In the 90’s, the CRM systems were mostly used for sales: to contact existing customers, make them new offers relevant to their previous purchases and trying to provide a better customer support. Since then, the public eye has viewed CRMs just like that – a salesperson tool. While not completely false, today it’s more of an ageing stereotype.
We often hear that the Customer Relationship Management systems (CRM) have evolved. While true, the scope of this evolution is much broader than just receiving several fancy new features. In reality, CRMs have moved far beyond the sales tools. ‘C’ doesn’t stand only for the ‘Customer’ anymore, while ‘Relationship Management’ plays the leading role.
Because of the flexibility that today’s CRMs have, they can be used for more tasks than were originally envisioned almost three decades ago. The abundance of features, appealing UI/UX, and a significantly lower price tag (for purchase, training, and maintenance) have turned the CRM systems into the jack of all trades.
How universal is a CRM?
CRM systems have been helping companies to improve sales (and not only) for decades, remaining one of the most requested software pieces on the market totalling $26.3B in 2015. There’s hardly a business that won’t benefit from a counterpart’s data presented in a clear fashion, workflows organised by stages, a unified up-to-date information for every employee, intelligent task lists and reminders, duplication search, personalised mass mailing and all of it in a single package.
If we strip away everything that makes CRM a sales-helper and take a look at its core, it essentially becomes a business process organisation tool and an actionable database. Once you learn to see beyond the common terms used in a CRM such as ‘lead’, ‘deal’ or ‘pipeline’, you’ll understand what this software is all about. Let’s get several things straight:
- Every business is a process;
- Most jobs are similar. They just name some things differently
- Customisation makes wonders.
Ready-made or custom?
If you want to implement a CRM for your company (and use it not only for sale purposes) you have two options:
1) Choose an industry-specific CRM. These are the systems that were build to facilitate the workflow in a certain type of business or activity. What’s great about them is that you get not only a preset system but also an example or a best practice in your business. On the downside, they usually cost more than the following option.
2) Go for a customisable CRM. Not to say that you can’t change anything in an industry-specific CRM, but it’s not the best idea to repurpose, let’s say, an accounting system to manage emails. A more flexible CRM allows you to change almost everything about it, from structure to the naming conventions. This way you’ll be able to transfer your actual workflow into the system, but you need to have a clear understanding of your business processes and their units.
If it’s still difficult for you to imagine how a CRM system is applicable to your business, here are some examples of industries and processes which prove that a CRM is not only for sales.
1. Marketing
First of all, marketing and sales are not the same. The main purpose of the marketing department is to bring in leads, which is the start of the sales pipeline. One of the most important requirements for a marketing automation system (MAS). is the possibility to segment leads, send a personalised mass email and analyse the performance of the campaigns. Such MAS functionality is available by default or can be added to most CRMs.
Having the marketing and sales data in the same system is an effective way of cutting down on efforts on maintaining two different databases up-to-date and a possibility to pay for only one service instead of two. Also, having access to the unified data from the two sequential processes will give you a more complete look on the potential clients.
2. Customer support/bug tracking
There’s a lot of things happening on the other side of the sales pipeline. An effective customer support is a proven way for turning new clients into the recurring ones. When your clients need assistance with a purchased product, you already have an instant access to that client and product data (in case it’s also stored inside the same CRM). This way, the customer support service can immediately react and provide the most adequate help. At the same time, the new data from the customer support department can become a basis for the future interactions of the sales team with the potential customers.
The same is true in case you’re providing some software services: when your user submits a bug report, you might already have all of the data associated with that user and product at hands. Modern CRM systems are capable of generating support tickets from the user messages/emails and they are immediately available to the project manager and developers. Such bug reports and UI/UX improvement suggestions are something to take into consideration during the product development and improvement processes.
3. Project management
With the rise of the simple project management (PM) tools like Trello or Asana, you’re probably wondering why should you use a CRM for the same purpose. Basically, for the reasons mentioned above: to collect your customer’s data inside one system for the easier search, detailed insight and wider accessibility. Integrating PM software with a CRM is not an issue, but organising the same process natively inside a CRM is much more convenient (if the system permits you to do so).
Kanban, agile, and sprints are the usual project management methods and they are easily replicable in most CRMs. A little rewiring, like treating leads as tasks, is almost all it takes to repurpose a sales pipeline into a project dashboard. While a client’s record should not be treated as a task, you can create tasks and link them to the people who made the request, who’s currently assigned to them and manage tasks in a drag-and-drop card-based UI.
4. Lawyers and legal firms
In the legal sphere, clients are not much different from the ones in sales. A centralised database of clients is of the highest importance for both a solo attorney and a big law firm. A CRM system can become the most effective management tool for a lawyer due to the possibility of managing client meetings and cases, storing case-related files and messages, and collaborating with assistants. This way, going to a meeting with a company’s client, a newly assigned attorney can learn everything important about him since that client has first entered the doors of the firm.
Managing legal cases as the CRM records (similar to the project management) will give you an actionable dashboard with cases organised by dates, clients, preparation stage, etc. This is a convenient way of managing the lawyer’s workload as well as coordinating their assistant’s work in preparation for the hearings. Similar to the marketing segmentation capabilities, CRM lets you easily contact important client via mass email for organising meetings, sending announcements or inviting clients to the corporate events.
5. Retail
Unlike companies that provide mainly services, retail chains and stores can also use a CRM system for keeping the wares in order just as much as a customer database. Each record in a CRM can keep the details on a particular product, check its availability throughout outlets, simultaneously change prices and put the items on sale throughout the chain. The inventory-keeping aspect of a CRM will also let you analyse and build reports on the bestselling good and judge the performance of the clerks. This is most effective when combined with the point of sale (POS) solutions or plug-ins to implement a full sales and customer support cycle.
However, the customer management isn’t less relevant in retail. On the contrary, the capabilities of the CRM systems allows to set up loyalty programs for turning new clients into the regulars. A unified customer database will tell your employees everything they need to know about the returning customers to add a personalised touch to their shopping experience. This may include special offers, complementary purchases or ensuring a warranty service if a customer has lost the receipt.
Conclusion
A CRM system is a significantly more versatile tool than we’ve grown to believe. A wide variety of companies adapting the CRM systems to their needs only proves the necessity of knowing your business processes from the smallest components to an overarching goal. So no matter the industry you’re in, there’s almost certainly a way to move some of your business process (or even all of them) into what previously was a sales-only tool.
For more useful tips and CRM best practice, check out the NetHunt CRM blog: https://nethunt.com.
