Use Your CRM System to Assess Business Performance

Businesses often think of their CRM systems as “marketing only”, and by marketing, they mean the typical push-marketing scenario: pushing out emails or messages to clients in the hopes of making a sale.

But did you know that you can also use your CRM system as part of a performance assessment metric? Your CRM system can be used to gather and organize valuable customer feedback with an eye towards improving service. Making improvements to your company’s service quality, time or value enhances retention and reduces marketing costs while increasing profitability. It’s often an overlooked benefit of a CRM system.

With these three tips, you can begin using your CRM system to understand customer perceptions of your current business performance and take steps to improve it.

1. Tip 1: Capture Customer Feedback

Every customer communication is an opportunity to capture valuable feedback. Create a simple, short, and easy to use survey. Include the link in your outbound CRM communications to resolve problems, close call tickets, and finish customer returns. A link to the survey within the email makes it easy for the customer to respond.

The key to successfully using surveys in your CRM is to keep the survey itself short and sweet. If it is too long or detailed, customers will skip it. Too short, and you won’t get the valuable feedback you need to improve your business processes, services and products. A happy mean is usually found within 5 to 10 questions.

1. Tip 2: Use CRM Dashboards to Review Service Metrics
   
   Your CRM system dashboard reports on more than marketing campaigns. It can also provide you with useful insights into service issues and problems. Use the data derived from your dashboards to assess how quickly service problems are resolved. What can you do to shorten waiting times and improve service?
   
   It is also a good idea to review the reasons behind complaints and returns. Too many returns due to wrong items shipped may indicate problems in your warehouse system or order fulfillment areas. Consistent problems can be spotted and fixed more easily when you use your system to track them.
   
   
2. Tip 3: Build an Incentive Plan
   
   You can also use the data from your CRM system to create an incentive plan that rewards performance, productivity, and customer satisfaction. These are the three elements that when taken together build a healthy organization. Look for opportunities to reward specific metrics as tracked by your system. These may be the number of cases closed, lower complaint volume, or similar metrics that indicate customer satisfaction.
   

CRM: It’s About Relationships

Although the term CRM system has come to be synonymous with marketing, don’t leave off the “C” and “R” in CRM. Relationships are built upon trust, and service quality is an important way to build trust. The more you can improve service, the better your business will be.

Blog: How to Develop a CRM Strategy

BAASS offers insight, support, and information to companies seeking CRM systems. We can help you choose from among many good CRM systems to find the right fit for your needs. For more information, visit our CRM page. Contact us or call 1-888-650-5544.

Read about how Flags Unlimited leverages their CRM!