What is Customer Relationship Management (CRM)?
Building good customer relationships is imperative to the growth and success of your business, and customer relationship management (CRM) is one way to maintain that function. CRM is an umbrella term for any business process that allows organizations to optimize and improve the way they manage their customer relationships. The practice of CRM is a continual process of rewarding customers for their loyalty, employing friendly customer services, and identifying new customers.
Today, CRM often comes in the form of apps and software as a service (SaaS) platforms with various features (such as Housecall Pro, ServiceTitan, Jobber, and others) that help retain, monitor, and satisfy customers. They’ve become an essential tool for businesses of all sizes, including local businesses like yours.
In this article, we will uncover the benefits your business can gain by using customer relationship management systems and the strategies you can try today!
Signpost is used by thousands of small service businesses to build a trusted reputation online with reviews, and integrates with many CRM platforms. Let us show you how our review software works.
Main Benefits of Using CRM Software
CRM software isn’t just for e-commerce businesses. Local and small businesses can grow customer satisfaction rates by finding the CRM platform that’s the right fit for their business needs and integrating the correct CRM solutions. The benefits of CRM go beyond just increased conversions. Here’s what else your business can gain:
Better business decisions based on aggregate customer information and sales data: Using a CRM system allows your business to build a centralized database with a wealth of customer information. Tracking these crucial insights will allow your business to make better strategic decisions and improve strategic reporting in the long run.
Improved customer experience and satisfaction: One of the most important aspects of customer relationship management is the management of quality customer service. CRM software helps collect and assess critical customer satisfaction rates and feedback that improve their overall experience.
The ability to track customer behavior and interactions: Many CRM platforms can assign individual customers and customer segments a unique customer ID; this allows the business to recognize customers, identify their behavior, and close sales accordingly. The marketing team or sales rep can track each customer’s relevant financial and personal details, prior sales, and purchase preferences in order to personalize their service throughout the entire customer lifecycle.
Improved forecasting: CRM tools will allow your sales team to more effectively gauge upcoming demand and forecast sales accordingly. This can help streamline your operations as you will know whether or not to expect a busy period for your operations.
Meet sales performance goals & other KPIs: The accuracy of your sales process and sales cycle will improve as you compile more and more customer data. This will allow your business to assess performance more efficiently, create realistic goals and targets, and maximize internal workflows.
Increased transparency across internal teams: CRM platforms enable greater coordination among teams. Marketing and sales reps can tap into the CRM system to deploy email campaigns and personalize marketing campaigns. Sales teams can also use CRM in coordination with marketing to make sure their tactics are in sync and representative of the whole brand.
Best CRM Software for Home Service Businesses
Housecall Pro
Housecall Pro helps simplify business operations by improving scheduling and dispatching, the payment process, and invoice collections. Housecall Pro is built for home service professionals and provides a free trial for the first 14 days.
ServiceTitan
ServiceTitan targets home service businesses in various industries and provides an integrated CRM solution. With ServiceTitan, you can manage customer service efforts, marketing campaigns, accounting, and inventory solutions. Businesses can started with a personalized demo today.
Jobber
Acculynx
AccuLynx is a bespoke CRM software specifically streamlined for roofing businesses. If you need help growing your roofing business, be sure to check out its integrated solution. With AccuLynx, businesses can manage their projects, keep track of job permits, create customer portals, maintain equipment inventories, and more. AccuLynx provides a customized demo for interested business owners.
5 Examples of CRM Strategies Your Business Can Implement
If you’re not set up on a CRM platform just yet, you can still implement CRM strategies in the meantime! CRM might sound like a complicated strategy to integrate into your customer journey planning, customer support operations, and overall sales and marketing—but it doesn’t have to be.
With these simple strategies, start optimizing your CRM efforts off the ground.
1. Implementing a live chat assistant for improved customer engagement
Live chat support is quickly becoming a popular online customer service method for small and local businesses, as it allows them to deliver more immediate support for their customers.
Empowering your customers to easily engage with your business online can deliver many benefits for their customer loyalty and the growth of your business. If you haven’t yet considered the addition of live chat support, you should get started now.
By engaging with your customers in real-time and addressing their queries, you can optimize lead management and enable better customer contact management on digital channels.
2. Managing customer feedback and online reviews
Your customer base wants to be taken seriously and feel heard. Managing online reviews is important not just for your online reputation, but for actively engaging with your customers. This level of customer interaction enables businesses to gain new leads, salvage any at-risk customers, and improve their overall customer retention.
You never know when potential customers are looking up your business, and online reviews are a great way to show them the quality of your services. Ensure you dedicate enough resources to monitoring online reviews, both positive and negative, across all review sites and social media platforms.
3. Tracking KPIs and sales figures
Operating a business with limited customer insight and sales data is one of the biggest reasons for customer churn. How do you know how to maintain your customer relationships if you don’t know what to evaluate? This is why businesses must track the sales pipeline and other KPIs, regardless of whether it’s stored in a centralized CRM platform. These figures and insights can inform the way you engage with your customers, your marketing efforts, and other executive business decisions.
4. Marketing automation and customer engagement
Automating your customer support through artificial intelligence and smart management tools will allow your business to stay on top of customer engagement touchpoints that you might otherwise forget. For example, you can automate follow-up reminders so that your salespeople know when to reach out to clients and customers after a service has been completed. Automated marketing can also help with lead generation, email marketing, generating online reviews, and simply keeping your business top-of-mind for your customers.
5. Enhancing the way you work… Integrations!
Besides undertaking a CRM software, there are other integrations and tools out there that will enhance the way you work. A live receptionist, for example, or customer communication software enables omnichannel support and interactions that help improve your overall customer relationship management.
Enhance Your Business’s CRM with Signpost
As a local home service business, the more you know about your customers, the better the quality of services you can deliver to them.
At Signpost, we help unlock full sales potential by aiding local businesses like yours with their marketing and customer management.
If you need review management software for your business without the headache, Signpost is a cost-effective solution that integrates with many CRM platforms. Start a demo today..