Top brands like Apple, Amazon, Trader Joe’s, and Costco (just to name a few) hyper-focus on customer experience. 

Shouldn’t you?

How do you get this competitive advantage?

It’s time to change your perspective. Put customer satisfaction first. Examine your products/services from the customer’s viewpoint. Take a few steps on your own customer journey.

Don’t just learn to address customer needs. Learn what it feels like to have those needs met by your company. Show you truly “get it” and exceed customer expectations. Satisfied customers mean more referrals, a better brand reputation, and repeat sales.

5-steps for a customer-focused strategy

1. Collect and unify your customer feedback

Most companies have plenty of customer information. However, problems can arise if your customer data is siloed across multiple teams and systems. Before you can create a customer-focused organization, you need to get your entire frontline staff on the same page (e.g. the same CRM).

For smooth customer journeys, choose a unified CRM that eliminates departmental data silos. For example, would your sales team benefit from the customer data and feedback stored on your marketing team’s email campaign platform? Would integrating all your customer information help these salespeople personalize their efforts and manage common objections?

Most of all, you need to spend time with your customer feedback. such as the ratio of positive to negative terms in reviews and comments. Be sure to read customer feedback in context. Purchases are emotional decisions. Learn how it feels to go on your company’s customer journey, and share these perspectives with your teams.

2. Study and streamline your touch points

Spend time to scrutinize customer feedback at each step of the customer journey. Use a single-customer-view approach and watch how customers develop individual relationships with your brand. Identify your most popular and productive routes to brand trust. Invest in those proven paths to decrease conversion costs and increase sales.

When compiling a comprehensive list of touch points, organize them in phases. Many touch points occur before the prospect is identified. You probably generate traffic with SEO blogs, social media ads, and search engine ads. Your company may also run print and outdoor ad campaigns. And don’t forget other touch points like events, gift cards, and customer referrals. 

During the sales process, customers consume reviews of your product/service in various forums. Point-of-sale blurbs/brochures can also count as touch points. Of course, your sales process, whether in person or online, must be frictionless and frustration-free.

After the sale, your touch points probably include satisfaction surveys, email lists, reviews, and comments. Of course, many people will continue to touch base with your brand via your social media communities. And remember, billing and shipping touch points matter to customers, as well.

Develop a business model that nurtures customer loyalty after the sale. Asking for feedback builds engagement and allows you to compute important metrics like stickiness, CSAT, Net Promoter Score (NPS) and more. Reduce churn and increase customer retention by showing you care about customer success, even after you’ve scored a sale.

3. Analyze and visualize your customer journey

Study your touchpoint data to anticipate customer needs and eliminate frustrations.

In this popular case study, a Norwegian research team analyzed customer journey touch points. They identified four common problems:

• Timing Errors – Your customer journey needs to make logical sense. This could look like a sales page link that happens too early in an email campaign, making people think you’re going to the hard sell rather than a micro-yes (e.g. download an eBook, check out a blog post). Worse yet, it could be a gaff like asking customers to log into a product before providing a code or registering their credentials.
• Ad Hoc Touch Points – Sometimes, unexpected and unplanned customer interactions happen. For example, when timing errors occur, customers (we hope!) will contact your support team. This can be an opportunity to build trust or further weaken customer relationships. Ad hoc touch points also include customer interactions with your accounting and logistics teams while untangling paperwork snafus.
• Failed Touch Points – Broken links, of course, diminish brand trust and increase bounce rates. Failed integrations between your ad platform, your website, and your point-of-sale software do the same. However, humans make mistakes, too. Late follow-ups, redundant/spammy sales calls, and other gaffs also lead to walk-aways.
• Missing Touch Points – A missing touch point could be as simple as a missing link or an incomplete email series. However, customers may be even more offended by missed meetings and ignored deadlines. These mistakes might be rare, but they can destroy brand trust. Demonstrate professionalism and due diligence to “walk the walk” of your customer-focused strategy across your entire organization.

Unify your data onto a platform with a comprehensive analysis suite. Visualizations matter, especially when sharing customer interaction and behavior insights with stakeholders. Use custom dashboards, graphs, and charts to tell customer stories and extract more value from your data. For example, you could track customer-focused KPIs like satisfaction scores to set team targets.

With the right CRM, it’s easier than ever to watch your customer relationships grow and mature.

4. Foster a customer-focused culture

Provide and track high-quality customer experiences across your entire organization.

To get started, define your vision of customer focus and share it with all stakeholders. It can help to follow Gulati and Oldroid’s four stages of the customer focus journey:

1. Create a centralized customer data repository, such as a unified CRM. Standardize this touchpoint information and organize it by customer, not by product/service, sale, account, location, etc.
2. Select a leader to own this project. This person will oversee the handoff of information from analysts to managers to marketers, to salespeople, etc. (A unified CRM makes this task simpler and easier than ever.)
3. Experiment with interventions. Use your unified data system to analyze and predict behaviors. Test possible improvements to your customer journey with customers (and against a control group).
4. Coordinate your efforts. With a good user experience system in place, let your teams care for your customers. For example, when a logistics team lead might notice a late shipment, she could identify the salesperson with the best relationship with this customer. Who else could best smooth over this mistake on your company’s behalf?

5. Resolve issues quickly

Customer focus means quick issue resolution. 

The logistic team leader from the previous example could use a unified CRM to update delivery schedules. She could reach out to your billing department for a revised quote. Her sales colleague could access this real-time customer relationship data and send out relevant customer service messages.

Of course, a solid software platform will help you catch your mistakes. Employ automated messaging and issue escalation features to alert stakeholders when teams take too long to resolve cases.

Align your teams with Insightly 

Insightly’s unified CRM gives you the tools you need to adopt a customer-focused approach.

It unites Marketing, Sales and Service teams into one tool. Then, you can easily integrate your other apps in your business with Insightly via AppConnect. You can quickly streamline your processes without writing a single line of code.  

Let Insightly’s unified approach give you the insights you need to improve customer focus and build stronger relationships.

 Get your free Insightly trial today.

The post 5 Ways To Improve Customer Focus appeared first on Insightly.

Engagement is a predictor of whether or not that customer will stay with you, and possibly even refer you, so it can be a leading metric for future revenue and growth.

So here’s how to use your CRM to track customer engagement and the appropriate Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for your business size.

What is customer engagement?

Though a sale or a subscription is a landmark in a customer’s relationship with your company, it’s just the beginning. Engaged customers create emotional bonds with your brand, and can create a valuable feedback loop for product improvements. 

You can elect to add engaged customers to customer or member councils who can get early access to new products or services and provide candid feedback in both one-on-one and focus-group style programs. If you’re in software, your engaged customers can be the ultimate beta testing group. 

In the positive cases, engaged customers become brand champions who are willing to provide referrals, testimonials, and enthusiastic reviews. In the best cases, they become brand evangelists who regularly engage in a positive manner with your brand on social media, and may even speak on your behalf at events, effectively functioning as an extension of your marketing team. 

Why measure customer engagement?

While engagement is a major revenue predictor in recurring revenue businesses, all businesses can benefit from surfacing these metrics. No one will argue that engaged customers create lasting value for your company. Knowing you can count on positive references and referrals from clients will help you compete for more and bigger deals. While some of this will likely be qualitative in nature, there are tools and metrics available today that can quantify engagement and track it over time, giving you insights into past, present, and future performance.

Five customer engagement metrics and KPIs that matter

There are five top customer engagement metrics that matter to nearly all companies. Each is described below. If you are wondering which matters the most to your company in particular, read on. At the end of each KPI summary, you’ll see a list of which kinds of companies typically prioritize it.

Start-ups defining and implementing their Unique Selling Points (USPs) will track different KPIs than mid-market companies working to scale up, gain traction, and win market share. Massive corporations typically focus on metrics that reflect their dependence on established brand reputations. That said, these metrics surface at the top for nearly all organizations.

1. First-week engagement

Engagement is often at its peak at the start of a contract. Make the most of your customer’s initial enthusiasm with streamlined setups, progress tracking, and solid support.

In a 2021 study, Linköping University’s Gustav Fridell examined SaaS best practices. He found that reducing friction and monitoring progress increased first-week retention.

Consider guiding, tracking, and displaying your new user’s progress through the onboarding process. They are more likely to stick with your solution if they can visualize a successful customer journey, especially during their first crucial steps.

For example, these tips can improve the new customer experience and lower abandonment and unsubscribe rates in the software industry:

• Make your platform or tool intuitive and easy to learn.
• Offer fast page load speeds.
• Prioritize addressing bugs and glitches that emerge during onboarding steps.
• Demonstrate ‘quick wins’ and value early on.

No user experience is perfect. Inevitably, people will have some trouble adopting your products or services. When they reach out, you need to offer reliable customer service to promote customer retention. Invest in robust support and show new customers you care about their success. 

Chatbots can be a great tool when implemented thoughtfully, but nothing is better than interacting with a deeply-knowledgeable support person. Short term churn can be avoided by quickly showing value to your customer in the onboarding phase. You have to get it right.  

Best for: Mid-market companies, especially startups, should hyper-focus on frictionless onboarding, user journey tracking, and responsive, knowledgeable support. At a small scale, individual customer success equals corporate viability.

Large brands with solid reputations enjoy more initial customer enthusiasm than smaller organizations. Their positive legacy marketing efforts mean users are less likely to jump ship when frustrated.

2. User Activity

SaaS companies, mainly social media platforms, eCommerce brands, and game manufacturers, pay close attention to their Daily Active Users (DAU) and Monthly Active Users (MAU) metrics. However, DAUs and MAUs aren’t just about competing for market share. Together they create an early-warning system. 

Think of MAUs as benchmarks and DAUs as indicators. If you see a significant difference between your daily numbers and your monthly averages, something unfavorable is happening. DAU valleys or spikes could be your first signal of a major problem or win.

Best for: Companies of all sizes should compare DAUs to MAUs to stay ahead of news events and emerging trends. Small and medium-sized companies can track this metric to acknowledge marketing strategy milestones. However, MAUs are crucial for large companies to maximize their market share for bottom-line profitability.

3. Stickiness

You can use DAUs and MAUs to measure “stickiness.” This metric represents how happy people are with your product or service based on how frequently they are returning. It’s an effective way to predict how likely users are to stick with your brand.

Typically, stickiness equals Daily Active Users divided by Monthly Active Users.

Stickiness = DAU / MAU

However, you may want to consider alternative formulas that account for unique users. Unique users represent the number of visitors to your site. An increase in this metric shows your company and website are growing. 

Businesses often look to churn rate as a measure of stickiness, but keep in mind that churn is a lagging indicator that doesn’t allow you to be as proactive as the formula above. 

Best for: Stickiness matters most for startups that need to build momentum and raise brand awareness. 

Mid-market and large businesses also want to limit turnover, but they are typically better positioned to tolerate variations in customer engagement and have more varied marketing campaigns.

4. Net Promoter Score (NPS)

You’ve likely seen NPS in action even if you’ve never heard the term. If you’ve ever been presented with a scale from 1-10 asking how likely you are to recommend a company, you’ve been NPS’d. The idea is that the most satisfied customers (those who rank you as a 9 or 10) will spread the word about your product or service. 

When you survey your customers, some will say they’ll probably promote you to their peers. Some will say they won’t. And some won’t feel inclined to share positive or negative information about you. The scale lists scores of 0-6 as “detractors”, 7-8 as “passives,” and 9-10 as “promoters.”

To calculate your NPS, subtract the percentage of survey respondents who would say negative things from those who would offer positive things about your brand.

NPS = Promoter % – Detractor %

For example, if 70% of people share positives and 20% share negatives, your NPS would equal 50. Many popular brands struggle with their NPS score. Apple, which is considered world-class when it comes to NPS, sits at around 50.

Best for: Large companies with massive ad budgets need to track brand health with the NPS metric carefully. Experts consider this a fundamental KPI for predicting near-term revenues, especially your target audience. Smaller and emerging businesses that rely less on brand recognition and more on networking and feature-driven ad campaigns rely less on this KPI.

5. Customer satisfaction (CSAT)

SaaS companies often measure CSAT by asking users for short one-to-five star or emoji ratings. You can use these quick check-ins to measure the customer experience with the features they use. 

This is different from NPS, which provides a more general satisfaction rating of your product, service, or brand. In short, CSAT tracks customer satisfaction, and NPS measures customer loyalty.

Best for: Because they focus almost exclusively on new solutions and USPs, startups must measure CSATs. Small SaaS businesses need to know specific user preferences when offering suites of new tools. Larger companies need CSAT data when adding features but depend more on NPS scores for predictions.

Track user engagement and much more with Insightly Service and unified CRM

There are other metrics out there, but this list represents a good batch to focus on first.  

With Insightly Service, 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. A dashboard view gives you rolled-up access to the data that’s important across the organization and to measure the KPIs that are vital to your team. 

Break down silos with a robust view of the customer. Empower your support teams to solve tickets quickly, listen with empathy, and create sales opportunities right in the application. See the features that matter to you with a free demo of Insightly today.

The post 5 essential customer engagement metrics and KPIs 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.

But how can your company be strategic when data are created and stored in so many different locations and formats? Email inboxes, social media sites, document repositories, and other third-party software tools are just a few of the places where your data live.

Integrating your CRM is certainly an option, but where should you start? Is integration worth the effort?

In this post we’ll explore CRM integrations and discuss five important integrations to consider in 2021.

Why use CRM integrations?

Before we dive into specific integrations to consider in 2021, let us first examine why CRM integrations are necessary. After all, you’ve already made a considerable investment in your CRM. Shouldn’t it do everything you need without relying on other systems?

Not exactly. Here’s why.

Even the best CRM can’t do everything

Last time I checked, no CRM will run a profit and loss report or statement of cash flow. Nor should it. And, although CRM technology continues to advance and encompass more aspects of daily life for businesses, the reality is that CRMs are not built to support every process and workflow. System consolidation can be wise, but total elimination of non-CRM technology is simply infeasible (at least in 2020). Therefore, integrating mission-critical apps to your CRM makes good sense.

Some tools become more useful when enriched by data stored in your CRM

You’ve put great effort into making your CRM the central source of truth for your organization. Maximize the usefulness of that data by making it accessible in other mission-critical apps, such as email inboxes and team collaboration platforms.

Not every team member requires direct access to your CRM

Sales, marketing, and project teams tend to be the heaviest users of CRM technology. That being said, there are many other teams who do not (or should not) require access to your CRM. Does your freelance graphic designer really need a CRM license? Perhaps not. On the other hand, she does interact with customer-related projects. What’s the right answer? Integrating her workspace to your CRM could be the perfect solution.

Managing relationships is messier than ever

No matter how much thought you put into engineering the perfect customer journey, some relationships do not fit into a nice and tidy box. Creating additional web-to-lead forms and autoresponder emails will never stop some customers from circumventing your ideal workflow. In today’s digital world, customers have more ways to engage your company than ever before.

Building integrations to third-party platforms (in particular to social media and email) makes your company better prepared to handle these situations, avoid data loss, and elevate customer relationships.

Integrate these five things in 2020

So, what should be on your integration to-do list in 2020? Here are the five system integrations that will deliver the most value to your organization.

1. Inbox

Stop and think. How much time do you spend in your inbox on a typical day? Now, multiply that across your entire staff. If you’re like many companies, email is still your most frequently used tool. Email offers a convenient platform for outreach and engagement, but it’s not ideal for organizing relationship data.

A better approach integrates your CRM and email, allowing users to quickly access and edit relationship data without leaving their inboxes.

Tip for Insightly users: Insightly Sidebar for Gmail makes it easy to view and add contacts without leaving your inbox. You can also save email messages into Insightly with a click of a button. The Insightly Sidebar for Outlook is also available for customers who use Outlook.

2. Financial data

Cash flow is the lifeblood of any business. When customers fail to pay their invoices on time, your company suffers. Unfortunately, for many organizations, customer relationship management and billing fall into two separate departments that rarely speak to each other.

Integrating proposal, invoice, and payment data into your CRM creates transparency for front-line staff who are most likely to engage with customers, thereby reducing past-due situations and increasing cash flow.

Tip for Insightly users: Insightly integration for QuickBooks Online pulls in invoice and payment data into a dedicated tab on the customer’s record in Insightly.

3. Documents and files

Your CRM is an excellent place to collect customer contact information, notes, memos, and small chunks of relationship data. However, some data sources are best retained in their original format (i.e. complex pricing spreadsheets, photos from trade shows, and product spec sheets).

Attaching downloaded copies of files to CRM records is one option, but a better solution integrates your CRM to a cloud document management system. Linking to live versions of an online document maximizes collaboration and minimizes the possibility of confusion caused by revisioning.

Tip for Insightly users: Insightly offers a number of document integrations, including Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, OneDrive, Evernote, and others.

4. Team chatter

With the advent of remote work and collaboration apps, such as Slack, team members spend more time “chatting” than ever before. This online chatter represents real business value, but value is decreased when data remains isolated from your primary source of truth. In a similar way, online conversations become much less meaningful when collaborators do not have direct access to CRM data. Manually logging into a separate system to search for records is not always feasible, especially in today’s fast-paced business environment.

Ideally, your team collaboration system should have a direct line into your CRM, thereby enabling data-driven conversations and avoiding the creation of new data silos.

Tip for Insightly users: Insightly for Slack allows users to quickly search for, find, and add notes to Insightly records without ever leaving Slack.

5. Everything else

Your CRM vendor cannot integrate to all of your mission-critical apps. That’s why integration platforms are so useful. For example Insightly AppConnect is a no-code integration tool that connects Insightly CRM with hundreds of applications you use across your entire organization. Learn more here.

Move faster with CRM integrations

In summary, connecting your CRM to mission-critical applications will help your company build a more data-centric culture that elevates efficiency, reduces data confusion, and, ultimately, helps your teams move faster.

Check out Insightly AppConnect to browse the complete list of integrations. Not a customer? Request a free product demo and CRM needs assessment with an Insightly rep.

Request a demo

Last updated in July 2021

The post 5 key CRM integrations in 2021 appeared first on Insightly.

In order to thrive in a post COVID-19 world, you need to reassess the ways you connect with your customers.

Here are a few things to keep in mind before you do so.

Get rid of silos

Make sure all your teams use data to create a complete picture of the clientele.

Sales, marketing and customer service teams are working in silos—which causes a number of problems. Namely, it creates a fragmented image of your consumers and their journey across too many places for your team to be serving them at peak efficiency.

Getting everyone on the same page is a first step and one that is essential to re-connecting with your people and understanding them in a more complete way.

Don’t ditch digital

Zoom fatigue is real and all of us are craving in-person connection. Though we’re on our way back to normalcy, don’t start planning for in-person conferences with customers for this year just yet.

Over the past year, you’ve (hopefully) spent time honing your digital communications and marketing strategy while recognizing the power of a well-crafted email campaign.

Your tone and candor in email is extremely important. You have to know your audience in order to be able to strike the right, personalized tone. Knowing your customers, and the needs and challenges they face, is essential to delivering appropriate communications.

Redefine “normal”

One of the good things to come out of 2020 is a more compassionate approach to workplace leadership.

If you weren’t taking a people-centered approach with your customers beforehand, you absolutely should be now. We’ve seen a big shift toward the “humanization” of marketing.

Sometimes it really is as simple as asking your clientele how you can help and voicing your support for whatever their current challenges are. Shift your thinking away from only achieving your own goals to supporting your followers in achieving their goals as well.

A customer-centric approach to marketing is essential to humanizing your marketing efforts and your brand. Make sure they feel heard and have an opportunity to discuss feedback with you. Use  satisfaction surveys, a closed online forum for customers, or direct outreach. Provide guides on using your products to navigate through a crisis, whether on continuing to manage remote work, or how to prepare for the post-pandemic world. Even if your services aren’t directly the most relevant, you can provide your people with curated content.

People are craving a return to normalcy, but it’s important to recognize that things may not be truly “normal” for some time and that may not always be a bad thing.

The post Reconnecting with customers in a post-pandemic world appeared first on Insightly.

This shift in consumer behavior has spurred disruptive changes in the way we do business. Brands are now looking to invite voice-based conversations with users via web and mobile apps. Studies and reports point to an exponential rate of adoption, with stats like:

• A total of 31% of global smartphone owners reported using voice tech at least once a week.
• It is predicted voice-shopping spend will grow to over $40 billion in 2022 alone.
• 40% of all internet users in the US, and a third of its total population, are users of voice search.

Voice user interfaces, search, and technology are changing the user experience and transforming the world around us.

Voice interaction & technology

Voice interaction is a major focal point for process development and it’s all about convenience. A user can bypass the need to type, read, or think—all requirements of the screen-and-keyboard style interfaces. Instead, an individual has their objectives met through conversation.

Voice technology combines powerful platforms into a simplified programmatic interface. Some common voice-based programs include:

• Natural Language Processing (NLP)
• Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR)
• Natural Language Understanding (NLU)
• Text to Speech (TTS)

UX designers are working to develop solutions that transform the way people interact with machines, systems, and services.

Although the concept of “conversation” seems rather straightforward, the building blocks of technology underneath it are quite complex. Moving beyond the screen-and-keyboard style UI opens a business up to greater levels of accessibility and inclusivity.

How does a voice user interface work?

The general definition of a user interface is the point of human-computer interaction and communication on a webpage, device, or app. A typical user interface can include a display screen, keyboard, mouse, and desktop. It enables a person to effectively control the device they are interacting with.

A successful user interface is clear, concise, and familiar. The system must be responsive and consistent with attractive features that are easy to navigate. Ultimately, a user interface must be efficient and forgiving. This entire process is refined when you add voice technology.

A voice user interface (VUI) makes spoken human interaction with computers possible. It uses speech recognition to understand spoken commands and text to speech to play a reply. These are the primary ways of interacting with virtual assistants on smartphones and speakers.

Voice command device

VUIs are designed to control a voice command device (VCD) which includes everything from a washing machine to automated attendants and automobiles.

Older voice response systems respond to the pressing of keypad buttons via DTMF tones. Newer VCDs, with a full voice user interface, enable callers to speak requests and responses without the need to press buttons.

Newer voice command devices do not require speakers, so they can respond to a variety of voices, regardless of tone, accent, or dialect. These systems are also capable of addressing several voice commands at once, separating vocal messages, and providing the appropriate feedback. By doing this, VCDs more accurately mimic a natural conversation.

How can voice search be used?

As most people are well aware, voice technology has a multitude of applications. Voice search users find different uses for the science depending on their age and information-related needs.

A recent study showed that 62% of people use voice search to look up fact-based information like term definitions, 46% the weather, and 32% the news. It also found that nearly 30% of voice search users aged 18-34 use it to issue commands to their device (i.e. set timer, add to list). This is compared to 19% for those ages 35-54 and 16% for over 55.

Some common uses for voice search technology include:

Form & data input

This is a task that is particularly challenging on mobile devices. Adding a conversation focused on data capture for a simple form can simplify the user experience. It also minimizes input time and errors.

Context-aware voice assistance

All types of businesses can add conversation to their mobile apps from retailers to grocers, malls, and campuses. Users can ask questions like “What aisle has soup?” or “do you sell paint?”

Combining a conversation with geo-location and the purveyor’s own data allows for easier access to context-aware information.

Voice-enabled workflows

Brands can improve efficiency and productivity through voice commands. These interactions help to streamline processes and speed up outcomes.

Developments in voice technology

As voice technology continues to evolve, there are a lot of interesting developments. Now that software teams can add a unified, cross-platform speech-based exchange for customers and users, expect new tools like:

AI-empowered voice-bots

Moving a step beyond a simple chatbot, voice-bots that are powered by artificial intelligence will be able to carry on conversations like never before. A mature AI foundation ensures the interaction is quick and as relaxed as natural conversation. This, in turn, leads to a faster outcome and since it’s intuitive, there’s no significant learning curve for users.

Voice analytics

New voice technology will leverage analytics to monitor emotions. This means the program is working to determine if a user is happy, sad, confused, disappointed, etc. Voice analytics can also track keywords to better inform and direct the interaction.

Voice analytics will also assess the quality and style of user responses and tweak a voice bot’s delivery to an exact situation. In a sense, chatbots will seem more empathetic. These are tasks that are simply impossible for screen-and-keyboard interfaces.

Voice biometric technology

Voice biometric technology enables a safer online experience. Internet privacy, security, and identity protection are major concerns for a user. Your voice is unique. Acoustic characteristics and behavioral features can be monitored and leveraged for authentication and access services.

Summing it up

Voice technology is exciting. It’s made leaps and bounds in the past few decades that have turned science fiction into modern life. Artificial intelligence, machine learning, and smart devices are all part of the foundational IoT. They work in conjunction with voice-based software to create a higher level of convenience, save on corporate costs, drive sales, and solidify business and customer relationships.

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Internal opinions aside, what’s more important is understanding how the people you serve define “customer service.” Just because you think your company provides great service is no guarantee that customers agree.

So, how can your company be more responsive, provide better service, and elevate the overall customer experience? Let’s take a closer look.

Why is customer service important?

Customers are more likely to thrive when your company makes customer service a top priority. After all, most products and services have a learning curve that requires some amount of training, onboarding, continuous education, and ongoing support. Although customers do not spend every moment of their lives thinking about the solutions that you provide, they do expect things to work when they need them to. Customer service, therefore, fills an important gap between your solutions and each customer’s abilities, knowledge, and expectations.

Prioritizing customer service has many downstream benefits for your company, too. For starters, each customer service interaction is an opportunity to collect attitudinal data, which is particularly valuable in today’s era of “contactless” eCommerce transactions. Collecting the right data makes it easier to understand your personas, identify detractors to the customer experience, and develop strategies for increasing customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction leads to better retention, more transactions, and a bounty of online and word-of-mouth referrals for your company.

In short, excellent customer service makes customers happy. Happy customers help you get even more happy customers. It’s a happy cycle.

Customer service vs. customer support

Although the terms customer service and customer support are closely related, they’re not exactly the same. Typically, “customer support” (or “customer success”) refers to an operational department that is responsible for helping customers when they have questions or issues. Customer support teams spend their days responding to emails, answering phone calls, and resolving tickets.

No doubt, support teams have a major influence on the quality of service that customers receive. That being said, customer service extends well beyond the walls (or virtual walls) of a support department.

To stay ahead of quota, for example, a company’s sales team must keep customer service at the forefront of what it does. Successful product development teams put the customer at the center of its engineering and design efforts. Even back-office departments, such as accounts payable teams, must align their conduct with solid customer service principles. Otherwise, customers may begin to look elsewhere for a more enjoyable buying experience.

Ensuring excellent customer service

If customer service is the responsibility of an entire organization (not just customer support), how can you begin building a customer service-focused culture? Here are three ideas.

1. Forget about your legacy systems & walk in the customer’s shoes

Many companies have already implemented a variety of business practices, technology, and processes to ensure that customers receive good service. Overly complex legacy systems, however, can make it difficult to see the bigger picture. As a result, some business leaders accept the status quo at the expense of the customer experience.

Legacy systems aside, it’s time to take a step back and see things through your customer’s eyes. Start by asking yourself this simple question:

If I were a customer, how would I rate the overall service that I receive?

Developing a customer journey map is one approach for objectively answering this question. Perhaps your support team is doing an excellent job of answering one-off questions, but your online documentation and training needs an upgrade. Or, perhaps customers consistently experience long and confusing delays during implementation, and you just need a better way to convert sales deals to projects. Study the customer journey holistically and identify the biggest gaps that require attention.

2. Analyze the right data & metrics

CSAT (customer satisfaction) score is the most widely used metric in customer service. Customer support software collects CSAT scores by automatically emailing the customer after a ticket is closed. Support teams use CSAT data to track high-level trends and identify potential issues that require correction.

CSAT might be a go-to metric for support departments, but it fails to provide meaningful context into a customer’s interaction with sales, operations, finance, and other customer-facing teams. For customer service insights that extend beyond CSAT, consider looking in your CRM. Depending on your CRM’s reports and dashboards, you may already have several useful metrics at your fingertips. How is customer service impacting your key business metrics, such as churn rate, conversion rate, and net new business? Is there a correlation? Drill down, explore your data, and get some answers.

3. Don’t try to scale too quickly

Customers want to be successful with the solutions that you provide. They want answers to their most difficult questions. And, perhaps more importantly, they want to feel valued and understood by you. Simply allocating more budget for new technology is not a long-term solution for improving customer service. Efficiency is important, but it’s not everything.

Focus on delivering an amazing experience throughout the entire customer journey. Routinely ask customers to share feedback about their interactions with support, sales, finance, accounting, and other teams. Use data to confirm that your customer service strategy is actually working.

Then, and only then, look for ways to scale.

Enhancing the customer experience with better service

Does your company need a fresh approach to customer service?

It’s time to take a break from the day-to-day operations and reimagine what customer service should be. Ask the difficult questions. Find out what customers expect throughout the entire journey—not just from support agents. And, continuously look for ways to integrate a customer service mindset throughout your entire organization.

If you would like to learn how to use a CRM to provide a stellar customer service and overall customer experience, request a demo with an Insightly rep. No commitment required.

Request a demo

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To put it simply, customer success is the accumulated success achieved by a customer, made possible through a mutually-beneficial relationship and collaboration between a software provider and its customers. But this definition doesn’t do the concept justice.

Below, we clear up the confusion around what CS is. We also explain how CS is dependent on, and interconnected with, an entire organization, both from a revenue and a collaboration perspective.

What does customer success mean today?

To understand what CS truly is at its core, it’s beneficial to first understand the evolution of CS, and why it has become so important today. Customer success is almost entirely contained within the realm of B2B SaaS businesses.

The idea of your customer being successful using your product is simple to grasp. To conceptualize it in the way it’s being used today, we must look at the birth of modern-day cloud computing.

Cloud computing becomes mainstream

Until 1999, computer software was sold on floppy, then compact discs, that were installed on a local computer.(1) When the software provider released an update, you received a new disc and installed the update yourself.

Then, something revolutionary took place. A sales executive from Oracle founded Salesforce, with a vision that in order to make powerful B2B software available to the masses, it had to be accessible through the internet.

An unexpected challenge

When B2B SaaS products became popular in the early 2000s, vendors began to face a problem. They’d invested significantly in acquiring new customers and growing brand awareness but hadn’t invested in customer training, nor thought about retaining these new customers and renewing their subscription-based contracts.

This frustrated customers as they were using complicated software but not receiving sufficient guidance on how to use it properly. High customer churn rates became rampant and this new method of delivering software was in jeopardy.

Customer success is born

At that point, customer success arrived on the scene. It was the tool early B2B SaaS companies discovered and implemented to resolve these issues and slow customer churn. They realized customers had to be successful using their products, otherwise their recurring revenue business model might not survive.

This planted the seeds that would grow into modern customer success and continue to define its evolution.

Defining customer success today

With that background in mind, here is a more nuanced definition of customer success:

Customer success is the end result of a multi-faceted, organization-wide effort to understand customer needs, challenges, and goals, then work directly with customers to meet and surpass those objectives.

This requires vendors to provide all the tools and education needed to ensure that customers: 1) understand the purpose of the product they’re using, and 2) know how to use it effectively to drive their own business success and revenue growth.

Customer success in 2020: Who needs it & why?

B2B SaaS companies need an internal customer success function. Today, many B2B SaaS companies have their own CS teams focused entirely on educating customers on how to successfully use their software as it relates to each customer’s specific use case.

Teams of customer success managers (CSMs) support customers on a one-on-one basis with the end goal of driving their business success. Each customer has a dedicated CSM that understands their needs, challenges, and goals. CSMs support and help each individual customer achieve their unique goals and in a way that aligns with their operating practices.

This is necessary given increasing competition in B2B SaaS. The companies leveraging success programs are pulling ahead of those that don’t. Customer expectations now obligate B2B SaaS companies to do so.

Why is customer success so important?

CS impacts the rest of your business in many ways. It provides numerous benefits and involves many moving parts. In short, it’s all interconnected and it starts with a vendor’s employee satisfaction rates.

Let’s unpack this web of interconnectedness.

Employee satisfaction

Satisfied employees are more motivated to produce a high-quality work product. They pay more attention to customers’ needs, leading to a better customer experience.

Customer experience

When your company delivers a positive customer experience, it generates satisfied customers. They advocate for your brand and are loyal to it. They help expand your brand awareness through word of mouth advertising. This creates market trust and attracts new customers.

Organizations can deliver a better experience by leveraging the personal and historical customer data captured and stored in a unified CRM. A unified CRM provides many benefits, including the ability to drive customer success.

Customers benefit when a company uses a unified CRM through the increased quality of support and attention they receive from their vendor. Vendors benefit through higher rates of customer retention and lower rates of customer churn.

Customer churn and retention

The happier and more loyal customers are, the more likely they are to stick with your company over the long term. This reduces customer churn rates and consequently increases customer retention rates. Those two factors lead to further benefits for the vendor.

Increased revenue & business growth

When customer churn is low and retention is high, your company has a reliable source of recurring revenue. This is important to note because, on average, 83% of SaaS revenue comes from customer contract renewals.(2)

This sounds like an easy-to-navigate process, but it’s more complicated than it appears on the surface.

How does customer success work?

Customer success teams take the baton from sales once a new customer is acquired. CSMs’ first task is to conduct comprehensive customer onboarding programs, complete with extensive product training.

CS teams then continue to work directly with customers to ensure that success is achievable, scalable, and sustainable.

This requires customer check-ins, routine health checks, and a deep understanding of how successful customers are at any given point in time. It also requires CSMs to initiate additional touchpoints to ensure customers always have the tools they need and receive additional education when needed.

Customer success doesn’t start and end with onboarding, but rather it continues through a customers’ entire lifetime and relationship with the vendor.

What do CS teams do?

Ensuring long-term customer success requires CS teams to have customer success playbooks that define actions that should take place at given points in the customer journey. For example, each CS team should have a customer renewal playbook that is put into action when a customer’s renewal date approaches.

How a unified CRM facilitates success

A unified CRM facilitates customer success through automated notifications and trigger-based actions that are prompted by customer behavior.

At each touchpoint, CS teams step in—often in collaboration with other internal teams—to apply CS playbooks at each pre-defined point along the customer journey.

They collaborate with sales, marketing, customer support, account management, and more. In this way, customer success is a company-wide initiative that wouldn’t be possible without participation from other teams.

Continuing the discussion

You now understand what customer success is and have a high level of understanding of how it works.

Stay tuned for part two where we dive deeper into what you need to prepare for and launch your customer success initiatives.

Read more like this:

• 3 ways a CRM success plan can help you maximize ROI
• Restarting the customer journey
• Lead generation vs. customer retention
• Rethinking customer retention

Sources

1. “Introducing customer success 2.0: The new growth engine”, McKinsey and Company, 2018

2. “Customer success accelerates user adoption by rapidly creating product experts,” Mindbody, 2018

The post What is customer success? appeared first on Insightly.

And wait. And wait.

Unless you’re paying attention to the right metrics, you may never figure out whether your customer relationships are growing the way they should. While you may have chosen the right path with a CRM, it is imperative to then devise a CRM strategy so that you can identify and measure important milestones, and then track progress and results along the way. This will let you know where to adjust your approach to ensure that your efforts are truly encouraging the long-term customer relationships you’re trying to build.

The best way to measure customer relationships is to view them in the context of who on your team is interacting with the customer and how the CRM can track those particular aspects of the customer lifecycle. By looking at the relationship through this lens, you can more accurately measure your efforts and their effectiveness.

Marketing

Let’s start at the top – your marketing team. In terms of the customer lifecycle, marketing’s primary goal is first to raise awareness of your product. Your marketing efforts are often the first point of contact with a potential customer and (hopefully) the beginning of a customer relationship. As such, the first way you can use CRM to fine tune your marketing team’s efforts is to track the effectiveness of campaigns throughout the various stages of the marketing funnel.

The most obvious number to keep track of is return on investment (ROI). Whether your marketing campaigns are easily quantified paid advertisements or more elusive grassroots outreach programs, they both share one common goal – generating sales. A CRM can help measure campaign ROI by tracking leads generated, lead conversion rates, and resulting sales compared to the cost of the marketing efforts.

While you might think that the marketing funnel ends with a sale, further down your marketing team works to keep existing customers engaged. If existing customers become disengaged, they are more likely to discontinue using your service or purchasing your product, and acquiring a new customer can often cost many times more than retaining these existing customers. CRM can help here by tracking customer retention rates in comparison to specific marketing efforts. Is your newsletter subscription base dwindling alongside your customer numbers? Are your discount offers and deals going unnoticed? A properly implemented CRM will tell you where your marketing efforts are missing the mark.

Finally, you will want to keep a close eye on customer lifetime value – this is how much your business will earn from a single customer over the lifetime of the relationship. By examining this particular number, you can determine where and when to offer discounts and deals to existing customers. Knowing when to make a deal can be the difference between revenue lost or gained over the long haul.

Some stats to monitor include:

– Number of campaigns

– Number of campaign responses

– Number of campaign purchases

– Revenue generated by campaign

– Number of new customers acquired by campaign

– Number of customer referrals

– Number of web page views

– User goal completion rate on the web

– Time per website visit

– Customer lifetime value

– Cross-sell ration

– Up-sell ratio

– Email list growth rate

Sales

In most representations of the funnel, the next step after marketing is sales. Your sales team has an integral role when it comes to the customer relationship. This is arguably the lifeblood of your company and there are a number of important metrics you can track with your CRM to improve sales efforts.

First, how long is your sales cycle? By tracking how long it takes from the time you identify a sales lead to when you close the deal, your sales team can reflect on their efforts and see what works and what doesn’t. On this same vein, you can track sales closing rates – that is, how often does a lead become a sale – and evaluate not only members of your sales team, but also the channels through which those prospects arrived.

Next, your CRM can track key sales activities, such as outbound sales calls or inbound passive inquiries. Perhaps sales are lacking because your team is spending too much time on each call rather than maximizing the number of calls made. Or inversely not spending enough time on each call. Either way, you can see these effects by tracking outbound sales calls over time and analyzing the trend. Similarly, trends in inbound sales inquiries can point to effective or ineffective marketing campaigns and sales techniques.

Some stats to monitor include:

– Number of prospects

– Number of new customers

– Number of retained customers

– Close rate

– Renewal rate

– Number of sales calls made

– Number of sales calls per opportunity

– Amount of new revenue

– Number of open opportunities

– Sales stage duration

– Sales cycle duration

– Number of proposals given

Operations

Finally, once you’ve secured the customer relationship, you will want to track how effectively you deliver projects. If we return to the funnel, we’ll see that it often ends at the sale, but this is far from the truth. In order to keep that customer and build a lifelong relationship with them, we need to always consider them as somewhere along the marketing-sales-delivery continuum. Delivery is when we make good on the promises made in our marketing and sales efforts and provide the customer with an excellent experience and product or service. If we fail to deliver, all was for naught, and the CRM should let us know.

For example, if your customer has a problem, how well do you handle it? Your customer service and help desk efforts have the ability to transform your product or service from “average” to “best”. How long do your customers have to wait before getting assistance? Do they feel that your efforts were sufficient? Was their problem solved? All of these factors can be the difference between losing and retaining a customer.

Some stats to monitor include:

– Number of cases handled

– Number of cases closed the same day

– Average time to resolution

– Average number of service calls per day

– Complaint time to resolution

– Number of customer call backs

– Average service cost per service interaction

– Percentage compliance with SLAs

– Calls lost before being answered

– Average call handling time

While customizing your CRM metrics is a lot of work at the outset, it will pay dividends in the long run. Take the time and energy to optimize from the start, and your customers will divert their own time and energy to your business–with all the benefits that brings. Are you ready to start? Request a demo.

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You’ve probably heard companies that tout similar mottos. On the surface, this type of tagline can almost seem clichéd. Clichés aside, delivering on promises is a fundamental part of being in (and staying in) business. Unfortunately, some companies mistakenly focus too much effort on their sales pipelines at the expense of downstream delivery.

In this post, we’re going to look at a few common delivery models and how they differ. We’ll also discuss a few tips for leveraging CRM platform for a more scalable product delivery and service delivery.

Physical Goods

Let’s start by examining something we all love: stuff.

Whether it’s the latest gadget, a yummy pizza, or a flashy new sports car, there’s a certain level of excitement we humans get by exchanging hard-earned cash for something tangible.

For manufacturers and retailers, getting stuff into the customer’s hands isn’t always as straightforward as it seems. In some cases, it may involve selling directly to end users. In other situations, selling through third-party resellers or franchises may make more sense. Whether you sell to consumers or other businesses, the sale of “stuff” tends to follow one of two models: direct or through distributors and/or dealers.

Let’s briefly review each model and consider a few examples for each.

Direct-to-End User Model

There are certainly perks involved with the direct distribution model. For starters, the vendor has a highly accurate feedback loop with end users. This, of course, makes it easier to adjust the product mix and develop new offerings. Since there are no “middlemen” to account for, the vendor may also be able to maximize its margin potential. On the other hand, some direct-to-end user firms operate under tremendous margin pressure – especially those offering a commoditized item.

Here are a few fictitious examples, along with a few less-than-creative slogans for illustrative purposes. (Please note: Few businesses operate in a purely “direct” or “indirect” ecosystem. Also, “B2C” is an abbreviation for “business-to-consumer” and “B2B” represents “business-to-business,” but I’m sure you already knew that.)

B2C

• Uncle Joey’s Pizza & Delivery – “Uncle Joey’s famous pie…in 30 minutes or less.”
• Tri-State Botanical Nursery – “We grow the best plants in the Tri-State area.”
• Grandma’s Handmade Silk Tie Shop – “Stop by and find the perfect tie!”

B2B

• City Iron Foundry – “We’ll cast just about anything you need!”
• Reliable Software Associates – “Join 10,000 happy customers who use our platform.”
• Industrial Medical & Safety – “Our best medical supplies, direct to your business.”

A direct distribution model typically relies on a high-volume, high-touch sales and support model. By assuming more control over the pipeline, the supplier also takes on greater responsibility for acquiring and servicing the accounts.

As one might imagine, many B2C companies follow a traditional retail model (be it in-person or online). A standardized (or somewhat standardized) product is made or created, the customer pays for the item, and the process repeats itself. In some cases, the “sales cycle” (if you can call it that) may only take a few minutes (or seconds, especially if done online). In such cases, a CRM platform may offer the most value for tracking new product launches, managing customer contact information, and encouraging future repeat purchases.

When it comes to product delivery, B2B firms tend to see even more value from a CRM platform. Take, for example, our iron foundry example. The foundry has a team of sales reps, each of whom is actively working a lead list. When a lead converts into a new paying customer, the foundry must then flawlessly fulfill the order. By leveraging a tool like Insightly, which lets you instantly convert opportunities to projects, the company can move seamlessly into order fulfillment mode. All prior emails, notes, design specifications, drawings, and documents are brought over from the originating sales record. Now, the engineering team can hit the ground running without pestering the client for duplicate information.

Indirect Model

In theory, a purely direct model sure sounds great. In reality, it’s difficult for most businesses to pull off – especially if the company desires expansion beyond a specific geographic region or niche.

For this reason, many companies choose to sell their products through third-party wholesalers, distributors, agents, dealers, merchants, and other entities. By tapping into a pre-existing distribution model, manufacturers can expedite brand awareness and – most importantly – sales.

Here are a few example companies that fit into the “indirect” supply chain. These organizations add value to the marketplace by selling products from one or more manufacturers, usually within a specific area and/or product category.

B2C

• Texas Tom’s Auto Dealership – “All your favorite brands…with deals the size of Texas!”
• Crafty Catherine’s Online Shop – “Everything you need for your next big project.”
• Corey’s Computers & Parts – “Gadgets you want for prices that you’ll love.”

B2B

• Downtown Promo Products – “Ad specialities, gifts, tradeshow items…and more.”
• Top Office Furniture & More – “More than just desks and executive chairs!”

With an indirect model, there are at least two points of delivery to be tracked. First, the manufacturer is responsible for ensuring timely product delivery to its downstream distribution partners. Whether items are to be manufactured just-in-time or fulfilled from an existing inventory, a project-conscious CRM (such as Insightly) can be tremendously helpful. As new purchase orders are received, they can be uploaded and linked to a fulfillment project. Production, post-production, shipping, and customer communication can be built into the project pipeline, ensuring nothing slips through the cracks. In addition, individual tasks can be assigned to team members, creating additional accountability and clarity.

For downstream distribution partners, delivery can vary greatly based on the business model and customer type. A computer retailer, for example, usually maintains a standard inventory level. Upon paying for a product, the customer is then free to take immediate possession of the item (except in rare circumstances, such as specialty orders or out-of-stock parts). By contrast, a promotional products company has a much more complicated delivery model. Even after a customer places an order, there could be several weeks of back-and-forth prior to delivery. Obtaining written approval from clients, working with manufacturers and pad printers, and coordinating freight are just a few of the many related tasks.

The more complex the product delivery model, the more vital your CRM becomes. Be sure to look for a CRM that not only tracks your projects and tasks, but one that will also allow you to save and link your email correspondence. Digging through your inbox is not the most productive use of time. Get everything in one place – and never lose an important client approval again.

Services

Time to shift gears and look at services.

We live in an increasingly service-driven economy. But, unlike products which have an easily defined cost of goods sold, services can be a bit more difficult to quantify from a profitability standpoint.

To ensure profitability, it’s especially important for service-oriented businesses to have a finely tuned delivery model. Time is money, and every minute wasted is money down the drain.

Note: Before we look at specific service model examples, I’ve chosen to categorize services into two models: recurring and limited engagement. I suppose one could categorize services as “direct” and “indirect” (as we did in the product section). However, a frequency-based explanation seemed more logical for this discussion.

Recurring Model

Keeping existing customers happy is often times easier than winning new business. Existing customers represent a known entity and can be easily upsold. New customers can represent new levels of risk and uncertain profit potential. For these reasons, some service-oriented companies focus on a recurring service model.

Not every recurring service model is identical. Some companies will bill on a straight hourly basis. Others will bill on a monthly retainer. Still others will batch together a hybrid of hourly and a la carte add-on services. Regardless of how billing is done, the goal remains the same: provide clients with more value than what they are paying for.

Let’s look at a few example companies engaged in a recurring service model.

B2C Examples

• Larry’s Lawn Care Company – “Keeping your lawn trimmed, green, and beautiful.”
• Community Preschool & Daycare – “Caring for children as if they were our own.”
• Upper Storage Facility – “Put all your extra stuff in storage – for a few bucks a month.”

B2B Examples

• Matt’s Social Media Super Stars – “Get more likes and shares with Matt’s team of stars.”
• Bob Smith Commercial Insurance Agency – “Working to protect your business from risk.”
• XYZ Web Hosting – “Your website, our servers = faster load times.”

In each example, continued engagement with the client is dependent upon the service provider’s performance. In the case of a lawn care company, brown yards and out-of-control dandelions are a sure-fire path to lost revenue. Likewise, a social media company that forgets to schedule posts will find itself looking for new victims…I mean clients.

With so many ongoing clients to keep happy, how can companies consistently deliver? A tool like Insightly can be a great solution for keeping everything balanced. Insightly allows you to set up recurring tasks, which can be linked to existing customers and organization records in your CRM platform. Once you’ve set up a task to repeat, Insightly will help you remember to follow up in a timely fashion. You can even have Insightly send you email reminders as due dates approach, making it even easier to deliver on your promises.

Limited Engagement

Not every service model fits neatly into an ongoing engagement. In fact, some companies never deal with the same client twice. It’s not because the service provider did a bad job – rather, the nature of the business simply does not necessitate future services.

Let’s take a quick look at a few examples of what I like to call “limited engagement” service providers.

B2C

• Smith Home Realty Agency – “Your house…sold in 60 days or less!”
• Western Kentucky Tree Trimmers – “Tree down? Let us handle that for you.”
• Lucinda’s Auto Body Shop & Paint – “Your best choice for your busted-up vehicle.”

B2B

• Tax Crisis Audit Partners – “Let us take care of your worst tax nightmare.”
• Quad-County Machine Shop – “Quad-county on-demand machining services.”

Limited engagement service providers may have the most complicated delivery model. Each customer probably has a completely different situation, requiring a highly customized plan of action. Although in certain instances it may be possible to follow a sequential project workflow, limited engagement service providers may realize more value from Insightly milestones. For example, a realtor needs to simultaneously draft the listing, build the social media plan, and collect high resolution photographs of the property. Insightly milestones allow her to do all of these things at once – without losing track of the bigger picture. Each milestone can have linked tasks and due dates, helping her to delegate with less effort.

Or, take the machine shop as another example. “Machining” is a rather broad service set, leading to a diverse group of customers and projects. Again, milestones can provide the machinists with the flexibility that they need. Instead of being forced into a pipeline that doesn’t make sense for their business model, milestones accommodate delivery planning and adapts to the dynamics of their customer lifecycles.

Deliver with Better Technology

Whether you’re a boutique advertising agency or an online retailer, one thing is for sure: delivering on your promises is an important part of what you do each day. Don’t just hope that things will work out as they always have.

Put your delivery model into a more scalable format with Insightly.

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