment when they open support tickets,” says Zeke Silva, Sr. Director Client Services at Insightly. “They don’t want to be treated as support tickets. They want to be treated like human beings.”

Tip: Lead with the understanding that the customer is currently grappling with a problem that’s making it difficult for them to perform their role, that you’re here to help them be successful, and that they can rely on you to help get them back to productivity.

2. Being honest and transparent

Empathy is a great starting point, but it can’t solve the customer’s specific problem. To build long-lasting relationships with customers, agents must go beyond empathy and take swift action to find a suitable resolution. That can be challenging, especially when there’s no obvious solution at hand. But, according to Silva, there’s still an opportunity to solidify the relationship when nothing can immediately be done. “It’s about being honest and transparent that you may not have the answer at that moment, but you’ll work to get it,” says Zeke.

Tip: Every ticket that comes into Insightly’s new Service application is matched to a Service Level Agreement, so customer service agents know exactly how long they have to respond to a customer, and how long to resolve customer issues. You can define SLAs for for specific segments of your customer base to dictate how long you have to first respond to tickets, and how long you have to follow up or resolve issues to ensure you meet and exceed customer expectations.

3. Steering the conversation

Each customer has a unique way of communicating his or her frustration and support agents must be prepared to steer the conversation productively. Setting the tone for a calm, outcome-based dialogue is key. “Keep in mind that the customer isn’t mad at you, they’re mad at the situation,” says Zeke. “Taking things personally can derail your ability to keep the conversation on track and deliver a positive outcome for the customer.”

Tip: Staying positive, asking questions, and focusing on delivering a successful outcome are all ways to steer the conversation in a productive direction and focus on what matters: finding positive resolution for the customer.

4. Slowing things down

Proactively controlling the pace of the conversation is another subtle way to reduce friction and recalibrate an unhappy customer’s demeanor. “Slow down and add a pause to your response,” says Zeke. “By taking this approach, you may notice that the customer slows down, too.”

Slowing down the conversation gives both parties more time to think about a creative solution to the problem. And, quickly solving a problem is one of the best ways to turn an unhappy customer into an advocate for your brand.

Tip: Pausing is one tactic for slowing down the conversation. But, you might also try using clarifying phrases like “What I’m hearing is…” and “If I understand what you’re saying…” These help you stay in control while simultaneously confirming the situation and allowing the customer to surface additional information. Listen and ask open-ended questions.

5. Identifying creative solutions

“Being creative in the support world is crucial,” says Zeke. “You may not have the answer right then and there, but can you give them a workaround that at least gets them up and running?”

Providing a creative solution to the problem may ultimately help the customer do his or her job more efficiently and effectively. What was previously seen as a limitation may ultimately serve as an educational opportunity for the customer, which could lead to a deeper affinity for your brand.

Tip: Ask the right questions to understand the customer’s true objective. Is there another way to provide the same (or similar) data, information, service, or outcome? Staying up-to-date on your company’s full capabilities and sharing known issues within your team will help you align the customer’s goal with a viable workaround solution.

Build better relationships by providing excellent customer service

Empathize with customers. Provide honest and transparent feedback. Stay in control, slow things down when possible, and be creative. Developing these skills will help your team provide better service, and, in the long-run, build even better customer relationships.

Stay tuned for the next post in our customer service series. Next time, we’ll explore common issues in customer service and how to overcome them.

The post 5 customer service skills to build great customer relationships appeared first on Insightly.