Your business has an outstanding website that serves as a major connection between you and your customers. On your website, your customers can learn about your company, products and services. They can ask questions, make purchases and review your products. All of this interaction provides you with valuable information about your customers that you can use to better your marketing, customer service and business.
How do you collect and organize all this data? One of the most effective ways is a Customer – or Contact – Relationship Management system (CRM). This system will collect and organize all the data from your customer interactions so it can be easily accessed and utilized. Integrating your CRM with your website will make this data collection faster, more accurate and easier to use. Here’s how.
Real-Time, Accurate Data
When using a CRM, your customer information is updated instantly, so you know your data is always current. You don’t need to worry about the delay caused by manually gathering information and updating databases.
Customers will likely have questions or requests regarding actions they took very recently on your website. When faced with this situation, up-to-date data provides an obvious advantage. There’s no question about whether you have the most recent information and can communicate effectually with your customer. This will lead to quick response time and better customer service.
Better Organized Information
Large amounts of contact data can become overwhelming, especially when multiple people are collecting that data through different systems. Consolidating all of your information using a CRM will keep you organized especially if you are running lead nurturing campaigns.
Using a CRM eliminates the need for your employees to search through multiple systems gathering data about a customer. When searching through unconsolidated systems, employees may be faced with duplicate or even contradictory information due to human error and system differences. All of this slows down your employees and reduces the speed and accuracy of their communications with contacts or customers.
Storing your CRM data in the cloud gives all your employees access to that data from anywhere. Having a single, fast, accurate and accessible source of customer information can do wonders for your client communications.
Increased Productivity
When using an integrated CRM, your employees don’t need to spend their time manually gathering customer information from your website and moving it into a database. This saves them time that they can use on other productive tasks and saves your business money.
Automating your information collection also removes the possibility of human error in the transferring and copying of data. Using a CRM in conjunction with marketing automation increases the accuracy of your contact information, as well as allows your employees to be more productive.
More Effective Marketing
Using an integrated CRM gives you access to real time, accurate information about your customers and how they use your website. This will allow you to get a clearer picture of who your customers are by allowing you to analyze the entirety of their communications with your business. You can then better predict what they might purchase next and what their needs are as a customer.
This ultra-accurate description of your customers allows you to more effectively target your marketing campaigns to them. You can also track how well these marketing campaigns are performing via the information you obtain through your CRM.
Better Customer Service
When you receive a customer request for help, a quote or other information, your CRM can automatically determine which employee to send that request to based on the data collected about the customer.
Automating the process of choosing which employee to transfer a customer request to speeds up the procedure, which makes for a happier customer. That customer is more likely to make a purchase.
Not only does the right employee receive the customer’s query quickly, but they also get access to all the customer data collected through your site’s CRM. This knowledge about the customer allows them to better help the customer and provide them with the information they need, as well as determine what services or products they might want to purchase.
Improved Customer Interaction and Engagement
Few things make your customers happier than knowing your company is dealing with their requests quickly and effectively. A CRM speeds up and improves the accuracy of your customer interactions. It can also assist you in the actual act of communicating with them by doing things like sending automated messages to let customers know their request is being resolved.
CRMs also allow you to track customers’ reviews. This lets you see what your customers think about their experience with your company and determine your company’s strengths and weaknesses. You can quickly respond to customer complaints as well positive feedback, which keep customers happy and engaged.
Improved Sales Figures
Perhaps the most enticing reason to invest in a CRM is the boost in sales it will help you achieve. In fact, studies show that a CRM can lead to up to a 29 percent sales increase.
Because of many of the benefits listed in this post, an integrated CRM will lead to higher conversion rates on your website.
Having an effective, easy-to-use website is becoming increasingly important in today’s business world, and so is using the data from online interactions to improve your business. These interactions can provide you with a wealth of information about customer habits, likes and dislikes and possible future sales opportunities.
Using tools such as a CRM helps you get the most out of this data. Integrating that CRM with your website helps you get the most out of both your site and customer information and, ultimately, will improve your business.
About Author:
Lexie Lu is a designer and writer. She loves researching trends in the web and graphic design industry. She writes weekly on Design Roast and can be followed on Twitter @lexieludesigner.