Lesson 4 - Finding your perfect CRM - What to look for and ask providers

Finding the perfect CRM can be a daunting task for many people and businesses. But it doesn't need to be once you break it all down into simple steps. This can be broken down into

1. Things to remember before looking at a CRM
2. Where are you now and where do you want to be? What type of CRM do I need? A needs assessment
3. Questions to ask the provider
4. Implementing a CRM

Things to remember

It’s all about the customer
Before you embark on a CRM adventure, you have to remember it’s about your customers as much as it is about you. Think about how and what is needed to improve how they interact with you and your organisation.

Understand CRM, it is not just software
A CRM does not guarantee great customer service. CRM is much more that a software solution, it is an organisation wide philosophy, even with the technology; it is still about the people within your businesses.

Promote organisation-wide adoption
One of the key elements to securing a CRM success is the user adoption. By involving them in your software needs assessment you have addressed their needs, and they feel part of the process. This will help create positive perceptions from the outset for your new solutions and incredibly boost the adoption rate. Offer them training on the software solution before it is activated so they are as comfortable and confident as possible with the new solutions. This gives you valuable time to receive feedback from the users and give you time to make any chances to the system

A needs assessment

That leads nicely onto our 2nd point - the needs assessment.

We all know that planning is the most important aspect when investing in anything - and it is the exact same with a new software solution, and a key part of the planning process is completing a needs assessment. The four key aspects to CRM failure are being over budget, too little or too much functionality, behind scheduled implementation, and user adoption. All of this can be avoided by completing a need assessment. Establish a core team of individuals, including a project manager, to oversee and manage the whole process. A CRM solution is one of the most valuable tools your organisation will have at is disposal, therefore allocate time in your dairy to hold a team meeting and complete a need assessment.

We know this can be difficult to do because some users are in customer facing roles and need to concentrate on serving your customers. Therefore, try and elect one person from each area that has the responsibility to collect the views of their selection of users. This will not only help you make knowledgeable decisions that are beneficial to all areas of your organisation, but also improve the success of the implementation of your CRM solution because you have the time and views to determined the budget, the timescale, and the features the users want, which will improve the user adoption rate of the new solution.

All businesses are different and different needs and objectives will need to be discussed within your needs assessment. However, your needs assessment should include some of these key points:

• Analysis of your current process and highlight which ones are working, which are not, why?
• What is it about our current system that is most frustrating or troublesome?
• What steps are required to solve the problem?
• What do we want to achieve?
• Is new software the solution to our problems?
• What will happen to your organisation if these changes are not addressed?
• Do we need a CRM?
• Do we need online CRM, on premise CRM or a combination?
• How many system users will we have? Don’t forget to include administration, technical, customer service representatives and off premise users.
• What features, and key fields will do we need?
• What reporting capabilities will we need?
• When do we need the CRM in place?
• What is our budget?
• Is they a solution currently available that matches our requirements?
• What type of CRM do we need? off the shelf? tailored? bespoke solution? Look at Lesson 2 - Types of CRM for more info

By asking yourself these questions you will be able to find a CRM solution and provider, that emulates the positive ways you do business as well as incorporating and helping you achieve your future business goals.

Questions to Ask

Choosing the CRM solution is much more than choosing the right CRM software, you have to think about the CRM provider. Would you want a solution that had little or no support? How about overseas call centres? All this has to be included in choosing the perfect CRM for you and your business. With so many companies in the CRM marketplace, how can you find the best provider and solution for your unique business? It all begins with asking the right questions during the initial process to help you make a smarter, and more informed purchasing decision.

Get the information you need from the CRM provider by and asking the following questions…

• What is your history? How long have you been providing this software?
• Do you specialise in any industries?
• Costs and pricing structure of the software? One off fee? Annual / monthly fee? Charge per user? Charge for storage? Charge on amount of contacts?
• Can we speak to your clients? Contact them directly? View testimonials?
• Can we see a demonstration?
• What installation timescale can we expect? Any costs with this?
• What kind of support and training is provided? Any costs for this?
• Will the solution grow and adapt as we do? Will they be additional charges?
• Will the system work/transfer data from our original system?
• What kind of support is provided? Is they a charge?
• Does the supplier provide consultancy? Costs again?
• How secure is my data?

You should also consider…

• Are we ready?
• Have we completed software needs assessment?
• Do we need online CRM, on premise CRM or a combination?
• What features do we need?
• How challenging will it be to introduce?
• How supportive are our staffs to new software?

The debate

Anything you would like to add to this? Do you have any other questions people should ask CRM providers? How about additional things to think about during the needs assessment process?

Lesson 3 - Benefits of CRM

I am sure we would all agree, in times like this we need to look after your existing customers effectively and concentrate our efforts in finding new clients. The more you know about your customers, the better the relationship, the better the relationship, the more trust you have and the easier it is to identify and increase your customer base.

Even with years of accumulated knowledge about your contact you can always improve. Each and every one of your customers need change over time, their likes and dislike change, their contact base change, and this technology can make it easier to record and find out more about customers and ensure that everyone in an organisation can exploit this information.

As organisations become aware that the intensifying customer relationships, including retention, satisfaction, and loyalty, are the responsibility of the whole organisation and not an individual department or team, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems are becoming organisations primary objective.

Experienced organisations have realised that CRM enhances performance, client relationships and interactions or ‘touch points’ through accurate and organised documentation, knowledge of their clients, and professionalism.

In basic terms a CRM helps you bring together all your customer information into one centralised location. It helps you manage and use the customer information you have to your own ends more effectively- whether that is marketing, customer service, selling.

These are just 10 ways a CRM system will improve your business

1. Improved Organisation Performance and Productivity
the centralisation of data results in faster customer service, improved data accuracy and the ability to quickly and easily access and share information to boost your productivity

2. Improve Decision Making Through Better Client Knowledge
have a sharper competitive edge, enabling you to sell more effectively and attract new customers.

3. Improve Call-Centre Efficiency and Service:
in a call centre, a CRM system enables employees to quickly and effectively access the client information to decrease the time of the call. Call Centres can also automatically identify incoming calls and instantly loads a complete client history ready for the employee.

4. Any time Information Access:
the web access option gives mobile employees instant access to the centralised data to support their all their activities to improve their time efficiency while also being more prepared and knowledgeable when interacting with your clients.

5. Improve Client Profitability
have the information to create and sustain individual client relationships and boost client satisfaction to maximise profits. A CRM system can also help you identify and market to your most profitable customers. This approach allows you to increase your marketing efficiency while reducing the cost.

6. Store, Report and Analyse Customer Feedback
including quality control and evaluation results, to ensure a prompt reaction to any scenario that may arise.

7. Professional Quality Controlled Documentation
when your templates and documents are held in one location your organisation improves and you can easily achieve a consistent brand image

8. Better Management Information
parameter driven reports, history tables, instant data field creation for the information you didn't know you needed yesterday.

9. Enhanced Quality Checking
including a range of built-in features, such as a the Automatic Version to check you are working from the latest version and full audits of all actions between your organisation(s) and your client.

10. Minimise Delays
you can start using and benefiting from the powerful features of a CRM immediately, with migration of your current data and virtually no disruption to your everyday operations, you can carry on doing what you do best.

11. Greater Accountability and Improved Team Working
CLIM8's unique multiple organisation structure for data means separate partner organisations or external organisations can safely share core data. Each organisation can be optionally made aware of each other's activities, but security features allow them to remain autonomous on selected data and information.

12. Other benefits

• Identifying needs more effectively
• Increased sales through better timing due to anticipating needs based on historic trends
• Identifying which of your customers are profitable
• Effective targeted marketing communications aimed specifically at customer needs
• A more personal approach
• Enhanced customer satisfaction and retention
• Increased value from your existing customer

here are just a few of many benefits of Hosted CRM Software

• Quick deployment time
• Cheaper set-up and maintenance costs
• Lower hardware costs
• Less risk
• Global accessibility
• Increase return on investment
• Automatic updates and patch management

OK, so I said they would be 10 but we all like that little extra

Do you have any benefits you have noticed from CRM Software? Can you think of any more - I Know I can think of many more which I can include further down the road...

Lesson 2 - Types of CRM

Customer relationship management (CRM) is important in running a successful business.

As 4N says “You met them, liked them, got to know them, then trusted them. It's at this point you work together”. The better the relationship you have with a person, the easier it becomes to conduct business and generate revenue.

CRM solutions tend to fall into one of these 4 broad areas:

Off-the-shelf CRM
Several software companies offer CRM off the shelf which tend to be cut-down versions made suitable for smaller businesses. This approach has been known to be the cheapest option as you are investing in standard software. However, with the low price comes many drawbacks. The major downside is that the software may not always do precisely what you want and you may have to trade off functionality for convenience and price. If it does what you want – this may be the best option – do not change the way you do business to fit in with a CRM – a CRM that is ideal for you and your business will fit in with the way you work. The key to success is to be flexible without compromising too much.

Tailored CRM
Tailored solutions are a mix between an off the shelf and bespoke solution. A tailored solution begins at core CRM solution. Additional business specific modules are added and fully integrated to form a more precise business tool for you and your business without the increased costs and time to implementation. Due to these reasosn this type of solution is on the increase.

Bespoke CRM
For the ultimate in tailored CRM solutions, consultants and software engineers will customise or create a CRM system from the chalkboard. However, this can be quickly become expensive and time consuming. If you choose this option, make sure you carefully specify exactly what you want.

Outsourced CRM
Also known as Hosted CRM, On-Demand CRM, Web Based CRM, Online CRM and Software as a Service (SaaS), is where the some or all of the organisations Customer Relationship Management (CRM) functions are hosted by a service provider and typically made available over the Internet.

The popularity and adoption rate of hosted CRM software is rising quickly with many small to medium sized business been able to benefit from CRM software. This approach is also ideal if you need to implement quickly, have a low budget, want global access or don’t have the IT staff to support an on-premise CRM. It is also a good solution if you already geared towards online e-commerce.

When deciding which of the four types best suits your organisation, you should take into account your requirements, your time-frame and your budget. It is also worth noting that a good solution can pay for itself in a relatively short period of time, where as a bad solution can cost you more and lower your efficiency in the long-term.

Remember, you are never alone in making this decision; reputable software providers will bring you peace of mind by guiding you through this process and helping you choose the solution that is right for you and your business.

Lesson 1 - What is CRM

Customer Relationship Management, better known as CRM, is a popular and well-used phrase, yet most people still don’t fully understand what CRM actually is or does.

A commonly cited definition of CRM is that of CRM (UK) Ltd (2002), which states:
"Customer Relationship Management is the establishment, development, maintenance and optimisation of long-term mutually valuable relationships between consumers and organisations".

I know what you are saying…What does that mean in a month of Sundays? If we begin to unpack and break down this definition the key is long-term mutually valuable relationship. So CRM is about building and maintaining long-term customer relationships where the relationship delivers extra value to customers, and more profits to companies.

CRM software centralises all the information within an organisation to give one coherent, 360-degree view, of each customer in real time. This enables all employees of the organisation, whether that is customer support, sales, marketing or call centres, to make quick and knowledgeable decisions on anything and everything from targeting to cross selling, but most importantly to your customers they have a complete knowledge and history of their interactions with you.

CRM One-Step Further.

Once known as just another type of software solution, CRM has evolved into an organisation wide customer-focussed philosophy. A CRM is a process used to learn more about your customers’ needs and behaviours that help you create these long-lasting relationships, increase customer loyalty, satisfaction, and profitability whilst reducing costs.

These relationships are no longer the responsibility of an individual department or team; but of the whole organisation. A CRM solution centralises all the information within an organisation to give one coherent, 360-degree view, of each customer in real time. This enables all employees of the organisation, whether that is customer support, sales, marketing or call centres, to make quick and knowledgeable decisions on anything and everything from targeting to cross selling, but most importantly to your customers has complete knowledge and history of their interactions with you.

To manage your relationships you need to collect, organise, and keep up-date with the right information, and make it easily usable and accessible. With this information and knowledge, you will have the tools to provide personalised communications with each customer, so they feel they are no longer a number on your computer, but an individual

The debate

What does CRM mean to you? How do you use your CRM Software to create long-term mutually valuable relationships?

CRM Lesson Store

Next week PPD Computing will be working with, and taking 4Networking back to school and educating the users of the forum on CRM.

Each day will be a different topic with the current class schedule as follows:

Mon - What is CRM
Tue - Types of CRM
Wed - Benefits of CRM
Thur - Implementing CRM - What to do, look for and ask
Fri - Question and answer time

So if you would like to learn more about CRM Software please do visit us over at 4Networking.

At the end of the week, when all CRM Class are complete we will be announcing some great news!

New Year Resolution you should keep - Give a great customer service

As the new year rolls around again - I hope you all enjoyed the extra second we were given - it is once again time for the new year resolutions to be made. I am sure many accross the world have already been broken or at least bent, but one new years resolution you should create and you can easily keep is to give a great customer service

Here are our 10 tips that will make it easy for you to give that outstanding customer service your customers deserve.

1. Be your customer

STOP! Before you skip through and just read the bits in bold, if you are only going to read one tip in detail read this one...

Call your support team, not through the company telephone but as if you were a customer. How long did you wait in line? How much would this of cost you? Did you get good support? Did the employee have a good attitude and have the information you wanted? Did they listen to you or just tell you what you wanted to hear? What was good about the call? What could be improved?

By completing these simple questions and many more you can instantly begin to improve your customer service.

2. Have happy service attitude employees
A smile can he heard over the telephone. A happy employee is more likely to pass this enthusiasm onto your customers.

3. Keep your employees informed
This may be obvious but your employees need to know any thing and everything about your company from your current product range to the latest offers and launch date of new products. The more they know, the better they can serve and advise your customers.

4. React fast when you receive a complaint
Complaints are wonderful! It’s the best feedback you will ever receive. It give you an instant chance to improve your product and the relationship you have with your customer, but remember to act quickly. Make your customer feel appreciated by primarily acknowledging receipt of the complaint and keeping them informed with details of how you can rectify this issue and the stages it is currently at.

5. Be a solution provider
Customer love buying, but they hate been sold to. People look for solutions to the challenges they are facing.

6. Make information easily accessible
A short an easy task for you do complete, but with great rewards. Help customers understand your solutions and find product information, FAQs and any other information they need. You may have the best products, but if customers cant find or understand them, they wont buy from you.

7. Don’t break promises
Remember most dissatisfied customers do not complain directly. They complain to their friends and family, who in turn will pass this information onto their friends. Remember the old saying "one unhappy customer will tell nine others, who will tell 9 more". Don't let this happen your organisation. You can easily reduce this risk by not breaking any your promises. For example, if you say they will have the product by Wednesday, make sure it is there. At all costs make sure it is not late even if you have to drive it their yourself!

8. Don’t forget your manners
Courtesy words and phrases such as thank you and sorry may be small words makes but they can make all the difference. When we were little we were taught to say these words as basic courtesy, so why did they disappear when we grew up? A simple thank you or sorry makes you stands out so much today because is rarely happens and makes your customer feel appreciated.

9. Keep track of your customers likes and dislikes
By getting to know your customer you can create a good solid friendship before any type of selling process is introduced. People buy from people they trust, not from people who pester and push for a sale. Once you have learned what inspires them and their interests - talking to them becomes so much easier and they become comfortable talking to you. Once you have built this trust and friendship then the prospect will be open to your ideas, products and services

10. Do not over contact prospects and clients
How many times have you been sat in the office and the same company never seem to be off the phone - calling you and trying to sell you different products? How do you feel about these companies? Do not become one these companies you hate so much. Instead use the information you have learned in Tip 9 and target the conversation you create with your prospects and clients



Do you have any tips to add this? How do you keep your customers happy? What kind of experiences have you had in the past? Good or dad please share...