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.

Unfortunately, CRM cost is anything but straightforward. Although many CRM companies advertise specific price points, buyers frequently find that hidden costs billed by their chosen platform quickly exceed the front-facing fees. 

In this article, we’ll lay out the various costs involved in implementing a new CRM including ones that often occur immediately after signing a contract (surprise!) and those that remain hidden until users have no choice but to hand over their credit card or start their search from square one.

How much does a CRM cost?

The cost of CRM software varies widely and depends on a number of factors, including but not limited to:

• Number of users
• Number of contacts or customer data points
• Complexity and number of add-ons
• Advanced reporting and analytics functionality
• Dashboard capability

CRM system subscription pricing – which is typically the number that’s advertised as the “cost” of the product – can range from the low double-digits to well over $100 a month per user.

Many providers scale their price based on your number of business users. These are the individuals in your organization that have access to the solution. For example, a Hubspot Professional plan for five users costs $450.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to CRM cost, though. There’s also the cost of implementation to consider, which for some legacy systems, can easily hit five or six digits (and immeasurable time and effort). 

It’s important to note that even CRM vendors that openly advertise all of their subscription and implementation costs often have substantial fees involved with customizing their platform to fit your business needs. These hidden fees can add up fast.

CRMs business models

All customer relationship management platforms have one thing in common: they bring efficiency to contact management. 

Beyond that, though, no two CRMs are exactly the same. Each and every platform is built differently and, therefore, determines its pricing plans by different metrics. 

Some CRM softwares charge clients per user. Some charge per user and per feature. 

Some charge a flat fee monthly, and some annually. Some even have a monthly or yearly retainer in addition to their SaaS subscription fees. 

And that’s just for the software package – implementation fees also vary widely and can easily exceed the cost of the platform itself.

CRM costs by company size

It’s hard to nail down an exact range of what a company can expect to spend on a CRM – some small businesses need a tremendous amount of customization, and some do fine with the basics until they achieve a certain level of growth. Some enterprise companies never explore beyond the surface level of their CRM, while others spend well into six figures customizing and building out their systems. 

It can be helpful to ask questions about this to your salesperson during the sales process. Can you see a timeline and a total cost of implementation for a company your size? Can you speak with a recently onboarded company about their experience?

Here are some CRM features you might expect to pay for based on your company size:

SMB CRM Costs

Small businesses (fewer than 20 licenses) run the gamut in terms of what they need from a CRM. While many opt to keep it simple during the startup phase, others choose to dive head-first into customizations and add-ons. 

SMBs can often expect to pay for at least the following features:

• Data Integration 
• Preferred Customizations
• Email & Marketing Automation 
• Ability to Create Landing Pages & Forms
• Contact Management
• Customer Interaction Tracking
• Lead Management
• Social Media Management

Mid-market CRM costs

Mid-size companies (21 – 100 user licenses) focus heavily on scaling, and need a CRM that can grow with them. 

• Additional Data Migration
• Intuitive Data Collection & Storage
• Integrations into Inbox
• Intuitive Mobile App
• Data Integrity Guarantee
• Customizable Objects/Fields
• Project and Task Management
• Ability to Transfer Deals to Project Management
• Scalable User Base
• Customer Segmentation

Mid-market companies can avoid department silos by adopting a platform that allows the marketing, customer success, and sales teams to have universal access to real-time data. 

Enterprise CRMs Costs

Large enterprise companies (100+ user licenses), no matter their level of customization, require a more flexible, sophisticated system to meet their needs at scale. 

• Additional Data Migration
• Workflow Consolidation
• Mobile-First Format
• Automated Data Entry 
• Automatic Logging
• Opportunity Management
• Personalized Campaigns and Engagement stats
• Lead Scoring 
• Activity Management
• Pipeline Views
• Power Dialer
• SMS and Call Management
• Dynamic Forms
• Granular Access Control
• Single Sign On (SSO)

It’s important to remember that these are only guidelines. Company size can be an indicator of investment, but not always. CRM pricing depends more on the customization and needs of the business. 

The cost of legacy CRMs

Many companies adopt big-name platforms like Salesforce with the assumption that they’ll have more than what they need in terms of account management.

The truth, though, is that these legacy solutions are almost always overly complex. The quantity of features doesn’t necessarily correlate to their usefulness. Feature-heavy CRMs require heavy training and create ample room for error with their steep learning curve. 

Legacy CRM systems also almost always require a dedicated dev team to implement the product, and other third-party services to reach complete customization as the business grows. They are also known to gate-keep certain marketing automation features, APIs, and reasonable workflow storage behind their premium pricing tier.

On top of that, most legacy CRM companies offer only multi-year contracts. This lock-in often creates a sunk-cost fallacy in companies who aren’t getting what they need out of their legacy system but are reluctant to start the search process from scratch. 

Even for companies that are in it for the long haul, the costs of implementing new capabilities and add-ons as the business grows can be a massive, ongoing budget hit.

Hidden CRM costs

Although the sheer number of choices can feel overwhelming, choosing the right system is actually the easy part – the implementation and integration processes are often surprisingly expensive, complex, and time-consuming.

The surprise and hidden costs (of both time and money) involved in setting up their new system often leave users wondering if the CRM really improved their business. 

Indeed the biggest cost can be a failed implementation where the system was purchased but was not properly configured and adopted and therefore just accumulated dust. 

If you’re shopping for a new CRM system, it’s important to fully understand the full scope of cost and fees involved with using the CRM in a way that works for your needs. 

Setup and implementation costs

The setup and implementation costs for CRMs can vary. Modern, intuitive platforms will be easier and more cost effective, while legacy systems (e.g. Salesforce) can be quite expensive. It’s important that potential buyers fully understand the upfront and post-purchase costs involved in the process. The following questions will help CRM shoppers screen potential vendors and weigh the various costs involved.

• How long will implementation take? 
• How many support staff are needed for the process? What hourly rate does your staff receive for implementation development? 
• Are there fees involved with transferring data from a previous system or inputting data into the new one?
• Is there a minimum number of users allowed? A maximum? What are the fees for exceeding the maximum number of users? 
• Is the subscription fee based on number of users, or number of employees? 

Ultimately, the specifics of your CRM implementation will vary according to your unique business needs. The important part is asking the right pre-purchase questions to get a full understanding of the scope of the project.  

CRM integrations costs

If you have additional softwares that you’re hoping to integrate into the new CRM, you’re likely to face fees for that, as well. For modern platforms, this can be a few simple steps; for legacy platforms, it can take a whole team. Be sure to clarify how these fees are calculated – some will ask for a large, one-time fee, and others may make you pay per integration.

CRM training costs

The second-highest leading cause of failure to adopt a new CRM system is lack of sufficient training, with most employees reporting the systems are far too difficult to learn on their own. 

Consider the costs involved in learning this new system. Not only will you pay for the trainers, but you’ll also be asking your employees to pause their revenue-generating tasks to attend long training sessions. The more complex your system is, the more training will be required and the longer it will take, so this is another reason to do some research. Ask your rep to put you in touch with current customers so you can discover how long it took for them to be working as a team in the CRM.

CRM support costs

No matter how carefully you implement your new system, or how thoroughly you train your employees on its specifics, you’re likely to encounter a few issues as you get the system up and running. 

As you choose your new system, be sure to understand their support program. How readily available are support agents? How much and when will you be charged for consulting with them? Are there phone and email options?

CRM add-ons costs

All CRMs offer add-ons, but most don’t advertise how necessary they are for full functionality. Even Enterprise or Premium subscriptions often require users to add on or build out new features to access specific integrations, analytics, reporting, or intelligence-based features. Unfortunately, these are often advertised during the sales process, but hidden behind a paywall after purchase. 

You’ll be frustrated to hear, “you didn’t select that option, would you like to add it on?”

Be sure to understand exactly which apps and custom features are included in the advertised fee, and what additional fees are involved in complete customization.

The cost of using the wrong CRM solution 

It should be clear by now that choosing the wrong CRM system will cost a ton of cash – even choosing the right system will impact your bottom line! 

There are also many significant and less tangible costs involved with not finding the perfect fit. 

First and foremost, the wrong CRM is highly likely to discourage adoption altogether. In fact, lack of user adoption is responsible for 70% of failed CRM projects.

Even for companies who have success in onboarding their employees, the risk of a poor UX or slow processing times is high. Despite their multitude of features, most big-box CRM systems are clunky and difficult to run once the add-ons and customizations are fully built. 

At the end of the day, one of the most significant costs of a poor-fit CRM is time. It takes a tremendous amount of resources to get a new system up and running, and the lost-time consequences of investing those resources into a poor fit can be devastating. 

Insightly is a deeply integrated unified CRM with transparent pricing

If you’re looking for an affordable, modern CRM with a unified database to build lasting customer relationships, check out Insightly. With Insightly’s robust CRM, you’ll get all the tools you need to run your business and great support to make it happen. Add on the Insightly Marketing and Insightly Service apps, and you’ll align your teams, deliver world class experiences, and drive growth. Choose AppConnect, and every tool you need to run your business will be connected with no-code/low-code integrations.

With one-click data migration and superior customer support, you can switch from your current provider in under two hours. 

Find out how much you can save by choosing (or switching to) Insightly by using a CRM costs calculator.

The post The true cost of a CRM 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.

In addition to solving customer problems, customer service professionals need to deliver a positive customer experience in everything they do, whether it’s offering technical support, sharing additional information to help customers maximize their investment in your product, or simply listening with empathy.

Customer service professionals need to perform to the best of their abilities for the good of the customer and the company. 

But how can you evaluate whether or not your customer service is effective? The answer is Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), which can give you critical insights into your customer service team’s performance and provide you with actionable and practical paths towards success.

Tracking customer service KPIs is essential

There’s no debate between the benefits of intuition vs. data. Data-based decision making uses quantitative measuring to make crucial business decisions. 

KPIs empower you to better understand the health and performance of your customer service practices so you can guide your team in reaching your company’s benchmarks and goals. 

The benefits of KPIs include:

• Sharpening business insights
• Improving customer satisfaction 
• Measuring efficiency 
• Strengthening customer retention 

When you focus on customer service-based KPIs, you can achieve results quicker and gain critical insights into buyer interactions. You will also help your customer support team identify and gauge customer loyalty and customer retention patterns. 

How to choose the right customer service KPIs

When you identify and measure your customer service teams with KPIs, you commit to helping your company efficiently analyze and monitor the entire customer journey. 

Let’s look at the best metrics and types of customer support KPIs you can use to accurately measure customer service practices. 

Customer satisfaction KPIs

Customer satisfaction KPIs measure how your customers feel about your company and the quality of their interactions with you and your customer service team. 

The following are the best KPIs to track and measure how satisfied your customers are with your company and their customer journey: 

1. Net Promoter Score (NPS)

The NPS is a metric that helps you measure customer enthusiasm, satisfaction, and customer loyalty. You can calculate the Net Promoter Score by asking customers to rate their likelihood of recommending your company, product, or service on a scale of 1 to 10. 

Why it matters: 

You can use the NPS to determine business growth opportunities. A high NPS shows a healthy relationship with your customers, while a low one indicates there are issues with customer relationships that you need to address. 

How it helps: 

While the NPS alone isn’t enough to paint a complete picture of your customer’s loyalty, it allows you to quantify the data over time to create internal benchmarks. 

You can also use it to rally your employees around creating an enthusiastic customer base because your teams can see the impact they have on customers.

2. Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

The Customer Satisfaction Score is a metric that measures customer satisfaction levels throughout the customer experience. 

This data comes from customer feedback surveys that ask questions about their satisfaction with your product, service, or brand as a whole. The CSAT score can range from 0 to 100%. 

Why it matters: 

The CSAT is a strong indicator of your customer loyalty and overall customer experience because it tells you how happy your customers are with your company. 

It also helps you identify the steps your need to take to increase your retention rates and improve your brand’s reputation. 

How it helps: 

The KPI gives your company a cumulative view of customer support to deliver goods and services for you to compare and contrast over an extended period. 

3. Customer Effort Score (CES)

The Customer Effort Score allows service organizations to analyze how easy it is for customers to interact with your customer support team to resolve their issues. 

The CES asks one question and then scores the responses on a numeric scale with one being the highest level of disagreement. 

Why it matters: 

Boosting customer loyalty is essential, but there is a more significant opportunity by keeping customers from becoming disloyal. 

Disloyal or dissatisfied customers are much more likely to negatively impact your company in a variety of ways.

How it helps: 

The CES analyzes the amount of effort your customers have to exert during their interactions with your service agents. 

You can use this metric to gauge and adjust your processes to achieve a highly satisfactory and low-effort experience for your customers.

KPIs for Customer Service Performance: Teams and Individual Agents 

Your customer support team is the face of your company in post-sale interactions. They are often the first ones to interact with new customers, which means their performance will reflect on your business and reputation. 

Companies need to make sure their customer service experience is second to none. And to do this, customer support teams need access to key metrics that will help them identify areas of strength and improvement. 

4. First Response Time (FRT)

Also known as Time to First Response, this metric measures the minutes, hours, or days it takes from the moment a customer submits a support ticket to when customer service reps respond. 

To find your average time to first response, identify the total number of tickets within a selected timeframe and divide the total time it took your team to send the first response. 

Why it matters: 

Your Time to First Response plays a critical role in enhancing customer satisfaction levels. Your clients want a prompt response to their support requests so your team’s performance makes a big impact. 

How it helps: 

Identifying your Time to First Response will help you set a baseline for support ticket response times. In addition, it can help you develop a timeframe benchmark for your customer service reps. 

5. Average Handle Time (AHT)

The Average Handle Time identifies the time it takes for a customer to finish their interaction with your customer support team from when they start the call to when they hang up. This KPI includes hold time, talk time, and any other idle time during the call. 

To find the AHT, add the total hold time, talk time, and after-call task time. Next, divide that time by the number of calls your team received during that time frame. 

Why it matters: 

Once customers start the resolution process, they want it to go as quickly as possible. No one likes to wait for a solution to their issue. The longer your customers have to wait for a resolution, the more likely they are to become dissatisfied and end the call. 

A discontented customer can make a negative impact on your business, so it’s crucial to identify and put practices in place to avoid long resolution times. 

How it helps: 

Finding your Average Handle Time will allow you to compare it with your industry benchmark times to ensure you are on par with your competitors. 

It also provides a benchmark to strive towards, which will motivate your customer service team to meet their call time goals. 

6. Ticket Resolution Rate (TRR)

The Ticket Resolution Rate is a metric that compares the number of tickets your representative or team receives with the number of tickets they resolve within a particular time. 

To determine the TRR, divide the number of tickets your team solves by the number of tickets they receive. Next, multiply that number by 100 to identify the resolution rate. 

Why it matters: 

Ticket resolution rates are subjective to your industry; however, every business knows they need to solve any customer issues quickly and efficiently. 

Your customers need to know you care about their time and problems, so offering a quick ticket turnaround time dramatically improves the customer experience.

How it helps: 

Identifying your ticket resolution rate will help you compare your company with others in your industry and assist your customer support team with identifying the areas they need to improve. 

7. First Contact Resolution Rate (FCR) 

The FCR is an essential customer service metric because it measures how many customer contacts your team resolves within a single interaction with the customer. 

If your company resolves the customer issue on the first contact, your customers won’t need to call again or require the representative to follow up. Improving your FCR increases customer satisfaction and improves customer loyalty. 

Why it matters: 

There are many ways to measure the performance of your contact center so it’s important to find the right metrics. 

To boost customer satisfaction, your customer support representatives need to view customer contacts as an escalation and have a strong desire to deliver prompt, effective resolutions. 

How it helps: 

The FCR is a straightforward way for you to experience your support team’s interactions through your customer’s perspective.

Call centers that honor the reality of customer contact allows them to surpass the expectations and requirements of the customer, which leads to a more satisfying customer service experience. 

8. Identify your top performing agents

When you combine multiple KPIs, like conversion rates, customer satisfaction surveys, and call response times, and sort them by the representative, you’ll be able to identify which of your customer support reps are performing well and which are not. 

Why it matters: 

Your representatives want you to recognize their accomplishments. They also want to clearly understand the expectations of their roles. 

How it helps: 

Positive reinforcement by rewarding top-performing representatives will ensure adequate staffing and encourage employee engagement. 

Operational customer service KPIs

Operational KPIs measure company efficiency in your day-to-day operations. These key metrics help identify which strategies during daily operations need improvement and which are working well. 

Here are the most important customer service KPIs to ensure your support operations are running smoothly. 

9. Tickets by channel

This metric identifies how many tickets your customers generate through various channels, such as your website, phone calls, or chatbots. 

Why it matters: 

Whether you operate through customer service apps or live call centers, knowing where your customers are looking for assistance is crucial. 

To meet the needs of your customers, you must be sure to have the optimal resourcing in the right places. 

How it helps: 

Seeing where your tickets are coming from will help you target where you need to focus and improve your customer service efforts. 

10. Tickets by customer

Use this metric to determine if any of your customers need to repeatedly reach out to your customer service team. 

Having to keep contacting support will lead to customer dissatisfaction and lead to a reduction in customer retention. 

Why it matters: 

If a customer generates multiple help tickets, you’ll know there is a problem to pinpoint and solve as soon as possible to avoid customer frustration. 

How it helps: 

Using this metric can help you determine which product or service is causing the customer to generate multiple tickets. Then you can set actionable goals to resolve the issue and stop multiple help tickets.

11. Tickets by category

Sorting tickets by category allows you to see which areas of your business result in higher amounts of customer inquiries or tickets. 

Knowing where to focus on improvements can help you improve the customer experience and raise customer retention rates. 

Why it matters: 

Much like sorting tickets by the customer, identifying how many tickets your customers are generating per category shows you the key areas you need to address. 

Faster resolution for customers will raise customer satisfaction and loyalty. 

How it helps: 

Automating the ticket categorization process can make it easier for your customer support agents to handle tickets by routing rules and knowledge sets.

How your customer service efforts impact higher level metrics and KPIs 

Every customer touchpoint is an opportunity to build your customer relationships and increase profits. Since your representatives are the first point of contact for questions and concerns, they play a significant role in your user experience (UX). 

Sometimes, customer service efforts can impact higher-level metrics and KPIs. Surprisingly, the following KPIs and metrics that may not seem connected to customer service can act as a litmus test for whether or not your customer service makes a positive impact on your customers.

12. Customer Retention Rate (CRR)

Customer Retention Rate (CRR) measures the number of customers a business retains over a specific period. 

To identify your CRR, begin with the number of customers at the end of a given period and subtract it from the number of new customers during that same period. Next, divide this number by the number of customers at the beginning of that period and multiply it by 100. 

Why it matters: 

Onboarding new customers improves your overall brand, but retaining them for the long haul shows you have cultivated a solid relationship of trust and loyalty. 

How it helps: 

Tracking your customer retention and churn rates will help you build unique, long-lasting relationships with your clients. It also demonstrates they trust you and your brand gives them value. 

13. Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

Some businesses abbreviate this KPI as CLTV or LTV. It identifies the net profit your company has contributed to the entire relationship lifecycle of a specific customer. 

Essentially, this metric lets you know how much it costs you to retain a client as well as the revenue they bring to your business. To calculate your CLV, subtract the lifetime customer costs from the lifetime customer revenue.

Why it matters: 

Successful businesses use CLV to guide their business decisions and identify where to focus their marketing efforts. This gives them valuable insight into which customer segments are the most profitable. 

How it helps:

Knowing which customers are bringing in the most revenue will help your customer service team focus on maintaining positive relationships with those clients. 

14. Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)

The MRR is a KPI that identifies the revenue a company can accurately predict it receives every month. It’s the amount of income existing customers generate. 

Calculate the MRR growth metric by adding the additional revenue from current clients that occurred within a given month. 

Why it matters: 

This metric is essential to understanding your overall business cash flow and profitability. Your KPI can help you monitor your business profits and make changes before your revenue sinks too low. 

How it helps:

Tracking MRR and MRR growth will give you a better idea of how your company is performing right now with current customers. It may shed light on customer service practices that are working well and some that may need improvement. 

15. Contract Renewal Rate (CRR) 

Your company’s contract renewal rate is the percentage of customers that renew their contracts or subscriptions with your business. This metric shows you how many customers are satisfied enough to extend their relationship with your business. 

Determine your contract renewal rate by dividing the number of contract renewals by the number of eligible members within a specific period. 

Why it matters:

Happy customers will renew their contracts. If your contract renewal rate is low or dips, it could indicate that you need to make some changes to your customer service procedures. 

How it helps:

Evaluating this metric regularly will help alert you to potential problems so you can start taking action. If renewal rates are trending down, this will alert you to look at a number of areas across your business, including product performance, service offerings, support, or customer success practices.

Build your customer service KPI dashboard with Insightly

The front-line interactions of your customer service professionals can determine whether or not your clients stick with your business or move on to a competitor. 

Evaluating critical KPIs is an efficient way to provide them with a clearer focus and ensure your strategy is on the right track. These metrics provide critical insights into the health of your business and point out areas you may need to improve. 

To help your customer service team go above and beyond, they need the benefits of a high-quality CRM. The KPIs they offer will allow you to access essential client interactional information and data to drive innovations and improvements. 

Test out all the great features Insightly CRM offers with a free trial. 

The post Use these KPIs to optimize your customer service efforts 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

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Marketers tend to be heads-down. Many of us are running a dozen programs, managing teams, and trying to keep up with a changing industry. When we’re underwater, it’s tough to remember to come up for air and ask: what do our customers actually want from us?

Understanding the voice of your customer can help you answer this question.

What does ‘voice of the customer’ mean?

The voice of the customer is what your customer wants and needs. It’s how your customers share their experiences with your product and services to inform your product and marketing.

It may seem like a simple concept. Of course, we listen to our customers. Yet, as companies and the number of stakeholders grow, what the customer wants and needs can sometimes get lost.

The customer’s voice can include negative and positive feedback, and it can be delivered in a variety of ways. Understanding your customers’ wants and needs can inform any number of programs across your company.

The benefits of listening to your customers

All companies have the best intentions when listening to customer feedback. In many industries, ‘the customer is always right.’ In others, customers must raise issues many times to feel heard.

When you’re listening to the voice of your customer, you learn what your customers value the most in your product and how they use it. You can use this feedback as market research to inform your marketing programs, product development, and customer success programs. Understanding the voice of the customer is the first step to becoming a customer-centric company.

How to create a customer voice strategy

Listening to your customers should be baked into your marketing strategy. Consider implementing consistent feedback mechanisms that can influence your programs.

Different kinds of customers can provide valuable feedback. Here are some ways each kind of customer can inform your strategy:

Loyal customers

Loyal customers are often the easiest to identify and to request feedback from. They are excited to share their feedback. Even though you have the strongest customer relationships with them, they are often the people to turn to for specific critical feedback about your product. They will also let you know how you can engage them better and keep them as a customer. Their familiarity and dedication make them a great sounding board.

Churned customers

It’s never fun to have a conversation with your ex. But your churned customers—especially those that may have been with you for a while—can often provide some of the best customer feedback. They will be more critical of your product than your loyal customers, but they also tend to be more straightforward. They may even be able to give you insight into your competitors.

“Lazy” customers

Some customers might stop by and buy your product whenever they feel like it. They may have an unpredictable buying pattern, but still appear to enjoy using your product. These customers can give you a lot of insight into customer motivation and how your product fits into the market.

Best practices for your customer voice initiative

Here are some of the methods to hear the voice of your customer:

Interviews or focus groups

There’s no replacing a face-to-face (or face-to-Zoom) conversation. By speaking with your customers one-on-one or in small groups, you not only hear their feedback, but you can understand how they feel. In these situations, you can read body language, hear intonation, and capture emotions. This can give you a human look into how your customers feel about your product.

Surveys and net promoter score

Post-service surveys are—unsurprisingly—one of the most popular ways to collect customer feedback. They’re simple to administer and inherently quantitative. You can aggregate your surveys into a net promoter score, a key metric in measuring customer satisfaction.

Customer feedback on site

A comment field or feedback email address allows for unbridled criticism, but perhaps that’s exactly what your company needs to grow. An open form for anonymous customer feedback can encourage trolling or spam. Yet, it also encourages feedback that your customers don’t know how to give otherwise.

Customer service data

Your customer service team is the frontline of the customer voice—they hear it every day. Ask your team for service tickets, recorded phone conversations, chatbots, and email conversations. You can uncover a buried treasure of what your customers are  trying to tell you.

Sales data

Your sales team is having dozens of conversations with potential customers. They are hearing their concerns and hopes for a new solution from your target market. Aggregate the recordings, notes, and data from sales calls for more insights into your customer voice.

Social media

It’s quite possible your customers are already talking about you. They might use LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook to share their thoughts on your company and recommend it, or not, to other people in their peer group. Use social media listening tools to scrape brand mentions and related conversations.

How do you determine the most effective way to collect customer feedback? Consider a mix of strategies. Some customers may be more comfortable with one method than another. By using a few methods, you can ensure that one method doesn’t show a bias over another.

How to measure and understand your customer voice

So, you’ve collected all your customer feedback. You’ve got a spreadsheet, a folder full of sales calls, notes from a focus group and a smattering of net promoter scores. How do you make this feedback actionable?

Here are the steps to organize and measure your customer data:

Aggregate the data using one common method

Your customer voice should be singular and consistent. In order for the customer feedback to be actionable, it must be standardized. Streamline your customer data using one or more of the following tools:

• An integrated CRM that can mirror your feedback directly with your customer data
• A dedicated customer experience tool, like GetFeedback, to collect feedback across channels
• A qualitative research tool, like FocusVision, to run focus groups and collect customer data

Determine if there are any gaps or issues with the data

Once you’ve aggregated your data, it’s your job to look for holes. Did you leave out feedback from a certain age bracket or demographic group? Was all your feedback collected during a busy season, or a slow season? Did you forget to ask a key question?

If a mistake was made, now is the time to correct it. The customer voice relies on complete and full data. Without it, we don’t know if we are representing our customers.

Identify trends

It may be tempting to pick out a juicy data point. Maybe you have one customer who has been with your company for 20 years. Maybe you have one customer who churned and came back a year later, Or, maybe you have a customer that said something really cruel or untrue.

When understanding your customer voice, trends are more important than outliers. Take time to understand the commonalities. Your customer voice will never represent all customers, but it should represent most of them.

Don’t fall into data analysis traps

Data analysis is not a perfect science. There are a number of biases and common analysis blunders that come into play, and can impact how you present your final data. These include:

• Errors. Does your data meet quality standards?
• Too small of a sample size. Did you survey enough people to have meaningful results?
• Confirmation bias. Did you ask open-ended questions, or did you use the data to confirm an already-held belief?
• Misinterpretation of results. Did you explore every possible reason for the results that you received?

What if your market research and analysis show no meaningful results? This does not mean your experiment was a failure. It could mean that you need to do more research, or that you need to ask questions that reveal customer similarities, rather than differences. It might also mean that your customers are not ready to give feedback in the way that you asked for it. In the case that trends do not come to light, be sure to use this as fodder for your next customer feedback round.

Report on trends and determine action items

It’s crucial to communicate the trends you uncover to product leaders and decision-makers. The voice of the customer can become a litmus test for new product decisions and marketing programs. It is your responsibility to speak on behalf of the customer using their voice.

You can present the voice of the customer in a brief presentation, a detailed report, or a series of recommendations.

Some immediate action items you can take with customer voice include:

• A webinar to educate customers on relevant product features
• Improvement of your customer relationship management (CRM) system with integrated and updated customer data
• A re-engagement campaign for churned customers, with a renewed understanding of their priorities
• Development of your ideal customer profile
• A ‘surprise and delight’ campaign for loyal customers who have expressed what they value

Conclusion

The voice of the customer is something marketers always think about, but rarely go through the exercise of quantifying. By going through this process, marketers can better understand who they are selling to. This will create stronger products and marketing programs to help their company grow.

Sources:

8 types of bias in data analysis and how to avoid them George Lawton. TechTarget. October 26, 2020

What is voice of the customer (VoC)? Qualtrics

The post Level up your strategy by listening to the voice of the customer appeared first on Insightly.

Considering drastic changes in mobility and the way people work, the use of business technology is becoming a key differentiator between companies that succeed and those that fail in the digital economy. How does your company stack up?

One way to find out how well business technology supports your team and goals is to perform regular tech audits. Keep reading to learn how to perform a tech audit.

The tech stack

A tech stack is simply a group of technology-based tools that help a business operate more efficiently, market more accurately, and enable sales and services teams to provide a stellar customer experience.

As a business adapts and grows, the tech stack will change. This is also the case for post-pandemic operational needs, as people seek to lower costs and maximize efficiency. Some organizations used this time to clean shops and go lean. Others introduced new technology to improve digital operations and meet new customer trends.

You may find that certain systems have poor integration, run too slowly, or lack the security for an at-home setup. It may be time to evaluate your tech stack.

Why is it important to audit your business technology?

When it comes to modern business needs, there is no “one-size-fits-all” solution. Each brand has unique needs, goals, and challenges. Considering also that new apps and platforms are developed each day, it’s helpful to audit your tech stack to stay on the right track.

A consistent review will help you to:

• Gain better ROI on all software and tools
• Reduce labor costs and employee time
• Consolidate systems and improve integrations
• Maintain a universal source of truth for all data
• Provide better customer experience

The more systems you have, the more critical it is to perform an IT audit. Every app used should be tied back to business strategy—everything from accounting to website management, to customer relationship management (CRM) systems, to social media accounts.

What types of tools are part of a tech stack?

Consider all the tools you need on a daily basis. The best tech stack can include, but is certainly not limited to:

Marketing

• Marketing automation
• Content management system (CMS)
• Lead management, including lead scoring and tracking
• Email automation
• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Data analytics
• Ad management tools
• Social media management
• Creative asset
• Chatbot automation

Sales

• Customer relationship management tools (CRM)
• Meeting scheduler
• VoIP/call tracking
• Data management
• Video recording/editing
• Sales enablement

Service

• Ticket management
• Live chat
• Knowledge base
• Help desk automation
• Time tracker
• Survey automation

Signs it’s time to audit your business technology

The major reason to audit your tech stack right now is the shift in the global economy and rise of the remote workplace. From productivity to collaboration to customer management, needs are changing and you may need new and different tools to meet them.

Other factors that will indicate it’s time for a technology audit include:

Data silos

A good sign it’s time to audit is when you start seeing data silos that hinder productivity. When the tech tools you are using don’t communicate with each other, it takes longer to get the job done, causing inefficiencies in both individual and team schedules.

Data silos also hinder collaboration between teams. If departments aren’t pulling the data from the same spot, it’s going to impact the success of operations. It will be hard to distinguish what is working from what is not.

If a system doesn’t easily integrate or is taking up too much time, consider getting rid of it or replacing it with a flexible alternative.

Bad data

If you are brewing mistrust for your data, it’s time for a tech audit. Inconsistencies, errors, duplicates, and problems with shared information can all lead to disaster.

If not right away, the loss of labor over time (to fix these issues) can certainly add up. Don’t let problems go unresolved. If a system isn’t working, fix it, upgrade it, or get rid of it.

Wasted time

As more people start working from home, businesses are brutally aware of wasted labor. If people are used to operating with mediocre software, all their time is spent working out the kinks, rather than shopping for a better solution.

Spending too much time on tools because you don’t know how they function is also a sign it’s time for a system audit.

Consider adopting easy-to-use, intuitive systems and training new staff around the tech stack as part of the onboarding process. This ensures high adoption rates and consistent usage of key systems.

Duplicate functions

Sometimes your tech software features overlap. If two separate systems do the same thing, you probably don’t need them both. You may decide to choose to keep only one or purchase a new system that can completely replace both systems.

Budget changes

If you need to get a new budget approved, it’s time for a tech audit.

Here are a few questions to consider:

• Are you seeing a return on investment (ROI) from the technology you use now?
• Are the number of paid users the same as the number of people using it? Or, what is the system adoption and usage rate?
• Do the tools fit in with your long-term goals?

How to conduct a business technology audit

When it comes to performing the actual audit, every business has its own method to the madness. Start with the following considerations:

• How, where, and when a tool is used in business processes
• The cost to move to a different system
• The number of needs a single tool or system meets for the business
• Systems with overlapping functions
• Can you scale your business with the existing tech stack?

Instead of directing all your attention to the apps themselves, a better approach is to think about the business processes they support.

You should also consider how each tech tool affects employee performance and productivity. This will have a direct influence on the customer experience.

The audit process: step-by-step

The best way to determine if you have the right business technology in place is to make a list of what you already have. Ask the following questions:

• What tools am I paying for?
• How many licenses/users does each program have?
• What does each tool do?
• How are all of the systems connected to each other?
• What critical business needs does each system serve?
• How much does each solution cost?

Once you have a broader view of exactly what’s running operations, follow through with these IT audit steps:

1. Conduct a security sweep of the network and every device attached to it
2. Audit the software in use
3. Consolidate the hardware
4. Inspect all security and backup systems
5. Audit the document management system
6. Ensure the company has a strategic technology plan

Deciding on what you need

When it comes to accommodating the gig economy, there are a few solutions that are critical for success. Here are a few things you’ll need for remote workers:

Secure and easy access tools

If you provide remote workers with tools that are too complicated or have a sharp learning curve, chances are they’ll go back to using their own. If your VPN is too slow for company apps, workers may end up using unsanctioned online tools.

Remote collaboration apps make it easier for people to work from home—and that’s the whole point.

Leveraging the cloud

Most modern brands have a heavy hand in the cloud and SaaS space. This means fewer issues with bandwidth and remote access. The more data that can be stored off-site, the easier it is to reach.

In the new normal, it’s a great idea to increase your cloud footprint. Ways to save money using the cloud include:

• Auto-terminating development during off-hours
• Reducing the need for “on-demand” resources
• Using storage-efficient apps

User feedback

A business technology audit requires input from everyone on the team. Ask for feedback on the daily tools your teams use. Make sure these discussions focus on gathering the facts and the underlying business processes. Ask people their thoughts on the effectiveness of the tool and any suggestions on what else might work.

Customer relationships

Customer churn and retention is a major concern for businesses across every industry and vertical. People have shorter attention spans and competition is fierce. This issue only becomes magnified during a post-pandemic situation.

Any business technology audit you perform must have serious considerations for customer relationships. In fact, your main focus when shopping for new solutions should be “how can this make the customer happier?” It’s the means to every end.

Robust CRM tools can help insulate companies from economic downturns and push revenue growth even in the toughest of times.

Instead of using separate point solutions for marketing, sales, and services, you could consider a unified platform with built-in integrations with other systems, including finance and accounting, HR, and/or e-commerce.

Setting up for success

Ignoring tech tools in your arsenal can cost you money and hold your business back from growth. Consider performing a business technology audit on a regular basis, just like you do with finances. Once a year is a good practice, but it can be more or less depending on your industry and changes in the economy or consumer behavior.

To stay on track, create an audit schedule. A set schedule will help you and your team to prepare and construct a methodology for changes, including additions. It also helps to keep teams communicating and integrations running smoothly.

When was the last time you reviewed your tech stack?

Sources

Before the coronavirus, telework was an optional benefit, mostly for the affluent few. Drew Desilver. Pew Research Center. March 2020.

National Compensation Survey: Employee Benefits in the United States. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. March 2020

The post How to audit your business technology appeared first on Insightly.

According to a recent survey by Gartner, prospects spend 50% of their time seeking information from third-party sources.* Why not study their moves?

What is buyer intent?

Buyer intent looks at aggregated behavioral signals to identify potential prospects in the buying cycle. There are a variety of data points that can represent buying intention.

Intent data can include the following behaviors:

• Web site visits and the frequency of visits
• What specific articles or pages a user is reading
• Which topics seem to interest users most
• Engagement with sales or marketing emails

Essentially, intent data is any type of information that indicates a lead is in the buying phase of their customer journey. The main sources of intent marketing include web traffic, off-site activity, data from your CRM, social media metrics, search intent, and content consumption data.

How is intent data collected?

There are a few types of resources that help businesses capture buyer intent. This includes both internal and external buyer intent tools.

Internal data

Any data that a company collects on its own is considered “internal data.” Also referred to as “first-party” intent data, it is information that is collected in-house using a variety of systems, such as application logs, a marketing automation platform, or customer relationship management (CRM) software.

Most CRMs will display metrics for what visitors are doing on your site. The benefits of collecting internal data include total control of what you capture and how, accuracy, and security.

Additionally, a business can act immediately on internal data and customize exactly what classifies as purchase intent. There’s no waiting for another party to deliver your data. This provides a good way to get started with buyer intent data.

External data

Another way of collecting intent data is through a third-party data collection company. This is typically sourced through cookies or IP lookups on specific websites. Because collected internal data can be complex, external data provides an easier means to the same end.

External data is distinct from internal business intelligence because it is generated by and purchased from outside agencies. This data is used by the purchaser to filter out potential buyers and is even packaged as marketing qualified leads (MQLs).

However, there are some disadvantages to going this route. The company you choose must always be GDPR-compliant. You’ll also need to set up clear expectations and closely monitor the deliverables for consistent accuracy and value of data you purchase.

Data should be sourced from leading industry sites that consumers are using to educate themselves. Research is usually based on search intent, prior buying patterns, and prior buying patterns.

Key indicators of buyer intent

In order to ensure prospects are exclusively a good fit, do your homework. You need to position the segmenting and targeting work around a buyer persona. Otherwise, you could end up with leads who, on the surface, look good, but may never buy a thing.

The first step is deciding what the company values as important and how to score interactions with key decision-makers. You should also account for who is interacting with your brand. There’s no point in spending time tracking and scoring leads that aren’t a good fit.

Key considerations when compiling intent data include:

Recency

How recently has a prospect engaged with the brand? This is super important data. If you wait weeks to contact someone after visiting the site, they probably already made a buying decision.

People waste no time these days and thus, speed matters in sales. The faster you react, the more deals you close.

Frequency

How often are people coming back? The more they return, the more likely they are to buy. If you see a lead frequently viewing pages for pricing or case studies, you can easily assume they are far into the buying cycle. At this point, the sales team needs to reach out.

Engagement

Most lead scoring systems count user engagement. If an individual is engaging with content on your site via chat, email, or other forms of interaction, it’s a good indication they are ready to talk.

How is buyer intent data used?

So, once all of this information is collected, what do you do with it?

You can use buyer intent data in a number of ways. For starters, it’s a key asset for customer acquisition. It works to greatly improve segmenting and targeting of account-based marketing campaigns. Intent data also helps to better align your messaging to buyers’ needs.

Some ways in which you can put buyer intent data to use today include:

Maximize outreach

Intent data gives your sales team a leg up. Sales teams don’t have to wait for buyers to complete an action to identify interest. With simple buyer intent signals, it’s now possible to prioritize outreach based on specific behaviors.

Reduce churn

After the sales team converts a prospect, a business can continue to monitor clients who research the competition. This data points to customers who may need additional support or attention. This usually indicates your product or customer service is failing in some way.

Set up triggers that request buyer feedback to help identify gaps for future product development. Intent data helps to uncover problems before buyers even utter a peep. This reduces the churn rate and adds to overall customer satisfaction.

Guide for messaging

Buyer intent data works to strategically target in-market prospects and convert them to quality leads. This type of data provides insight into prospect research history, including specific products and brands.

Research by Gartner found that “by the end of 2022, more than 70% of B2B marketers will utilize third-party intent data to target prospects or engage groups of buyers in selected accounts.”*

Buyer intent data can be used to better craft unique and specific messaging that speaks to segmented audiences in different ways. Rather than using generic marketing tactics, you can better align your outreach with specific interest signals that buyers leave, such as cookie crumbs across third-party sites.

Pros & cons of buyer intent data

When it comes to using this type of data to conduct business, there are two sides to the coin. Here are some pros and cons:

Pros

Efficient prospecting

For a sales team, closing deals is the top priority. Buyer intent data simplifies prospecting with a layer of business intelligence. Knowing who is looking at what content means you can tailor messaging with more direct targeting.

It also means sales can engage leads as early as possible while collecting information on how and what prospects are researching. Sales will be able to prospect SQLs in a fraction of the time.

Improve outbound sales

This is about working smarter, not harder. The sales cycle can be long. Giving your team direct access to buyer intent data allows them to reach out to the most qualified leads and spend less time on people who aren’t really interested.

It also increases the ROI of your B2B content syndication efforts. See who’s reaching out and target more efficiently.

Sales prioritization

Practice advanced sales prioritization with buyer intent data that lights the way. Traditional lead scoring relies on adding points when certain actions are taken.

Intent data helps to uncover additional avenues a lead takes during the buying cycle. This can be used in a more precise way to predict purchase intent and prioritize contacts.

Personalization & targeting

Intent data helps both the sales and marketing departments to run more accurate account-based campaigns. Successful outreach, including buyer enablement, is built on personalization.

The most effective way to improve B2B campaigns is to provide a continuous stream of relevant content. It allows you to strategically nurture leads by segmenting lists and adjusting the messages accordingly.

Relevancy

When you closely understand consumer problems, you can create more relevant content. Buyer intent data helps to uncover common obstacles and issues people run into that pertain to the product or service you provide.

These insights can be used to better guide content creation and increase inbound leads. Create content that directly reflects exactly what people are interested in and watch the social return on investment skyrocket.

Cons

Accuracy issues

When it comes to purchasing buyer intent data from a third party, there is no true way to confirm the data is accurate. You are simply relying on good faith that the company is giving you correct information.

Leads can be anywhere

Third-party agencies that provide external buyer data include leads that can be anywhere in the funnel. Rather than focus on one buyer stage, most outside sources will send them to you along the entire journey.

That means, purchasing buyer data with the intent of using it for top-of-the-funnel messaging can be risky. Your business is going in directly for the sale when some buyers may just be getting to know you. It comes off as pushy.

Too specific 

Being too specific in targeting can lead a sales team right back to blind targeting. There is such a thing as over-personalization. Zeroing in on super-specific characteristics of a potential buyer can cut out people that are actually willing to buy.

You risk not reaching a wide enough audience and missing out on sales. You should employ critical thinking to determine the fine line between being too general or too specific in your messaging.

Waiting to reach out  

Having sales and marketing wait to respond to buyers reaching out can cost you. Sometimes outbound cold-calling is the best form of gathering new leads.

Non-compliance 

The worst issue a business can run into when purchasing buyer intent data is that it was captured in a way that’s deemed “non-compliant” with the latest data security standards and regulations. Control and management is necessary to ensure the data is being used properly.

If it’s not used correctly, you can face non-compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which can lead to some hefty fines.

Is buyer intent data worth it?

It all depends on how a business wants to spend its money. Top-of-the-funnel leads require a lot more time and attention. This means fewer leads for your money.

Perhaps a better option is to purchase buyer intent when prospects are part-way down the funnel and use CRM and internal data before that. You can then allocate resources to more profitable endeavors, such as ad spend, customer engagement campaigns, and content creation.

Buyer intent data is most valuable when a business has a well-crafted buyer persona and has the capacity to follow through with leads in a timely manner. A poorly crafted buyer persona or failure to pay attention to details means wasted money on missed opportunities.

Many businesses start targeting before they have fully segmented the audience. Narrow the focus and build out the value prop with relevant content. Then, it will make more sense to purchase buyer intent data. This establishes buyer confidence that your company can solve their biggest problems.

Sources:

*“Emerging Technology Analysis: Leveraging Intent Data for Marketing and Demand Generation.” Alan Antin. Gartner. February 11, 2020.

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Customers want—and expect—a great product or service, amazing support, and a price that beats the competition. And, in an age of “cancel any time” and “no long-term commitments,” customers know that they have the upper hand. When companies fail to deliver, customers cancel and take their business elsewhere.

So, what should companies do to reduce cancellations and encourage long-term relationships? Let’s take a closer look at customer churn, how to calculate it, and what to do about it.

What is customer churn?

In business, the term “churn” typically refers to the act of customers cancelling, unsubscribing, or otherwise leaving. Adding up the number of customers that were lost during a specific period provides a company with its total churn metric. Churn is often tracked on an annual, quarterly, and/or monthly basis. Companies that have unusually high amounts of churn may choose to report on a weekly or daily basis, especially as they implement systems and programs aimed at reducing it.

How do you calculate customer churn rate?

Reducing customer churn is a top priority for businesses of all types—particularly those that offer monthly or annual subscription models, such as software as a service companies, no-contract wireless providers, consulting businesses on monthly retainers, and streaming media platforms. Unfortunately, improving churn is not as simple as it may seem. Customer journeys are complex and diverse. Seasonal buying patterns create artificial peaks and valleys for signups and cancellations. Just knowing what to focus on first can be a point of contention for many companies.

That’s why you need to normalize your churn data into a metric that accounts for the fluctuations in your business. That’s where customer churn rate comes in handy. Customer churn rate is usually calculated like this:

For a simple example, let’s assume that your company calculates churn rate on a monthly basis. On March 1, you had 1,000 total customers. By the end of March, your company lost 200 customers. This means that your monthly churn rate was 20%. Given a 20% churn rate, you could theoretically expect all of your customers to churn within a five month window. Or, stated slightly differently, your average retention period for a typical customer is five months.

5 tips for lowering churn

Maintaining a high churn rate is a recipe for disaster. There’s only so much demand generation that your sales and marketing teams can deliver. Here are five tips to consider as you develop a strategy for reducing churn.

1. Know your customers (better)

Keeping pace with customer orders and support requests can seem like an insurmountable job that leaves no time for strategic planning. However, it’s only by zooming out and seeing the big picture that your organization can identify issues that lead to cancellations. Invest more time in understanding your customers’ goals, objectives, and needs. Customer journey mapping is an excellent place to start.

2. Surround yourself with great people, systems, & processes

Does your company have the expertise and capacity to build a first-class customer success program? Perhaps you already have a qualified CS leader onboard, but he or she is in the wrong seat. Or, perhaps you need to go and recruit someone who has the right mix of experience and know-how. Start by surrounding yourself with people who are invested in the customer experience. Then, empower them to recommend and implement systems, processes, and technology that align with both your company’s and customers’ goals.

3. Focus on delivering great service & being customer-centric

An essential component of customer success is, of course, providing stellar customer service. Achieving and maintaining a one-hour response time on support tickets does not go far enough. Customers expect an amazing experience at every step of the journey—from interacting with chatbots to accessing thorough information on your support site to receiving helpful responses from your live agents.

Revisit your customer journey map and identify unnecessary points of friction. What adjustments can (and should) be made to provide a customer-centric experience? Strive to be more empathetic as a company and develop training programs that show staff how to walk in the customer’s shoes. Implement processes and metrics that hold front-line staff—particularly support agents—accountable for providing great service.

4. Collect actionable data to understand why customers leave

Customer data is more readily available now than ever before. Each customer interaction with your website, emails, and support team is another datapoint that can help you improve customer satisfaction and, hopefully, reduce churn.

If customer data management is not a strength for your company, here are a few data sources that are worth cultivating:

• Customer interviews: When a customer cancels, ask if he or she would be willing to have a 15-minute conversation. Expect a low participation rate, but also expect tremendously useful information from those who do.
• Built-in prompts: If you have a customer-facing user interface (UI), build in prompts to ask each customer why he or she is cancelling or downgrading. Sync this data directly to the contact or organization record in your CRM.
• Automated surveys: Use marketing automation technology to measure customer satisfaction throughout the entire customer journey.

These are just a few ideas to get your creative juices flowing. Collaborate with team members from support, marketing, sales, and operations and continuously look for ways to securely collect more data and improve churn.

5. Use your data to identify trends & correct course

Simply collecting large amounts of customer data is a fruitless endeavor unless you have a reliable way to track and manage it. Using an easy-to-integrate and customizable CRM, such as Insightly, makes life easier on staff when trying to make sense of customer churn data. Custom objects and fields provide flexibility for organizing data in a way that aligns with your unique business model and customer journey.

In addition, look for ways to harness data that already exists in your CRM. For example, your sales team probably tracks their lost deals and cancellations. Use your CRM’s built-in dashboards and reports to visualize this data, identify churn-related trends, anticipate problems that lead to churn, and develop new strategies for lowering it.

Build business relationships that last

At the end of the day, reducing churn is all about building business relationships that last. Companies that truly understand their customers, implement customer-centric systems and processes, and strategically use data are better positioned to build long-term, churn-resistant relationships.

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