Customer relationship management is a key facet of any successful business. In fact, the process begins before a contact is actually a customer. In order to ensure that nothing falls through the cracks, it’s important to find and secure CRM software that makes the process of managing contacts as simple as possible. Here are four core features that must be part of that software package.
Easy Contact Management
Every contact in the database includes quite a bit of information. It’s not just first and last names, company names, physical addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers. There also needs to be information like job titles, notes on upcoming important dates in the life of the contact, and several other key bits of information.
The software you choose must make it easy to access any of that data with no more than a few keystrokes. When you want to focus on contacts related to a specific company, sorting the data in that manner should be easy. In like manner, if you need to focus on contacts who are located in a specific geographical area, that should be easy too. Make sure there are multiple ways to sort data and you’ll find the software makes your work a lot easier.
Simple Integration With Your Email Software
Email campaigns are a common approach to staying contact with leads, prospects, and customers. When there’s an announcement related to a new product or even the need to reach out and extend holiday wishes, email is a great way to go. You can streamline the process by having software that will integrate with your email setup without any issues.
This makes it all the easier to create a template for the mailing, then draw information from the database to personalize and send it out to whatever group you choose. A task that would have once taken hours to complete can now be done in minutes. Think of how this allows you to spend more time finishing other tasks.
Scheduling and Tracking Contact Interactions
There’s always the need to keep up with when it’s time to make another contact with someone on your list. Perhaps you’ve promised to get back with key information by a certain date. Maybe you want to call and make sure something sent through the post was received. It may be time to ask the questions that move a prospect to the status of a customer. Whatever the case, you need CRM software that doesn’t allow you to forget when to make those followup contacts.
Think of how nice it would be to have software that would provide you with a list of all contacts that must be made the following business day. You literally have an agenda of essential items that will provide structure for your work day. Since the list can include everything from attempting to close a sale to wishing a valued customer a happy birthday, nothing will be overlooked.
Effortless Generation of Custom Reports
Reports are a reality of business life. They may be used to share data in a meeting, or possibly a way to provide evidence of productivity. At times, they may be needed to remap a strategy with a prospect who has not yet decided to make the leap to a customer. For this reason, the ability to generate custom reports is a must.
Many software packages come with several report formats included. That’s great, but what if you need to add information. If customization is possible, you can adapt one of those formats and save it for future use. Think of how that would prove helpful in a number of scenarios.
There are other features that you may want included. Take advantage of any introductory or special offers and run the software through the paces. If it provides everything you want, it’s the right solution for your business.
