It is needless to say that all of us have woke up today in a very much different situation than we were when we started the year 2020.
Back in January we were booking hotels, flights and meeting our prospects and customers like nothing can stop our business growth.
Most people were realigning their territories, holding kickoff meetings, busy executing their marketing campaigns and planning conferences and events…
AND THEN CAME COVID-19.
And now as we sit here this Coronavirus which ushered a global Pandemic is having a seismic impact on our way of life and how businesses get done during these crises.
Nevertheless, even with social-distancing rules and global economic meltdowns let us talk about how easy to use CRM and related business growth technology platforms are having a positive effect on businesses and the people they serve, as explained below.
Now even though we have had seen many other crises in the age of CRM, such as Y2K and the great 2008 financial crisis, nevertheless this Coronavirus Pandemic along with its associated problems and challenges is completely unique- something that none of us had perceived before.
Fortunately, CRM platforms like Salesforce that is used mostly by enterprise-level companies and Salesforce Alternative CRM software solutions used by small and medium businesses have evolved to address some of these scenarios and so if we look at the winners and losers in business today, many businesses will credit their CRM investments for sustaining their show.
Therefore, in this article let us breakdown the acronym “CRM” and discuss how companies are leveraging this business growth technology as it relates to Customer, Relationship, and Management:
CUSTOMER
Now in any business, there are typically three types of customers that any brand will deal with, on a day-to-day basis:
• The internal customers
• The external customers
• The prospective customers
The internal customers which fall first, are teams of people that rely on each other in any organization, while the external customers are the distribution or sales channels that help to keep the metaphorical lights on in any business and lastly prospective customers those that need nurturing for finding new revenue.
Irrespective of what types of customers for which you are responsible, it takes human resources to serve and sell your offerings and easy to use CRM is exactly what empowers your employees like never before.
One way easy to use CRM helps internal customers (your staffs and employees) is by providing them that important information that enables collaboration, the right workflow to make sure that nothing falls through the crack and also audit trail for tracking and measuring how well your business is doing follow-through on your customer’s needs.
We say this because, when people are working remotely these capabilities found in a CRM are needed more than ever along with tools that are embedded in an easy to use CRM which enables centralizing streams of discussions in a way that can make people work more productively.
Additionally CRM also enables people to connect virtually using online communities in a meaningful way that can supplement or boost the traditional interactions done through phone and emails.
Now when in the present time many businesses have been forced to operate with skeleton staffs, these online community portals can help customers to support each other and also provide brands the ability to communicate and share information between distributers and your sales teams.
Finally, easy to use CRM is also providing a valuable assist to employees working remotely in customer support teams by providing access to critical information needed to resolve customer issues since the current business environment has created openings for several innovations using AI and internal and external bots that can handle a very high volume of self-service requests (and get better with time) which is freeing up overworked staffs to focus on more complicated and important things.
RELATIONSHIP
One of the original and central themes of creating CRM software is to leverage the ability to understand the company’s relationship and use them to create new business opportunities.
Now in a time when in-person and face-to-face interactions have all but disappeared most businesses are now looking at their CRM software platforms as mission-critical business growth applications that have the ability to get business done remotely.
For example, as one of the most popular CRM for small and medium business organizations, we have observed that even though many organizations have had CRM solutions for many years but it is during this COVID-19 that they are now realizing the importance of having a CRM to take care of their needs.
Nevertheless, there are also organizations that in the past have not realized that the accuracy and depth of their contact details in their CRM database are highly degraded. In fact, many contacts are simply missing from the CRM systems or those contacts that were entered in the CRM are unreliable making it hard to gauge the relationships.
We know these challenges can be daunting.
Therefore in the present times we are seeing several organizations that are shifting their priorities and budgets to double down on easy to use CRM tools and shifting funds allocated for face-to-face events and travels to buying tools that will automate and improve the data in their CRM database.
In fact, AI platforms are providing some of these much-needed reliefs, which are aiding CRM tools to automate contact creation, clean existing contacts, measure relationships, and provide customer sentiment data and next best actions for sales teams which are now extremely critical aids for businesses that want to distinguish themselves in a virtual world, since in uncertain times most brands will steer their business only in the direction of people they know and trust.
MANAGEMENT
One of the biggest challenges that leaders and employers are facing now is- how to manage their business remotely.
This is because management can only be effective when it has visibility into operations, since without visibility (especially considering the challenges inherent with a new remote workforce) executives and managers could be forced to allocate resources or create strategies without being able to view the effects of their judgments.
Now easy to use CRM system provides managers and leaders with three big advantages.
Primarily as CRM can bring together and centralize information and present it in a way that improves customer service, and drive new business, hence it empowers management with a strategic weapon to reduce spending on disparate silo software systems for business growth.
Secondly, CRM can be accessed from any location via most devices like laptop, smartphones, tablets and others and so it provides the management with a unique capability to find insights wherever they may be, that even includes looking into the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators).
Finally, implementing easy to use CRM software enables leaders to adjust to a quickly changing business environments, as most CRM platforms have a wide-ranging ecosystem of extensible business growth solutions that can be implemented remotely, which is the need of the hour during these
Pandemic days while working with a remote workforce spread across the different global territories.
TAKEAWAY
Since we have realized now, more than ever before that people are a most valuable asset for any organization and so while the way we engage and work with each other has evolved a lot since the onset of this Coronavirus Pandemic 2020, to help businesses overcome these challenging times, CRM has become mission-critical to businesses, as it is really making a difference in the way we find and keep our customers, till we (hopefully) meet better days in the months to come.
