CRM: Not Just for Sales Anymore
Myth: CRM (customer relationship management) is a system intended for the exclusive use of a company’s sales and marketing teams to help them organize and keep track of their customer information. If it’s a data silo within the organization, that’s okay because no one else needs it.
Reality: CRM can be so much more. By making your CRM system available to groups outside of sales and marketing, you enhance the value of the CRM and achieve a more complete view of your customers.
Too many modern enterprises adhere to the CRM myth and ignore the reality. By doing so, they are not getting as much as they could from their CRM investments.
Evaluating Your CRM Utilization
Examine your CRM environment to determine who, outside of sales and marketing, is using the CRM data and what they are using it for. We encourage this because customer interactions do not occur only with the sales and marketing teams. Consider:
- Website visits
- Phone calls in which the customer got (or failed to get) what he or she needed from the company’s automated voice response system
- Contacts with customer support and technical support teams
- Contacts with the legal, accounts payable, and collections teams
- In-store visits
If these touchpoints aren’t captured in your CRM system, you will lose valuable data and opportunities to form 360-degree views of the customer. Moreover, if these touchpoints are captured by other systems not connected to CRM, you don’t have a “single version of the truth.”
Some businesses employ workarounds to distribute CRM data around the organization, such as extracting data to spreadsheets that are stored on shared drives or emailed to distribution lists. Although this approach is better than nothing, it has its disadvantages. For example, it doesn’t provide a real-time view of the customer data, which can become obsolete minutes after it’s sent out. Why not give other teams direct access to the CRM?
Add Value by Expanding Your CRM Utilization
Does your CRM system support your overall business strategy? If you don’t know or can’t prove it, it probably doesn’t. And one reason might be that its use is limited to the sales and marketing teams.
At Empellor CRM, we evaluate a client’s CRM environment with our Propellor Methodology. The foundation of this methodology is an understanding of the goals and strategies of the organization. All key CRM functionality should support these goals and strategies. If the CRM system’s functionality falls short or has no direct connection with the organization’s goals, we recommend modifications to bring your CRM up to where it needs to be.
If access to your CRM is limited to the sales and marketing teams, you’re not getting maximum value from your investment. We find that the most successful CRM implementations span the enterprise, drive key business processes, and facilitate the flow of information.
In particular, make sure that your CRM captures all customer interactions. This is vital to the whole business. Extend CRM to all customer touchpoints. This will give the people who interact with customers the information they need to provide the best customer experience.
Get Expert Help on Your CRM Evaluation
At Empellor CRM, we evaluate client CRM environments to discover how they fit in and support the “big picture” of the overall business. We strive to understand your business goals and strategies because these aspects inform what your business needs from its CRM. This insight, in turn, tells us how your CRM should be configured to give you maximum value.
Contact Empellor CRM today to learn how we can help you analyze your CRM setup and align it with your business needs.
