3 Reasons why you should be using a CRM Software

This article, written by our very own Community Manager, Dena Stern, first appeared in SmallBizBee.com.

Customers and vendors are a small businesses most valuable resource. Do you use a paper address book? Do your business contacts live  in a paper rolodex? Do you search by hand for client details, flipping through sheets of paper on a call trying to find the answer to someone’s question while frantically flipping through pages of notes? When was the last time you had a paper cut? Well those days should be behind you.

With the rise of the age of technology, your clients and customers expect you have instant access to their detailed information. Lost pages and delays are not good customer service and they reflect poorly on you and your business. The good news is that customer relationship management (CRM) is now cheap, easy to use and accessible.

Most small businesses just don’t need something big, expensive and complicated. Your biggest priority for your CRM should be to quickly and easily access up-to-date information about the people you do business with. Small business contact management software should do two things: help you organize and track information about your contacts and  help you track your interactions with them.

3 Reasons you should switch to a CRM for your Small Business!

Reason #1: An  address book just stores information on how to reach a contact, a CRM  track your interactions with your contacts. An address book just doesn’t allow you the ability to really include thorough, easy to find notes about  your clients. And a paper address or filing system really isn’t easily sortable.  Having this data stored with your contacts information makes it searchable, sortable and easier to deal with. It allows you to track not only the contact information, but when you talked, what you talked about, when they were billed, when payment was received and any other data that you learn while you are talking (birthdays, complaints, how those complaints were resolved).

Reason #2: In addition to contact and billing info a CRM stores miscellaneous details about your contact that you can refer to later. With detailed notes, plus all of their billing/receiving info at your fingertips, the information you need is at your fingertips. Telling someone, “Hold on, let me look that it up…” just does not have the same impact as “Of course, last time we talked you mentioned your birthday was this week, happy birthday! I know your last bill was sent out on 8/17… how can I help you?”.  Not only does having searchable, detailed notes save you time, it enables you make your customers feel important! Using a CRM allows you to seem as if you “remember” their account information and to avoid leaving out important details when you are interacting with people.

Reason #3: Using a CRM which links to your bookkeeping syncs your billing/ordering and inventory to your contact records and allows you to easily aggregate important business metrics, like sales volume. Tracking this data gives you invaluable access to data about your customers purchasing habits, allowing you to study patterns in ordering, predict and meet future demand, pull reports automatically and automate processes that would otherwise be tedious and time consuming. You’ll be able to pull out trends from the data in ways that would never be possible with other filing systems including insight into your customers’ purchasing habits. This data is organised in your CRM so you can look for and capitalize on  sales trends by product, location or season. Identifying these trends can also be a valuable tool to refine your marketing to reflect these trends!