CRM examples: 7 workflows you can automate
For many growing businesses, a powerful customer relationship management (CRM) system is key to operating efficiently and generating sales. This guide provides an overview of what a CRM system can do for your business:
How to use your CRM: 7 CRM examples
1. Omnichannel communication
An omnichannel CRM system allows for a single customer view, regardless of the communication channel your customer chooses to engage with your brand.
For example, they may want to interact with you in-person or over the phone, email, live chat or social media. Whatever their preference, an omnichannel CRM captures the data and interactions in one place, enabling a comprehensive view of the customer’s journey across all channels.
Omnichannel communication means that customers can start an interaction on one channel and seamlessly transition to another without having to repeat the same information. For example, a customer may lodge a support request via live chat and follow up with a customer service representative over the phone without having to repeat the same information again.
CRMs track customers across all your touchpoints to create a comprehensive picture of their needs and preferences.
2. Behaviour tracking
Behaviour tracking involves monitoring and capturing customer interactions across different touchpoints. In addition to purchases, this can involve tracking customers’ website visits, product views, time on page, email opens, social media engagement and more, to get real insight into who they are, what they’re looking for and where the drop-off points are on their buyer journey.
With these insights, you can improve the customer experience by showing them what they’re most interested in. Further, you can enhance the user experience where you see drop-offs. For example, you may decide to streamline the checkout process or add payment options to lift conversions.
3. Personalisation
You can increase loyalty and sales if you personalise your offerings. Today's customers expect tailored experiences. If you don’t provide this, your customers are likely to disengage from your brand very quickly.
Segmenting users based on their characteristics or behaviour is easy with a CRM. The software stores customer information for your use. For example, you can generate product recommendations in personalised emails or targeted ads, based on a customer’s previous purchases or browsing history.
4. Feedback collection
Customer feedback is a treasure trove of information for your business. It gives you valuable insight into your customer experience, which removes guesswork and helps you make important decisions in the future.
With a CRM, you can set automatic post-purchase emails to thank your customer for their purchase, provide order details and gather feedback. Later, when they've received their product, you can automate another follow up to see whether it met their expectations.
Collecting this feedback allows you to gain insights from both qualitative and quantitative data. CRMs allow you to generate reports on this data to assess customer satisfaction and quickly identify problem areas to rectify.
5. Marketing
Managing “full-funnel” marketing requires attention to many tasks simultaneously. CRM systems automate many workflows, improving the efficiency and reach of your team and allowing you to personalise your marketing efforts.
Some examples of automated CRM workflows include:
Sending thank you notes after purchases or discount codes to inactive customers.
Generating product suggestions based on a customer's past purchases or wish list.
Providing special offers to customers on their birthdays and other milestones.
Offering abandoned shopping cart customers incentives to complete their purchases.
Notifying existing customers when a new product launches.
Collecting customer satisfaction surveys after a purchase.
These automated features make your marketing strategy more streamlined and effective, nurturing customer relationships and freeing up time for your team.
6. Quoting and selling
Generating individual sales emails or quotes can be a time-consuming task. With product and pricing information stored in CRMs, sales representatives can generate quotes quickly and accurately. Likewise, they can automate quotations and other steps in the sales process — like sending outreach emails or scheduling product demonstrations – to reduce manual effort, save time and improve the customer experience.
By providing insights into your sales pipeline, your CRM may be able to help you identify patterns that may help you improve your sales process and develop more effective sales strategies.
7. Support management
Support experiences greatly influence whether customers return, and 89% of consumers are more likely to make another purchase after a positive customer service experience. Good support means resolving customer complaints and queries quickly and effectively.
With a CRM system, customer service representatives can document detailed case notes. They can also access live chat histories and support tickets to enable a single customer view as well as prompt and efficient handling of queries. By setting up Service Level Agreement rules and automations, the CRM system can track and escalate tickets that are nearing defined response or resolution times.
Get the right CRM for your needs
As with any software investment, you need to decide what your business requirements are, as you only want to pay for features and functionality that you need. However, it’s also important to consider future growth and choose a solution that’s scalable.
For best results, a CRM should integrate with your business management platform. MYOB is a business management platform that addresses the six core workflows that any business may need to handle: customers, suppliers, projects, employees, finance, accounting and tax. Cloud-based you only pay for the software you need, but can add on capabilities across all workflows as your business matures and your needs become more complex.
Try MYOB CRM (formerly known as Tall Emu CRM) FREE for 14 days. Alternatively, with MYOB you can also add on a range of third-party integrations to get the tech stack that’s right for you. At MYOB, we have you covered.
Disclaimer: Information provided in this article is of a general nature and does not consider your personal situation. It does not constitute legal, financial, or other professional advice and should not be relied upon as a statement of law, policy or advice. You should consider whether this information is appropriate to your needs and, if necessary, seek independent advice. This information is only accurate at the time of publication. Although every effort has been made to verify the accuracy of the information contained on this webpage, MYOB disclaims, to the extent permitted by law, all liability for the information contained on this webpage or any loss or damage suffered by any person directly or indirectly through relying on this information.