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Archive for CRM software

Building Up Sales With A CRM Strategy

By Steve
Tuesday, October 26th, 2010

Leading organizations typically look to implement POS software and CRM software as part of ERP software implementation.

One of the main advantages of using CRM strategy is it facilitates in the growth of your sales. You will see the number of your sales go up dramatically once you have successfully put a Customer Relationship Management solution in place.

Sales will definitely decrease if a company is reputed to provide bad service to customers. This is because the level of customers returning for more business is extremely low}.

When employees feel useless and unimportant, they would become unhappy – and customers can sense this with the way they are treated by these employees. Their interaction with customers is detached, forced and not altogether warm.

Employees need to work on creating a great customer experience. A customer who is not happy with the service will not bring their business to you. Or even if they once did, chances are, they won’t return to your store for more business transactions.

To make Customer Relationship Management work to the fullest, a plan must be designed and strictly implented. Employees must be educated and motivated to feel that they are an important member of the company and that their position contributes to the success of the company.

Why? Service representatives are the first people customers see in stores and business companies. They represent the company and are the first people customers see and talk with. When reps are happy and their morale is uplifted, they will take care of customers better.

As a result, customers who are happy and satisfied will likely spend their money in your store and shop more. And chances are they will also be recommending your company to their family and friends.

CRM strategy is the right approach to take if you are aiming to boost your sales. Every member of the company – both owners and managers – must care for their employees so they in turn, can take care of the customers better.

Categories : Customer Support Software
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Fast, Effective Help Desk Responses Build Loyalty and Revenue

By Steve · Comments (0)
Friday, December 18th, 2009

Fast, Effective Help Desk Responses Build Loyalty and Revenue

Responding quickly and effectively to customers’ concerns builds loyalty to your brand. It is well documented that customers who experience problems with a company’s products or services to which the company responds promptly and effectively are even more satisfied with and loyal to the company than are customers who never experience a problem.

- Fast, effective responses show that your organization views its customers’ concerns as high priorities.

- Fast, effective responses eliminate (or greatly reduce) the time your customers spend worrying about or wondering whether their concerns will be addressed.

- Fast, effective responses eliminate or reduce the need for your customers to investigate alternative solutions or workarounds to address their concerns.

One of the most productive and highest-payoff applications of corporate resources is responding to feedback from profitable customers and addressing their concerns quickly. The moment a customer expresses dissatisfaction is the very moment at which an organization, through its response, can most influence customer retention, recurring revenues, and customer lifetime value. A satisfied customer will become loyal and will tell others; a dissatisfied customer will broadcast far and wide his dissatisfaction, driving business away.

Your help desk or customer management software is your first line of defense when a customer expresses a concern or his dissatisfaction. That software must immediately open a ticket (sometimes called a case) and notify the correct team or person to deal with the issue. It must also make it easy for that person or team to include other team members from across the organization without re-explaining the issue or what has previously been done. Therefore, real-time alerts and real-time collaboration are key elements to fast, effective responses.

Having a KnowedgeBased Software can certainly take a load off your customer support agents and make their job easier.  It will also give answers to your customers which can certainly increase their confidence in your willingness to deliver world class support customer service.

Your software must have escalation rules set up and must generate a deadline for resolution in order to keep the process moving quickly and smoothly to completion in a timely manner. It must provide quick and easy access to a well-structured knowledge base. By tracking who has done what (and when), your software will eliminate duplication of effort and streamline responses to the customer.

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Categories : Customer Service Management Software, Customer Support Software, help desk software
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Customer Relationship Management Solutions

By Steve · Comments (0)
Friday, December 11th, 2009

Customer Relationship Management Solutions

Customer Relationship Management — or CRM — helps companies achieve business objectives that facilitate rapid responses to customer needs and lead to healthy and profitable customer relationships.

It is imperative for every organization to gather, retain, and use valuable information about their customers to enhance their business strategies, offer their customers faster responses, and provide better products and services. Today’s organization produces and collets information at a rate that far outpaces its ability to manage or share that information.

More information should mean more knowledge which should mean a greater competitive advantage. However, most companies do not have the power or resources to make sense of and apply that knowledge.

CRM solutions manage knowledge and information. They also enable companies to execute activities within and across value chains while supporting all facets of decision-making underlying those activities.

Most workplaces are now “connected workplaces.” That means the workers have computers (usually laptops to have at home and at work) and various other always-on technologies such as PDAs, smart phones (such as iPhones or Blackberries), and MP3 players.

Business has become globalized. Your business can access any business worldwide and any business in the world can find and access your business – often in real-time.

Corporate transparency and accountability is being demanded today as never before. These factors, along with the need to constantly respond more quickly and effectively to competition, are driving businesses to seek new applications that will affect their net profits in a short amount of time.

Performance is about more than just information quantity; it is about information usability. Increased information does not increase performance if there is not a corresponding expansion of the user’s ability to sort, apply, differentiate, and manage the information.

CRM solutions enable workers and companies to work together with efficiency and agility. They encourage information sharing and communication at all levels. And they streamline workflows to save time and improve performance.

CRM solutions sort information to make it easy to access information that is relevant and avoid that which is not. They mask process complexity by providing an intuitive and relevant user interface and simplifying multi-part tasks.

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Categories : CRM, Customer Service Management Software, Web Based CRM Software
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What Can CRM Software Do To Help My Company?

By Steve · Comments (0)
Friday, December 4th, 2009

Companies need to increase customer loyalty and boost profitability. However, customers are more informed, more demanding, and less willing to release their cash.

The businesses of customer relationship management and marketing have historically based decisions on what the manager thinks the customer or market is going to do or what the company management feels will happen. They are slow to embrace the new technological methods of actually assessing trends and competing based on intelligence and analytics.

The time has come to change, to understand and be responsive to customers’ needs and market forces. The CRM solutions are readily available to help organizations improve their understanding of customers and realize the full revenue potential of their leads.

Three key obstacles stand in the way of turning leads into customers: (1) the lack of real-time data and analytics that capture insights from multiple customer touch points, (2) information that is selectively gathered, inaccurate, or incomplete, and (3) date being siloed and its use restricted across the organization. As a result, critical business decisions are made based on conjecture and partial data rather than on empirical data and intelligence.

Managers need to see their company from the eyes of their potential and current customers. That means thinking like a customer seeking information. They (and perhaps a friend who is not in the same type of business so he has fresh eyes and mind) need to become customers. Start with a question and navigate the company web site to see how much has to be done to answer the question – or if the answer even exists there. E-mail the support department with a request or question. Make a purchase to see how well that process works and how aggravating or simple it is. If you have stores, walk into one or more and ask questions a customer would ask. Request a demonstration. Purchase something. Return your purchase to see how that process works. Take notes on all the processes. Where are the glitches, the frustrations, and the hang-ups? What is going well?

When you pose the question to customer support, it is very important to note the follow-up. This is an area where many companies lose their customers’ future purchases and recommendations. Get together with key players from marketing, customer service, and sales and brainstorm ways to improve the various ways in which a customer can access and interact with the organization.

Select a CRM system that enables an organization to run campaigns that align with its customers’ preferences, tightly integrate marketing across all inbound and outbound channels, increase sales productivity by providing customer insight, manage marketing and sales resources more efficiently, and turn contact centers into profit centers.

Have you ever considered that help desk calls have the potential to become sales opportunities? By having a CRM software that includes a real-time data miner, call center agents can get a recommendation of a customer-appropriate prequalified sales offer while on every call.

The use of support tickets that are tracked can increase retention rates by as much as 40 percent. Good customer follow-up using CRM software can improve service renewals by over 100 percent in the first 18 months.

Customer promotional campaigns can be executed within hours instead of days. And 100 percent of the campaign offers will be followed up. Did you know it takes at least five contacts with a customer to actually engage the customer in talking about a sale? How many of your sales reps stay engages with potential customers through five or more contacts?

Implementing the right CRM solution makes the business of customer relationship management easier and provides economic value and a competitive edge to the company. It turns your sales reps into trusted advisers who can make appropriate, targeted offers to customers. It enables support personnel to shorten call times, resolve issues quickly, and engage in seamless conversations. The right solution delivers personalized, customer-focused interactions which result in more frequent revenue opportunities and satisfied customers.

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Categories : CRM, Customer Service Management Software, Customer Support Software, Web Based CRM Software
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Five More Essential Ingredients of Web-Based CRM Software

By Steve · Comments (0)
Friday, October 30th, 2009

Cynergy software improves communications between Help Desk customer service reps and customers or employees with the Cynergy Web Based CRM ticketing system.

Cynergy Web Based CRM ticketing software can also be easily customized with multiple user defined fields, colors, labels and multiple addresses or phone numbers. If you need to be able to view only “your” help desk tickets, or if you want to be able to view everyone’s outstanding issues, Cynergy gives you Special Permissions that allow this.

Cynergy’s help desk and CRM suite of solutions can be modified to allow strategic permissions and security among your internal employees and external customers. We also allow three methods for submitting tickets and our new Project Management module allows conversing and benchmarking throughout the launching and completion of a project.

6. TIME KEEPING is as important to your bottom line as productivity levels are. Being able to justify time spent on a project or client’s site is paramount during these economic times. Cynergy keeps track of time on tickets, projects, and events.

7. DATA is what runs today’s world. That’s why we use MS SQL. We ship with SQL Express (good for 250,000 tickets) and upgrading is straight forward. Backups are easy and stable.

8. INTEGRATION into other systems and software platforms is accomplished with relative ease. We have build a Web Service that allows platforms such as PeopleSoft to update Cynergy on the fly based on changes that take place in the primary system.

9. KNOWLEDGE LIBRARY systems are becoming commonplace among most large or growing organizations. Our Cynergy CRM Knowledge Center Software can contain unlimited information easily searched on. Or you can link tickets to knowledge for content management and training.

10. ASSET MANAGEMENT is essential to any business or organization that has over 5 employees or customers. Cynergy allows unlimited User Defined Fields for keeping track of Assets.

This concludes ten pieces that any great Web Based CRM system should have. Cynergy Help Desk Software has much more than we listed above. Try out a FREE DEMO Today or Call 405 516 2420 and talk to one of our experienced Help Desk Professionals.

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Categories : CRM, Uncategorized, Web Based CRM Software
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Is Your CRM Software Failing?

By Steve · Comments (0)
Monday, August 24th, 2009

Three Legged StoolCustomer relationship management (CRM) software should give you higher profitability, improved productivity, lower costs, stronger customer retention, and greater insight into customer and prospect behavior. Is CRM doing all that for you? Let’s take a look at three reasons CRM may not be achieving this for you.

1. People.

That is right. The number 1 reason CRM does not deliver on its promises is not technological glitches, but the people who use the CRM software. These are the people in your company! If the people in your company are unable or unwilling to use the CRM software or are using it incorrectly, it will not be able to deliver on its promises. In most cases, this is not a person here or there, but teams of people influenced by their peers to think the new software is “too hard to use or learn” or “does not service their customers like I can personally.” Or it can be due to lack of training.

2. Lack of clear business plan.

Does your company’s business plan spell out what success is? Do you know when you’ve had a successful month or year? Do your employees understand what success is? Next evaluate your company’s processes. How do you do things? What methods are comfortable or “the way we’ve always done it” and what methods are efficient and effective? What is the motivation for people to change how they do the processes? Does your CRM software assist with your processes or throw a hammer in the gears, bringing the processes to a halt?

3. Lack of ownership of technology.

If most of the company feels the CRM software “belongs” to the IT department and the IT department feels it is “company-wide” software, nobody feels responsible to understand it or make it work. Therefore, it is of no help to any department. If it is viewed as “another technological contraption” it is doomed to be only marginally useful. The full company buy-in has to be enthusiastic and the software must be embraced as the best way to assist each department and each person in performing optimally.

For CRM software to be as successful as it can be for your company, each person must be involved in various steps of the process. The three-legged stool of CRM software implementation – people, process, technology – must not be allowed to break or the whole thing will collapse.

People need to embrace and use the system to enable the company to achieve its goals. The company needs to have well-defined goals and processes and must identify those that need to be improved or automated. The technology must be the right features in the right places. The timing must fit the company. The implementation and training must generate excitement and buy-in.

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Categories : Customer Support Software, Web Based CRM Software
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Best Practices for CRM Software

By Steve · Comments (0)
Saturday, August 22nd, 2009

Top companies have certain practices in common when it comes to implementation of CRM software. These best practices are the same things that every company should be doing to propel their business and improve their operations and their customer relations. Four of these best practices are critical when thinking about CRM software.

1. Customize the CRM software to fit your own business processes.

The CRM software you implement should be fully customizable to fit your business processes. Some CRM software can be installed in modules as well as fully customized. This is best. It is important for you to access data that represents change and assess its meaning and significance concerning your need to alter actions.
Your CRM software should allow full integration of data from or into spreadsheets and scheduling and tracking systems. It should be able to transfer data from transactional systems into your reports or spreadsheets. Not only will this allow you better use of your data throughout the company, but it will facilitate your providing your stakeholders the information they need in a timely manner.

2. Maximize the benefits rather than minimizing the cost to increase ROI.

Many companies purchase CRM software based on cost. That means they purchase what is cheap rather than what fits their company and their specific needs. It also means they don’t get software that actually facilitates company processes or prepares them for growth or makes them more responsive to their clients.
Automation of operational data collection and analysis allows companies to make adjustments in a timeframe that allows for performance to be affected rather than waiting until it is completed and losing the opportunity to improve performance and efficiency.

3. Automate repeat processes.

Processes your company does repeatedly can easily be automated, saving time and effort and eliminating mistakes. By automating lead generation and distribution to sales people, you can accelerate the customer acquisition process, increase sales and marketing productivity, and build stronger relationships with customers.
Automated e-mails to customers and alerts to sales people help relationships continue. Another process that could be automated is project bidding.

4. Integrate CRM software with software used for other purposes.

It is of utmost importance to assure that your CRM software is integrated with other software used throughout the company. This gives each employee access to the same pieces of information or the pieces of information he or she needs about a customer. It allows the people in each department to see trends and changes so that they can quickly respond.
Integration of CRM software creates a customer-focused company. It helps the customer feel that he is known, his history is known, and therefore, the people of your company care about him and his needs. This applies as well to the service staff who often access customer information on hand-held devices or a computer in the vehicle. With web based CRM software, they too have the same information and can update that information from the customer’s location.

The Best Help Desk Software Reports will give management the information they need to be able to make intelligent decisions quickly and with the detailed content they need.  They also will be able to be customized easily, and be able to email or fax the report automatically on the date desired. 

If you want your company to be responsive to customers and able to change and adjust quickly, you must incorporate these four best practices into your implementation of CRM software.

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Categories : Web Based CRM Software
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Improved Business During a Tough Economy Part 3: Wise Investments Give Better ROI

By Steve · Comments (0)
Friday, July 17th, 2009
Mired in data with outdated processes and no CRM software

Mired in data with outdated processes and no CRM software

Managers know that their workers deal with multiple layers of data every time they look for information. It is estimated that so much time is spent by sales people looking for qualified leads that only a fifth of their time is spent actually selling. Businesses have such a wealth of information that most workers are mired down in the effort to find and make sense of it all. Meanwhile, the world is becoming more automated and the workers are falling farther behind.

Business strategies and processes may need an overhaul to identify the important information and streamline its access. Agility in using the information takes “real-time” solutions that work intuitively for the worker and seamlessly with other applications the company uses in the course of the workday.

If you were to have your company’s workers track how they spend their days, you might be surprised to realize that many spend up to 30% of each day simply looking for information they need – information that should be at their fingertips. This is almost one third of their time spent on non-productive activities. Just imagine what you could do to make your company more productive and quit wasting one third of your workers’ time and pay.

The best thing you could do for your company to give a good return on the time and money spent would be to start using the best Customer Relationship Management software for your company. In some cases, this would be premise-based software, but in many cases it is much more cost-efficient to use web based crm software which can easily be configured to fit your company’s needs.

By switching to a web base crm software, you can greatly increase the efficiency of your workers. And make their lives easier in the process. Your workers need to access information in a myriad of software packages and on an array of servers. Each package has its own formatting. Yet a person such as a help desk representative may need to access information about an order or create an order (as for cross-selling or up-selling) while talking with a customer about a problem. Another person may need to access financial data for a customer to understand their bill. Their manager must access information about the length of time each worker took to solve the customer’s problem. All of these can be accessed through a web based crm software.

Each of these workers would also like the interface he sees to be customized for him – with his e-mail, his to-do list for the day, and other pieces of information he needs ready to be accessed with a single click. To be useful, the information needs to be centralized, integrated and easily accessible. Workers need to spend less time looking and use their time effectively in responding with the right information within seconds.

Your company’s CRM solution needs to connect all your company’s date, people and processes. Web based  crm fully supports workers in sales, marketing, services, and support roles. By using CRM software effectively, your company reduces its monthly costs which, in turn, increases its revenues.

When the economic times get tough, companies are often forced to realize that the very thing they have resisted may be their savior—their means of getting through the tough times and coming out ahead of the competition. For some companies, web based crm may seem like an unnecessary expense or too much technology for their business. However, workers throughout the company will be empowered to work faster, more efficiently, and more effectively. Customers will be impressed with the improved and more personal service. Prospects will be followed more easily from the point of first contact through the purchase decision and beyond. And the performance of all of your company and its actions can be tracked and analyzed to make sure that peak performance is being achieved each day.

Don’t get stuck in the processes and software you have always used when there are better ways to do things. Right now, during the economic downturn, is the best time in your company’s life to take a hard look at and question every process and every move to become more efficient and more effective in the next few months. Help your workers find their way through the layers of information. Pull them out of the mud by using the appropriate web based crm application. By doing so, your company will survive the tough times and come out a leader when the economy picks up again.

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Categories : CRM, Customer Support Software, Web Based CRM Software
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CRM Software’s A’Changing Again

By Steve · Comments (0)
Monday, June 22nd, 2009

There are so many vendors of CRM software around the world, it is impossible to even know all the names of the CRM softwares, let alone what features each CRM software has. While many use the same platforms, each has a slightly different technology and multiple features available.

Web based CRM software is fairly young but appears to be the way to go for the vast majority of companies, especially any small or medium sized company. If you are considering web based CRM software, ask questions about storage limits, cost for additional storage, maximum number of custom tabs and fields, maximumum number of applications that can be added, and other features which could push you to upgrade sooner than you would want. Also make sure that the features and functionality offered by the web based CRM software are those that will increase your ROI or make life easier on your customer relations agents or sales force.

Implementing web based CRMknock-down-walls software is a way of knocking down all the walls in your office(s) – and those offices can be spread all over the world as well as throughout a single building. Today’s CRM software typically includes contact management software, knowledge bases, and integrated front and back office functionality.

Therefore, web based CRM software is a great tool for your whole company. The marketing department can use campaign and lead management tools. The sales force will love the offline and mobile capabilities. The customer service department will be able to see a complete history of all clients. Your back office can manage inventory and invoicing.

The latest versions of web based CRM software give great advantages over on-premise CRM software. The first one we think of is the ability to use it anywhere and any time, including the use on mobile devices (think Blackberry or laptop while eating lunch or getting coffee). They are also faster than on-premise software and often do not require re-loading or refreshing pages to continue working after entering new data.

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Categories : CRM, Customer Support Software, Web Based CRM Software
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‘Up’ with Customer Support Software

By Steve · Comments (0)
Friday, June 12th, 2009

up-movie-272-x-162I am wondering if customer support software correlates to the movie ‘Up.’ Take your family to see ‘Up’ and think about the story. It is fun, funny, and sad. There is a lot to think about in relation to life itself, people, and relationships.

Speaking of relationships, that’s what customer support is. In the movie, Carl is obsessed with getting to Paradise Falls and, in working so hard to get there, he loses sight of the importance of relationships with those around him. His goal is not bad. In fact, it is noble and worthy. It just managed to blind him to the needs, desires, and worth of others.

Often customer support software is purchased with one purpose in mind – to improve the bottom line. That could mean using metrics to measure length of calls or length of time to resolve an issue. It could mean using analytics to figure out what issues are the most frequent and create a standard response to those. It could mean creating campaigns (e-mail and otherwise) to target customers to purchase other services or products. If any of those rings a bell with you, you may be a lot like Carl. These are all good reasons to purchase customer support software and it certainly can do all that and more. However, you must remember the idea of customer support as you use the software.

Your customers have needs, desires, and worth. You must treat them as individuals with great value in and of themselves – not just value to your bottom line. They are not commodities to be manipulated and used. Their main reason for interaction with your company in the first place was that they needed a service or product you have. Don’t overstep your territory or assume they want you prying into their lives every week just because they purchased one thing from you. On the other hand, a caring inquiry about the usefulness of that product or service could lead to an ongoing relationship with them.

When checking on your customers, make sure you ask them about their needs and desires and find ways to answer some of those – even if the answers are not your services or products. They will feel you truly care and will be much more willing to work with you or purchase from you again. Don’t be like Carl in ‘Up’ and see your customers as a means or only useful if they can increase your bottom line or help you get to Paradise!

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Categories : Customer Support Software
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