CRM workflow: What it is and how it benefits your business
As a business grows and scales, having a customer relationship management (CRM) system can improve business performance, efficiency and productivity. It can enable better customer service and deeper customer relationships, helping to boost sales and profitability
What is a CRM workflow?
A CRM workflow is a series of steps within a CRM system or a business management platform that you can automate, rather than having to complete manually., Since each step is triggered by the previous one, the system can autonomously perform specific tasks and activities.
For example, after a purchase from your online store, your CRM workflow may auto-generate a thank you email with your order details. Likewise when your order is dispatched, your CRM workflow can send another system-generated email with tracking and delivery information.
Automating CRM workflows saves time on admin, allowing you to focus on other aspects of your business. Automation also ensures that tasks get completed on-time and every time for the best customer experience.
Why should you use CRM workflows?
Efficiency
Welcome messages to new customers, processing sales orders, generating product recommendations — these tasks can be time consuming and error-prone. CRM workflows can automate these tasks, making them instantaneous and possible without human intervention. Automation reduces your team's administrative burden, and becomes increasingly important as sales volumes increase.
Customer interactions
CRM workflows allow you to scale your customer interactions, engaging simultaneously with many customers and leads at different stages of your sales funnel. With CRM workflows you can also track customer touchpoints, gathering data, which you can use to improve the customer experience. For example, you can track your email open rate, click through rate, unsubscribe rate, conversion rate and more.
Document management
A CRM can help you organise relevant files, documents, notes and communications in one place your team can access anytime. You can also better understand your customers' behaviour by keeping vital information alongside the corresponding customer journey. CRM workflows can be designed to assign tasks, set reminders and send notifications to your team members, so that everyone knows what is required of them and when.
Error reduction
It is human nature to make mistakes, whether accidentally transposing numbers or forgetting to follow up on an email – and this can adversely affect your customer experience. CRM workflows can remove the risk of human error by automatically completing set tasks.
Transparency
CRMs offer a top-level view of sales activities in your business. By automating data transfer and updates, CRM workflows ensure that information is correctly and completely captured, and available to the relevant team members or business partners at the right time for the next stage of the sales process.
What can you do with CRM workflows?
Automate sales processes
Automated sales processes gently push consumers down the sales funnel by sending them the correct information at the right time. A CRM workflow can engage customers with relevant emails, reminders and personalised product recommendations. For example, when someone visits your website, you can activate a popup asking them to join your email list.
Create email marketing campaigns
Email marketing campaigns keep you connected to customers regardless of where they are in the sales funnel. You can automate drip campaigns for various scenarios, like welcome sequences for newsletter subscribers, abandoned cart campaigns for shoppers who get to the checkout but don't buy, and post-purchase campaigns that encourage customers to buy additional products or services.
Improve complaint escalation
Customers need assistance when they can’t resolve their issue using self-service channels. Chatbots can analyse and categorise complaints for proper routing to customer service representatives. CRM workflows can make sure you have the full customer history to hand, so customers don’t have to repeat themselves in their interactions with you.
Qualify and assign leads
CRM workflows can help you identify the hottest leads so you can spend your time and energy where it matters most. CRM workflows can score leads based on their interactions with your brand to determine who is more likely to buy from you and where to focus your marketing efforts.
Get a complete view of the customer lifecycle
Customer lifecycles vary depending on the product type and to whom you sell it. A CRM workflow enables you to manage the lifecycle of a customer and each customer relationship by triggering emails, ads or notifications for sales calls, based on their current status.
How do you set up a CRM workflow?
1. Choose a CRM platform
There’s no one-size-fits-all CRM platform; the best option will vary depending on your needs. To speed up your search, consider what features you need, whether you need to integrate it with other software systems and how user-friendly it is. Whatever platform you choose, make sure it offers robust support and can scale to suit your growing needs.
2. Establish a goal and workflow rules
Examine your current processes for bottlenecks: These are potential areas to streamline and automate. Choose a workflow with the most significant impact, then set rules based on specific events. For example, if customers frequently complain about your support response times, consider setting up a CRM workflow to send an immediate automated response to their ticket and to notify staff of the complaint.
3. Run a test
Test your CRM workflows with a small group of users before launching them. Check for friction points, as well as any errors or oversights in your processes. Seek input and feedback from affected team members to ensure that the CRM workflows meet their specific requirements. Remember, you can also monitor and continue to fine tune your workflows over time, setting key performance indicators to track their effectiveness.
4. Create a template
Setting up future workflows is much easier and faster when you have a template to work off. Make sure you highlight critical touchpoints and responsibilities at each process stage, document and refine as you go. Once you know the template works, you can save and apply the same steps to set up other workflows.
Automate your workflows with MYOB
By automating CRM workflows, you can make sure you don’t lose track of customers, leads or sales orders. But workflow automation can help in other aspects of running a business too: MYOB is a business management platform that allows you to manage all your business workflows in one place. You can digitise and automate your business processes not only for your customers, but also for your employees, supply chain, projects, finances, accounting and tax.
With MYOB, you pay for what you need today but can scale your platform and add on new modules and capabilities to meet tomorrow’s requirements. Streamline tasks, build powerful connections and grow confidently with a solution that’s future ready.
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.