How to Make Your CRM Maximize Sales and Service Productivity

Increase in sales implies top-line growth, for this growth to translate into a healthy bottom-line companies need to develop strategies that focus on efficient operations without wholesale cost cutting. Whenever cost-cutting measures are implemented, the customer facing functions often face the brunt of such measures. Under such circumstances, it is unrealistic to hope for any real benefits from your CRM deployment.

Of course, you need to improve your cost-to-sales. This is where CRM comes in useful. An increase in sales is a phenomenon that feeds off efficiency. There are many ways in which

CRM enables you to conduct your operations efficiently, not only at the front end but across the organization.

Aspects to consider for maximizing sales and service productivity:

It pays to remember that customers are everywhere. The philosophy of CRM has to be used to develop relationships with clients, vendors, and business partners. CRM enables you to serve all these groups with information. Empowered and informed vendors and employees are in a much better position to offer service to the customer.

Your CRM system enables you define customers by segmenting them. So, if you intend to be at the forefront of your business, remember to utilize your CRM data to find out who your most paying customers are. This helps to develop loyalty programs and marketing communications that are more tuned to your customers as per demographics and their purchasing power.

You should have the desire and a roadmap ready to help you tap into the multi-channel communication access that your CRM solution offers you. Although the software facilitates communication and helps immensely by offering tons of data to be processed into information, it is your willingness to do the communication that matters. As a business you need to be prepared to communicate with customers on their terms, telephone, fax, emails, snail mail, voice chat are the communication channels open to you.

Service productivity is enhanced when customer service executives have information at their command. Along with information, employee buy-in is crucial. Their attitude to a CRM deployment and the training that happens in parallel will set the pattern for the success regarding conversion of leads, retaining customers, cross-selling, and other activities related to making the customer feel important.

Last but not the least ensure that your CRM is a part of your company’s value chain. You derive true value out of your CRM only when the system acts as a bridge between the various processes and the customers. It is a bridge that spans back-end operations and the customer facing departments.

Conclusion

High sales and good customer service are the two most desired effects of implementing a CRM solution; however to make this happen requires a synergistic effort on part of the entire company which has a responsibility for offering quality service to its customers.