Category Archives: CRM

CRM, Tools

Why Your Company Needs a CRM System: Benefits for Customer Success

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After a long day at work, the last thing that you want to do is spend hours on the phone with your customers. This is where CRM systems can come in handy! But what exactly does CRM stand for? And why should every business have one on their team?

A customer relationship management system (CRM) can help a company manage all of its customers in relation to the different stages they’re at with your organization – whether it be lead generation, prospecting, retention, or upselling/cross-selling products based on previous purchases. A CRM will provide information about each person’s interaction history so that interactions are more personalized and timely responses are given accordingly.

With a CRM system, you’ll be able to manage the customer experience from start to finish and provide better service for them each time they contact you. It’s not just about customer service, though; these systems also allow businesses of all sizes access to valuable reporting and data insights that help strengthen business processes.

A CRM system can help you keep track of customer preferences, deal with any problems that may arise, and provide better service in general. You can use these systems to see how well employees are performing as well! It’s a win-win for everyone involved – your customers get exceptional customer experience and you also have more accurate reporting on the performance of your team.

CRM Systems and Data

A CRM system can also help you with data insights that go beyond customer service. You’ll be able to see how your employees are performing and if they’re meeting the goals for their position or not. If an employee needs more training, then it’ll show in the reports! It’s a great way to keep track of performance across all areas of the business.

The data is also a great way to measure how well your marketing efforts are working. If you see that customers have reduced the number of times they’ve contacted customer service, then this means that either your product has improved or you’re doing better at providing information on social media and through emails. However, when customers don’t contact you, it could also be viewed negatively, as it could mean they’re frustrated and no longer wish to speak to you.

There is also a lot of data that CRMs can provide with reports. For example, from a sales and marketing point of view, you can see how many customers have opened your emails and clicked on links or visited websites recommended in the email. You’ll be able to measure if these efforts are successful and it will give insight into what type of content should be included in future marketing campaigns. Conversely, from a support and operations point of view, you can track response rates and key KPIs like First Call Resolution (FCR) and more using a CRM.

A CRM system also helps to keep track of your employees. You’ll be able to measure how much time is spent on what tasks, which will ultimately help you make decisions about where resources need to go for increased efficiency and productivity. This data can also provide insight into who the best customer service reps are and if there’s a problem with any individual on your team. The CRM can help you understand what areas you need to focus on with your training and where they’re strong or weak.

Using a CRM to Manage Your Team

It’s not always easy for managers or supervisors to be able to track what employees are doing when they’re on the phone, emailing customers, or talking about how things went at an appointment. A CRM system can help by providing reports that show you exactly who did what and whether it was successful (or not). You’ll know if your team members need any additional training or coaching so you can address this as soon as possible before anything goes too far awry.

The CRM is typically the primary tool for customer service reps and managers. You’ll be able to see what they’re working on, how long it’s taking them to respond or close cases, if a client has complained about something in particular, etc. It can also help you with succession planning as well since you’ll have access to performance data over time.

A CRM system can provide insights into where training needs are needed so that employees know exactly what they should focus on when going through various iterations of tasks/modules during training sessions. However, a key area where a CRM shines is strategic planning.

You’ll be able to see trends where the company needs to invest more in certain aspects of their business and also find out about what customers are saying. This is a great tool for creating reports that show how effective your team has been so you can plan accordingly on improving different areas which may not have succeeded as well as others.

Using a CRM to Improve Retention

A CRM system helps with customer retention by providing insights into what it takes for them to get back in touch, how they found out about your company’s product or service, etc. You’ll know if there are any issues or concerns from past cases that need attention, since this will all be cataloged and stored for future reference. This is important in order to maintain a strong customer base and build upon previous successes.

Investing in a CRM

If you’re thinking about using a CRM system, then there are a few things you need to consider. The first is how much time do you have to invest in using the system? If you have a large customer service team, then you’ll need to set aside a lot of time to learn the system and get it up and running. You’ll also need to invest in training your employees on how to use the system and what they should be doing.

Next, you’ll need to decide if you’re going to use software or a cloud-based system. Software-based CRM systems are typically more expensive than cloud-based CRMs. That being said, you’ll also have the ability to personalize the software solution to a greater degree, since you’ll be able to add in features that are specific to your business.

If you’re in the business of selling products and services, then you’ll need a system that helps you manage your business operations – in this instance I’d recommend a solution like HubSpot. They offer functionality that’s a lot closer to more expensive SaaS solutions like SalesForce, but are simpler to use and configure, especially for a smaller team.

However, if you’re in the business of customer service, then you’ll need a system that helps you manage your customer relationships and improve customer service. In this instance, I’d point you in the direction of Freshdesk. While you could use HubSpot for this, Freshdesk is better and more focused.

A CRM is an essential tool for any company, no matter how big or small. It’s also instrumental in helping companies improve customer experience with better service and reporting tools to measure success.

CRM, Tools

SalesForce vs. HubSpot: A Side-by-Side Comparison (2020)

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In the year 2020, no matter what the size of your company or business the selection of the best client management software is not an easy task. I’ve just created this 6-Round head-on-head comparison for SalesForce vs. HubSpot which are two of the best options out there. Let’s see who takes the lead.

Many questions went through my mind while selecting the best CRM system. I asked how exactly I could improve marketing results with customer satisfaction. How can I opt for the best contact management software? In the end I managed to get the most of the best CRM system I selected for myself and I used the same selection criteria I’m using for this comparison.

The selection of the best client management software is no doubt an investment that guarantees the growth of your company and engages more clients. I’ve talked about Why Does the Right CRM Make a Difference in an earlier post and I’ve also talked about The 5 Best CRM Systems in 2020 so I’m not going to go into too much depth about CRMs in general here.

HubSpot vs SalesForce

There are as many differences between these two products as there are similarities.

HubSpot sells software specially designed for content management and search engine optimization under inbound marketing.

Salesforce is one of the cloud computing services that focus on customer relationship management (CRM). It connects the different customers and partners by using cloud technology. HubSpot enables small businesses to grow fastly with the lead generation whereas Salesforce possesses the attributes to streamline sales operations.

CRM is a model that automates and organizes marketing and sales for better customer service. CRM allows your team to maintain a relationship strategy by increasing shared intelligence and functionality. In short, I can say that companies manage their interactions with present and future customers under customer relationship management (CRM).

This detailed SalesForce vs. HubSpot comparison will help you out.  Remember, the comparison is based on the top six features you need to look for. It is not an easy task to compare two of the best client management software, but taking the features one by one can make things a lot easier. It will be a guide for your ideas to make a clear understanding of the right direction for solid reasons.

In this post comparing SalesForce vs. HubSpot we will be looking at the following key areas:

  1. Features
  2. Reporting and Analytics
  3. Marketing and Automation
  4. Cost
  5. Implementation and Support
  6. Scalability

ROUND 1. Features

Salesforce Features

  • It follows the lead process and shares an organized contact list with the team.
  • It assigns various tasks to the team and oversees the schedules.
  • It manages the analytics and sales for future forecasts and completes all contract requirements.

HubSpot Features

  • HubSpot learns about customer needs and creates targeted campaigns to enhance customer service.
  • It also examines new prospects for the support and products under the lead segmentation.
  • HubSpot boosts your revenue by targeting the sales and it is the core module of the system.
  • It also manages the contacts and sends email templates along with books the meetings.

Round 1 Winner?

If your target is the sales and content marketing field then try HubSpot as it better than SalesForce and easier to use.

ROUND 2. Reporting & Analytics

Salesforce Reporting & Analysis

  • Salesforce is always on time in terms of analytics and reporting as a small delay can cause the information to become outdated.
  • It provides the proper analytics dashboards and continuously receives and delivers the reports without any delay.
  • The output of the analytics dashboard is that users can access it and operate it easily with the best features of intuitive controls.

HubSpot Reporting & Analysis

  • The reporting and analytics of HubSpot evaluate the progress and marketing of the sale.
  • It comprised of reports, analytics tools, dashboards. HubSpot analytics tools do not provide a deeper idea of customer behavior and marketing trends.
  • It does not give deeper insight and metrics relating to the performance of the business by combing the CRM software.
  • It does not properly guide relating to the traffic tags or UTM parameters on your traffic data

Round 2 Winner?

HubSpot needs improvement in reporting and analytics. Thus, Salesforce is more beneficial in terms of Reporting and analytics.

ROUND 3. Marketing Automation Platform

Salesforce Automation

  • It is not easy to get accustomed to the software system and personal touch disappears with automation.
  • A high level of cost is included in the installation and for handling the system due to which it doesn’t increase productivity.
  • It is very difficult to every time update the system and deleting the irrelevant entries.
  • It also not easy to compete for the market advantage in terms of revenue and cost.

HubSpot Automation

  • Through HubSpot, you can attract the visitors, build the community, and convert leads as it is a marketing automation software.
  • It has no coding issues and most of the organizations already using it are familiar with it.
  • It enables content management systems to move in the right direction across multiple channels.
  • The team creates add-ons and peripherals at the right time for the system. HubSpot sends an email at the right time to your potential and valuable clients.

Round 3 Winner?

HubSpot offers better and simpler automation as compared to Salesforce with better tools and standards. As it is also easy to use at the user interface and anyone can access it easily even through the mobile app. The key point is that it is simple and easy to setup.

ROUND 4. Cost

Salesforce Cost

  • There is no free plan of Salesforce for the benefit and convenience of customers.
  • Salesforce tends to force and pressurize you to purchase preferably their yearly plans.
  • They use hidden tactics to attract customers and they start paying for Sales Cloud at $150/user/month for their Lightning Enterprise plan.

HubSpot Cost

The major feature of CRM is the fact that it is free in HubSpot and starter plans are as follows

  • Service hub: starts from $50 – $1,200 per month
  • HubSpot CMS: starts from $300 per month
  • Marketing hub: starts from $50 – $3,200 per month
  • Sales hub: starts from  $50 – $1,200 per month

Round 4 Winner?  

If your budget is low then you should go for the HubSpot as it also provides the Free (Forever Plan)

ROUND 5. Implementation & Support

Salesforce Implementation & Support

  • Salesforce is expensive and its setup and configuration are intricate. Only a plan of 14-day free trial offers by the Salesforce and there is no free CRM
  • It asks for the add-ons payment and cluttered interface makes tasks complex.
  • The Salesforce customer support is limited and most of the queries remain unanswered due to the weak support system.
  • The internet connection should be stable as it relies on it. So, for the persistency of business and CRM support connection must be secured.

HubSpot Implementation & Support

  • HubSpot provides the feature of free sign up and you can import all your contacts and can match the existing standards and properties. Hubspot easily integrates with Gmail and other mail clients.
  • HubSpot keeps the same software as your company grows and track the leads. It simplifies the administrative tasks by saving the contact information and emails following the CRM.
  • In HubSpot, CRMs can collect and oversee the data including the sales dashboards. Personal performance can also be evaluated and monitored.

Round 5 Winner?

HubSpot wins this round, not because SalesForce is not capable, but rather due to its ease of use. SalesForce can do almost anything you want, but to implement those solutions you need a dedicated team working on the solution. HubSpot by contrast can be quickly and easily configured with little to no knowledge and still be a useful solution.

ROUND 6. Scalability

Salesforce Scalability

  • Salesforce has the potential to design and scale the teams along with the thousands and millions of the users
  • Salesforce scalability increases with the increase in the needs of the customer.
  • It supports the merchandising, marketing, and artificial intelligence that maximizes the B2C and B2B user integration.

HotSpot Scalability

  • You can start with the free plans but as companies grow, they might need a more robust solution for their B2B and B2C requirements.
  • Sometimes HubSpot develops workflows as confusing and features are a little bit overwhelming.
  • Extra programming is required for integration in HubSpot and CSS knowledge is though required

Round 6 Winner?

Salesforce is better than the HubSpot as far as scalability is concerned, but what I observed that both needs the improvement

Verdict

It’s a tough competition as both, Salesforce and HubSpot are contributing more and more to the industry. Both have attracted millions of clients from all over the world. Both client management software have an extensive and reliable history. I’ve decided based on minor differences that HubSpot is better than Salesforce, especially for small and medium businesses. This does not mean that Salesforce isn’t a wise choice, it’s just there is a better and cheaper option out there.

CRM, Tools

The 5 Best CRM Systems in 2020

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In an earlier post, I talked a bit about the creation and set up of a CRM for a friend working within the medical sector. That post and task got me thinking a lot about why I selected the CRM that I did. I realized that I spent a lot of time searching for the right solution and if a “best CRM systems” post in 2020 had been available to me, I might have saved myself some effort. So I thought I’d share some of that research and thinking with you here.

Over the course of my rather long career in CX, I’ve had the pleasure and pain of working with many different CRMs. Some of them are better than others as I’m sure you’re well aware. So without further ado, here’s my list of the 5 best CRM systems in 2020.

What is a CRM?

A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system efficiently collects data about the company-customer interaction and this information comes from a variety of sources including integrated social media handles, official websites, support logs, and testimonials, and reviews from the customers. The central database of the CRM system keeps this information for the company to analyze data for optimal decision making while addressing customers’ concerns.

In this post we’re going to be looking at five different CRM systems and will try to provide an unbiased opinion on them.

SystemProsCons
HubSpotConvenient connectivity to sales, service, and marketing hubs
Integrated tools for tracking pipelines The efficient activity log of interactions from different sources
Free CRM services		Developers are working on introducing in-depth features as the platform is relatively new
Customization issues for only large businesses
ZohoNew business leads, client accounts, and client meetings
Easy lead conversion
Easy tracking of deadlines
Convenient access to read-only data to all team members		Occasional bugs when entering data
The upper limit on modules should be elevated  
AgileAdding contacts (automatically or manually) is easy via on-site form filling
Banners for important updates for users
Easy email reporting and access to CTR open rate		No open HTML section for email builder
There should be more help documents for optimal campaign
StreakFree Gmail add-on
No email clogging
Convenient customization		You have to manually add the email addresses
Searching keywords needs improvement (for box correspondence items)
SalesForceEnsures data integrity
Efficient automation
Simple User Interface
Easy customization
Easy to navigate mobile app		Data mapping and visualization needs improvement
A bit expensive on a shoestring budget

Our list of the top 5 Best CRM systems includes only those platforms that are suitable for most small to medium businesses. 

1. Best Overall: HubSpot (Optimal Scalability)

No matter how small your business is, hopefully, it’ll grow with the right strategy and that is why HubSpot is there for you. With HubSpot, you can start with only a couple of modules or the whole enchilada. The best part is that it’s all free! HubSpot lets you have a scalable CRM system for the long run. Some features are:

Interactive Visual Dashboard

HubSpot offers a highly interactive dashboard to let you see live updates of the sales funnel. It lets you track performance and schedule appointments within minutes.

Automatic Logs

HubSpot efficiently updates log of social media, call, and email interactions with the customer and you can easily sync it with Outlook and Gmail. You can easily tie Gmail accounts into your ticket feeds helping you import customer contact information in one click.

Timeline View

The follow up become fairly easy with the timeline view of HubSpot CRM. You can not only send personalized emails but you can also set schedules and access all actionable insights.

Marketing Hub

The HubSpot Marketing Hub allows you to create templates for email, optimize landing pages, and analyze SEO-based ROI.

Office 365 and G-Suite Compatibility

One of the biggest HubSpot features is its seamless compatibility with third-party platforms including Office 365 and G-Suite.

2. Best Cloud-Based CRM System: Zoho

Zoho is something I used when I was looking for a free version of Office but word processing and spreadsheets are definitely not the only things Zoho does. They call Zoho CRM the “Remote-Ready” CRM – from a company with an incredible portfolio from collaborative apps to accounting tools. If you are not comfortable with self-hosting you need to consider Zoho – the self-hosted CRM system.

Multichannel Online CRM

Zoho extracts customer date from live chat, social media, calls, emails, and other online sources.

SalesSignals

The Zoho SalesSignals include customer notifications and serve with real-time analytics. It lets you assign the team members individual targets while you can use the central dashboard to monitor the progress of each team member.

Sales Process Automation

You can not only build sales processes but can also automate these processes using Zoho CRM. Besides, for different customers, you can create distinct portals.

Develop and Integrate Custom Solutions

You can use the Zoho libraries and REST API to develop as well as integrate custom solutions.

Zoho Marketplace

The Zoho Marketplace offers scores and extensions you can add to your Zoho CRM dashboard to optimize its functionality.

3. Best for Automation – Agile

Agile takes the lead when it comes to extensive automation. The pricing of this CRM system is competitive – $8.99/month as we write – and specifically targets small businesses.

Extensive Database

Agile lets you store the details of approximately 10k contacts or companies.

2-Way Email Tracking

Agile supports tracking of 2-way integrated emails in addition to custom deal milestones, and lead scoring.

Builder Tools

To facilitate marketing teams, Agile provides builder tools. Marketers can use these tools for email templates, forms, and website landing pages.

Automate Tasks and Monitoring

You can monitor social media and automate tasks for marketing and the procedure is fairly convenient.

Plugin Optimization

Agile lets you use different plugins to optimize the functionality of the CRM system. You can respond to reports by using canned responses.

4. Best User-Friendly CRM: Streak

There is no need to worry if you aren’t comfortable with the modern-day complex CRM systems. Streak is the one you need to consider if you are looking for an easy-to-use CRM system in 2020. Streak is a CRM I’ve really enjoyed using as I’m a huge Gmail fan and user.

While I ended up selecting HubSpot for my personal project and Freshdesk for a recent corporate rollout – it was not due to Streaks’ capabilities, but simply the price.

Built on the Gmail App

You can transform the Gmail interface into the CRM system instantly because all you need is to install the Streak extension.

Easy Collaboration

You can easily share files to collaborate with the team members. Managing deals, task scheduling, and reminders, and supporting queues are easy with Google Calendar.

A Mixture of Efficient Features

Webhook API access, shared pipelines, mail tracking, and mail merge are the valuable features available with Streak CRM. Thanks to Gmail integration, Streak easily uses Google Web Apps. It is also compatible with school and personal Gmail accounts and environments such as Product Development and Sales.

5. Best Binge – SalesForce

If you can pay a bit higher to the benefit of your business in the long run then SalesForce CRM is definitely an option to consider. There is, after all, a good reason for it being the biggest CRM in the world.

Professional Editing

The editing features on SalesForce are exceptional, for instance, campaign management, lead scoring (rules-based), and automation of the B2B market. SalesForce offers customizable sales process, contact management, and account management.

Mobile App

The SalesForce mobile app lets you track customer interaction anywhere anytime. The dashboard is configurable and you can access reports with real-time insights.

Convenient Collaboration

You can establish convenient collaboration within the company and share recommendations and files easily. SalesForce is also compatible with third-party platforms including Lightning Sync and Google Apps.  

Conclusion

Hopefully, this list is a good start on your CRM journey. While it is possible to migrate from one CRM to another it is often not as easy as you might think (despite what their salespeople will tell you).

At my current company, we recently went through a 4-month nightmare migration which saw our support portal unavailable for days at a time. In that case, it was simply moving one SalesForce instance into another.

So if I can give you one piece of advice it is this.

Do your homework well. Try to get some trial accounts organized so that you can test different CRMs and make sure they integrate into the way you work, not the other way around! When picking the best CRM systems for your organization it’s important to ensure that it suits the way you work.

CRM

Can a Call Center Help in a Pandemic?

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Firstly I hope that everyone is staying safe and sane during this very weird and bizarre time in the world! What is currently going on is something no-one expected & how people have generally responded is nothing short of miraculous. There are of course exceptions out there – I’m looking at you toilet paper hoarders – but otherwise, I’d say in most cases people are acting reasonably well. However, how people are behaving does not really explain how a call center comes into the equation does it? Well, stick with me.

Now one group that is going above and beyond during this crisis is probably the medical profession. I think regardless of whether we’re talking about doctors, nurses, admin staff or even cleaners in the hospitals, those individuals have literally been putting their lives on the line to help us. I’m lucky enough to know a doctor and in one small way, I believe that I was able to help also.

The Situation

You see, many people are frightened by what is going on. Normally the doctor would be the perfect person to speak to for advice and information. But when we’re talking about a disease that seems to be this contagious, people are staying away from doctors’ offices. This tends to only increase the level of fear and confusion.

Now my friend wanted to help address this gap. So he came up with a very innovative solution. With potential clients and patients being frightened of meeting a doctor in person, he thought going virtual would be a good solution. However, this was going to be a free service so the overall cost was definitely a factor. Knowing that I was involved in customer management and experience he reached out to me for some guidance and help. So we came up with a strategy.

We basically split it up into three different parts. A website, a call center and a CRM. Coming from a corporate background, this might have been overkill, but I thought we could do it all at a reasonable budget. Luckily I was wrong!

Website

Create and launch a website to inform people of what he was doing. Why he was doing it and how it could be of use to them. The website was not only used as promotion though. It was an entry point with an integrated form that could be filled in. This ensured the doctor had the required information they needed to help. We didn’t really get into SEO and advertisement as that was not the function. He was basically going to promote it through his own local channels and with the current panic, had no concern about traffic.

Call Center Phone Services

Potential patients and interested parties needed a way of getting in touch. Here’s where things got a bit interesting. I found a company called MightyCall that offered a cloud-based IVR solution. This was a US-based company, but one that had operations in Canada so it was ideal. The best part – they had a special offer for Health Care professionals and offered their service for FREE for three months as a response to Covid19.

This made things super easy in terms of decision making. I’m happy to say that the setup was exceptionally simple and the features were more than I could have asked for. I was able to quickly configure an ACD/IVR for my friend with defined operating hours and voicemail services. In this time of social distancing, having the system point to individual cell phone numbers was super simple and easy. In addition setting it up as round-robin ensured that no one, single call taker got overwhelmed.

For anyone looking for a simple solution, I cannot recommend MightyCall enough. It is a great solution for a call center and can be easily expanded as requirements change.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Now, this was something my friend didn’t really understand that well until I showed him. By integrating the form into a simple CRM – I used Hubspot because it offered a free option – I was able to get all of the information into a single location.

However, the CRM had other benefits. In addition to providing a single source of truth, it gave us the capability of assigning work based on skill and availability. Added to this was the fact that repeat calls/emails could now be tracked and a record maintained of previous interactions. It all started to make sense really quickly.

As I continued to play with Hubspot I became even more impressed with its ease of use and capabilities. As someone that uses SalesForce on a daily basis, I’m used to complex systems. Similarly, with the time I’d spent on Freshdesk over the years, I was familiar with simple ticketing systems (well, Freshdesk is simple to use but deceptively powerful).

Hubspot however, seemed to be a perfect, happy medium. It provided a fully functional CRM, but one that didn’t require hours, days and weeks of study. In fact, I probably had it up and running for the purposes we needed inside of an hour. If you’re looking for a great CRM at a great price (you can’t go wrong with free!), I’d really urge you to look at Hubspot.

Now we didn’t go the full-service desk route with integrated Chat and Chatbots. That’s potentially a step we’ll take in the future as this offering grows. However, it’s really nice to see how technology can help in a really measurable way. For me, it’s even more important as I can say that I potentially helped save lives. Like the MasterCard add, that’s something that is truly priceless.

CRM, Customer Experience, Customer Management, Helpdesk, Tools

How Help Desk Software Increases Your Customer Support ROI

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If you want to invest in customer support software such as Freshdesk, you may be wondering if the cost of the software will pay off. It can be tricky to calculate the return on investment (ROI) of your new tools.

One of the things you need to consider is if it will bring in revenue. Most help desks are cost centers, but if the software reduces the cost of doing business it is still a benefit. This is one of the most important questions that you must get answers before you start using the software. The software can be effective in measuring the impact of your actions on the business metrics. It is possible to make customer support into a revenue generator and not just a cost center.

Nowadays, things are changing, and more customer support teams are focusing on driving growth in businesses and proving their worth to the business. Using the right software can make your customer care more effective in generating revenue. Freshdesk, for example, can help you streamline your customer conversations, automate your repetitive work and collaborate with other teams to solve problems faster. Software for help desks should save money and bring money into the business in order to create a return on investment.

How to Measure Your Investment in Software

If you are at the stage of putting processes into place to support your business’ customer of if you want to fix some gaps in your system, the right help desk package will ensure that you get back to all clients in a timely manner.

This is an important baseline to meet. If you miss one email just once, you can cause your customers to stop doing business with you. 86% of customers quit doing business with companies because of poor customer service. 51% of customers quit doing business with a company for one poor customer experience. All the lost customers lead to lost revenue. Read on to understand different ways of investing in help desk software, save revenue in your business, and increase your customer service team’s ROI.

Move to a Streamlined Queue

Help desks were originally made around the idea of tickets. This can still be seen at the butcher. You take a ticket number and get services in the order that you came in. Nowadays; your businesses shouldn’t treat customers like tickets anymore.

It is important to adopt a nuanced approach to organizing questions from customers. You can become adept at managing messages from customers by using modern help desks. You can achieve this by prioritizing customers who seem to be more upset or customers who have a high opportunity of converting to paid customers. Businesses should invest in help desks that offer better management of queue. This will make customer support teams to more effective.

Self-service Should be Part of Your Customer Service

Businesses should have the ability to offer content in the form of FAQs and knowledge base articles to help customers be able to help themselves. Businesses should understand that self-service is another form of customer service. Self-service carries the highest ROI for different reasons.

Customers like being able to help themselves. 70% of customers like to see an option on your website where they can help themselves. If you don’t offer this service, your customers will be frustrated and will need to contact you. On the other hand, 73% of customers prefer researching for answers on their own instead of talking to a human over social media and live chat. 81% of customers also try to help themselves before contacting human support.

Investing in software that allows self-service keeps the customers happy. Customers will keep coming back when they find it easy and convenient to do business with you. Apart from customers helping themselves, self-service also benefit you as a business owner or manager. Self-service is a cost-effective way of helping customers to resolve issues versus other business help channels. When you get self-service right, it is a cost-effective way of making your customers happy.

Personalize Each Transaction

You can build your customer loyalty by investing in your customers. You can focus on building good relationships with your customers beyond transactions. We should form holistic relationships with customers instead of treating the problems of our customers as a series of events that don’t relate to each other.

You should, first of all, know who your customers are before you think beyond the transaction. If all your customer service team can see is the question at hand, they won’t have a nuanced and personalized conversation about their customers’ needs.

Your help desk can provide additional context with different conversations. For instance, they might show you the last four conversations the customer initiated. If you have integrated your help desk with your CRM, you can see when the renewal date is coming up. You will also see how many users they are paying for. When the context revolves around the history of the customers, you can tailor your approach. You can easily see what your customers need and offer it.

Provision of valuable data

The return of investment of customer support is not always tied to sales . Businesses can also use customer support for research on users. This includes knowing what customers think of your product and how they use the product. You can also know what your customers think of your competition. You need help desk reporting that will capture trends for you to get all the information you need from your conversations.

You can use important data from your customers to enhance the efficiency of service delivery and improve the quality of your products to suit your customers’ needs.

Investing in Helpdesk Software – Money Well spent

Calculating the customer experience return on investment is a critical requirement for frontline teams. It is important to know how our actions affect the business. When we connect our customer support goals to the business goals, we move from making our customers happy to the value we create.

A Help desk plays a crucial part in the journey of connecting customer interactions and making money. This can be through increasing the power of your support team, improving the loyalty of your customers or uncovering important data. With all these, a help desks can deliver a huge ROI.

CRM, Customer Experience, Tools

The Top 3 CRM Software Packages You Need to Consider if You Want to be Successful

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For the success of a business, managing the customer relationship is essential. For any company, the client is seen as a potential resource. Therefore, it is essential to stand out from the competition while responding to your client in a timely and effective manner. As a company, we must not forget that the criteria for choosing a client are not always financial, even in times of crisis.

Whether it is to acquire a product or a service, the client also requires account recognition, responsiveness, and listening. With customer relationship management system, the company must be able to handle difficult customers and claims, to be responsive and communicative, to be satisfied by meeting their needs.

Here is where the role of CRM comes in! Now if you’re not in the support and operations industry, you might not be familiar with CRMs so perhaps we’ll start with an introduction first.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

The Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is the set of tools and techniques for capturing, processing, analyzing information on customers and prospects, with the aim of creating loyalty by offering services.

With regard to a computer application, these include software packages that allow you to deal directly with the customer, whether in terms of sales, marketing or service.

Why Use Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software?

Customer relationship management software (CRM) is considered to be a modern version of the “client file”. It is a tool that allows the updating and storage of prospects or contact lists as well as associated customers or target companies. It is possible to use an Excel file and a simple database to maintain your customer records, however, modern CRM software goes further. Here are some examples of its features:

Increase the Satisfaction of Your Customers

Be more efficient in business processes (by better managing your after-sales service, being more responsive and intervening at an opportune moment),

Have a closer relationship with the customer by developing a privileged relationship with them (by registering their preferences, birthday for example, etc.),

Develop competitiveness by providing more services and personalized advice.

Increase the Profitability of the Company

Increase sales through targeted actions on defined segments of your customers and prospects (Example: retain your customers through specific offers based on each customer population),

Optimize the profitability of commercial investments, marketing, and customer service thanks to a better calculation of the return on investment,

Have a clear vision of the commercial activity to optimize the processes (report on the sales, the follow-up of the appointments of the salesmen, the advancement of the objectives, etc.),

Save time by automating recurring tasks (automatic results tracking, automatic client recovery).

Improve the Internal Organization

Calendar shared between the collaborators (tasks to do, events),

Centralization and sharing of all customer data (all important customer information is sorted in the same place and easily accessible),

Structuring information and business processes. You have a structured customer file with relevant information that can be used for marketing purposes (Example: paper mailing, e-mailing, phoning, etc.),

Keep the history of your customer data.

Top CRM Solutions Available In the Market

Your relationships with your customers are sometimes complex, but the tools you use to manage them must remain simple. Created with the needs of customers in mind there are many CRM solution software available in the market. Some of them are mentioned below:

Freshdesk

Freshdesk is the only cloud-based support center software that offers you a feature-rich package that’s easy to use and affordable. Freshdesk is a full set of features including social networking capabilities with   Facebook and Twitter support. The list of integrations includes services like Capsule CRM, Google Contacts, Google Analytics, Freshbooks, Harvest, and JIRA.

All this combined with the exceptional support of Freshdesk gives you an unbeatable, reliable and incredibly affordable customer support experience.

1. Advantages:

  • Setting up Freshdesk is easy
  • The support team is available to help you
  • No hidden clauses, no hidden fees
  • Freshdesk is the only support center that allows you to chat with your team directly from the ticket thanks to Team Huddle
  • Customize your workflows to fit your needs

Disadvantages:

  • Limited data transfer
  • Premium Package is expensive

2. Zendesk

Zendesk is one of the best customer service software packages in the market. With its ticketing system, live chat, telephone support and intelligent knowledge base in one solution, providing effective customer service have never been easier.

Advantages:

  • Reduces the total number of views that agents must view
  • Allows you to see the total number of open tickets at a glance
  • Very easy to configure

Disadvantages:

  • Agents need special training to respond to tickets on a brand
  • Difficult interface

3. Salesforce

Salesforce is your sales order center that takes the form of a Customer Relationship Platform (CRM). The solutions work together to help you manage your sales, marketing, and customer service from one central location. It is intuitive, personalized and designed to support your growth.

With Salesforce CRM, treat each of your customers as if they were the only one. By managing your customers’ information and their interactions with your business on a single platform that is accessible anywhere, anytime, you can understand their needs, solve their problems, and identify areas for which they need help.

Advantages:

  • More than 150,000 companies are on the road to success with Salesforce
  • Ensure the satisfaction of all your customers
  • Manage your business from a mobile device

Disadvantages:

  • Salesforce is the most expensive option in our list! You will need to pay consultants to customize the CRM for you, the interface and the applications
  • As Salesforce does everything, it has many – too many – views and its reporting and dashboards are clunky.

Final Verdict – Freshdesk Wins!

Out of the three discussed CRM solutions; Freshdesk is my and useful option available. Freshdesk is SaaS-based customer support software used by more than 100,000 companies worldwide. It is a comprehensive helpdesk that provides excellent customer support thanks to its many features and integrations.

Freshdesk is positioned primarily as a hub that centralizes all customer requests whether they come from the ticketing platform, incoming phone calls, chats, emails or social networks. This hub allows you to be present at each place where your customers are and it also allows assigning the tickets automatically or manually to the agents who will take care of them.

Freshdesk’s Strengths against Salesforce and Zendesk

In view of the exceptional functional coverage of Freshdesk and its ergonomics, the creator offers an ultra-competitive rate.

The tool is also very well connected to social networks. Freshdesk allows you to master all incoming and outgoing channels without leaving the tool.

Finally, Freshdesk offers you the opportunity to purchase one or more phone numbers and manage calls from this online software.

Conclusion

The use of good customer relationship management technique within a company gives you the opportunity to boost the marketing strategy by targeting and segmenting your contacts. These efforts will enable the company to evolve by conducting targeted marketing campaigns, with the sole purpose of raising the awareness of customers according to fairly precise criteria.

CRM, Freshdesk

Why Does the Right CRM Make a Difference

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If you run a business that relies on customer experience to grow, then chances are that you have probably heard about CRMs multiple times in your life. If you haven’t and this is the first time you have heard of it, then you’re in luck! In this post, I’m going to talk all about what a CRM is, its importance as well as explore some of the most popular CRM solutions in the market, and also tell you which one of these you should definitely use to enhance customer experience.

What is a CRM?

For those who don’t know, CRM stands for customer relationship management. As its name suggests, it is one of the most (if not, the most) efficient method for maintaining a strong relationship with your customers. It helps create a strong, healthy, personal relationship with your clients and can even help form brand loyalty. 

This is why a CRM is very important for your business. A CRM allows you to monitor and analyze your interactions with your customers. This helps the team understand more clearly what customers are looking for.


Additionally, by using CRM, as a company, you’re able to understand what your clients want rather than what you think they want. This is actually a really good way of doing business as you’re looking to satisfying your clients completely- this will build customer loyalty in the long run, something which is very important in today’s very competitive market.


In order to understand what the client wants the CRM will use a number of ways to collect data regarding the customer’s preference. This may be in the form of a survey or a series of pop-up questions that come as the customer browses your website. By filling in what they’d like to see, or what they didn’t like, on your website, the CRM system collects this information and provides raw, accurate data for analysis. When the analysis is complete, you’ll be able to tell exactly what your customers want and then provide it to them. It’s a really simple concept with quite a lot of benefits. 

This is why it is absolutely essential that you have the right CRM solution for your company. In order to understand why you need the right CRM solution, you must understand the benefits that come with them.


The Benefit of the Right CRM System

Every company will have a different CRM system to meet its requirements. With the right CRM solution, your company can be quite successful. In particular, the benefits will include:

An Increase in Profit Potential

This is brought about by a strong, healthy relationship with your customers. If your customers are happy with your service, you’ll find that you don’t really need to do much marketing. You can stick with your current clients and then use the money set aside for marketing for other development prospects. 

You’ll be investing more in areas that need improvement instead, and you’ll know that clients will be there for you because, by meeting their needs, you will have developed a trusting relationship with them which will significantly reduce their chances of leaving your services for another’s.

An Increase in Productivity

A CRM solution is, for all intents and purposes, a computerized system. This makes the job easier for your team. Instead of allocating monitoring and analysis jobs to individuals, your team can use the CRM system to do the job. 

This increases workplace productivity as less time will be spent in gathering information since it is now automated, and more time will be spent on understanding your clientele’s needs and moving in the right direction to satisfy their needs.

Enhanced Customer Experience

With a CRM solution, engaging with customers in real time takes place a lot more quickly than it would without one. Additionally, the experience also becomes as personal as possible. This enhances the chance of converting a visitor to your website into a customer by a large margin. 

A CRM solution will provide links to the customer as well as showcase its social media presence to attract the customer. By doing this, and using other methods, a CRM is able to enhance the customer experience and bring in more clients to your company.


Examples of Some CRM Solutions

Of course, now that you know all about the benefits of the CRM solutions, let’s move on to inspect the best-known ones in the market.

Freshdesk

First up on our list is Freshdesk. It is a cloud-based CRM platform with the goal to allow companies, no matter how big or how small they are, to be able to provide superb customer service. It is a CRM solution which integrates traditional support systems like live chat, emails and telephone support with the new social systems like Twitter and Facebook.


Pros:
  • Has a built-in knowledge base
  • Has a self-service portal as well as multi-channel support that includes all major social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
  • Includes a community portal for management and sharing of ideas
  • It’s automatic so ticket routing is managed easily
  • Quick follow-up and initial response


Cons:

  • Reporting module has room for improvement
  • Premium packages (which provides excellent service) is on the costlier side.

Zendesk

Zendesk is a similar CRM solution that also supports multi-channel support and has a quality ticketing system. Furthermore, it also has a great reporting and analytics module and offers a self-service portal, much like Freshdesk.

Pros:

  • A flexible ticket management system
  • Multi-brand support system with linked accounts
  • Unlimited, free ‘light agents’
  • Public and private forums
  • CSS rebranding

Cons:

  • Does not include answers from its knowledge base app
  • Not enough guidelines provided in the forum for users when submitting a ticket.
  • Zendesk has a harder user interface.
  • Tickets’ workflow isn’t natural.

Salesforce

Lastly, we have Salesforce. Like the other two, it is also a cloud-based CRM solution which companies use to help manage their customer service. Salesforce was one of the first CRM solutions to come up on the internet. Truly, before this, companies had to create their own CRM solution. In a way, Salesforce paved the way for the other two CRM solutions on this list.

Pros:

  • It has an easy-to-navigate user interface
  • Multi-channel support and links to all major social media sites like Facebook.
  • Customizable dashboard so you can log in and check your company’s performance from a bird’s eye view.

Cons:

  • It is very complex and this can be problematic if you’re a small business using a CRM solution.
  • It is actually far more expensive than the other two CRM solutions mentioned on this list even though it has a range of different prices- the features offered are limited if you choose the cheaper options.

Ultimate Verdict: Freshdesk is the better choice!

As it might be a bit obvious for you, we personally believe that out of the three, Freshdesk is the best CRM solution. 

While Salesforce delivers good service as well, you’re more inclined to use Freshdesk because of its better pricing policy. This is because Freshdesk’s features make it worth the price you’re paying whereas Salesforce limits feature according to the pricing and that is enough to put a lot of people off. 

Similarly, Zendesk does not have the same number of features and user-friendly interface as Freshdesk does. As a result, Freshdesk is a CRM solution that caters to every type of business- be it big or small.

Conclusion

CRM systems are very important for your company. We hope that this article was able to help you understand why so many companies are turning towards them to help them establish a greater customer experience as well as decide which CRM solution you should use for your business.