You’ve probably heard the saying, “It’s who you know, not what you know.” Typically, advisors dispense this bit of wisdom to professionals seeking career success. However, the idea that relationships matter more than industry-specific skills and knowledge can also apply to businesses. Even if you have the best support team in your sector and the latest and greatest products, you’ll flounder if you don’t nurture strong connections with your customers.
Many business leaders who want to build long-term relationships and earn clients’ loyalty turn to customer relationship management (CRM) software. The right CRM platform can improve interactions with current and prospective clients in addition to containing costs, enhancing the customer experience (CX), facilitating collaboration between sales and marketing, and offering unprecedented levels of insight into customers’ behavior, among other benefits.
As a result, CRM software has enjoyed considerable popularity. More than 91 percent of companies with more than 10 employees rely on CRM systems, and the global customer relationship management market size was $52.4 billion as of 2021, according to Grand View Research.
However, CRM software can also end up slowing your company down and costing you a significant amount of money if you don’t implement it strategically and select an offering that aligns with your requirements and objectives.
Any number of common missteps could slow down or even derail the CRM deployment and adoption process and decrease your return on investment. If you’re in the market for customer relationship management software, proceed with caution and be sure to avoid the following CRM mistakes.
1. Not considering your end users’ needs and preferences.
One survey found that 30 percent of professionals said one of the most significant issues with their CRM upgrade or deployment was a failure to take users’ judgment into account during the solution selection process, according to KPMG. Implementation and end user adoption will go smoother if you involve the people who will utilize the CRM technology and make it clear that you value their opinions.
2. Failing to provide adequate training.
If your team members don’t know how to use the new CRM software, adoption rates will lag, and your implementation could be a flop. You should host training sessions and encourage your staff members to spend time exploring the platform on their own, according to the CRM Solutions Review article “11 Common CRM Mistakes to Avoid During Setup and Deployment.”
3. Choosing a CRM that doesn’t integrate with your other apps.
Selecting customer relationship management software that integrates with the rest of your essential business tools (such as your Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) platform) is an absolute must if you want to achieve maximum efficiency and productivity, according to CRM Solutions Review.
4. Lacking a clear strategy.
Everyone in your organization should know your goals and reasons for undertaking the CRM project. Executives and managers should communicate clearly and define expectations from the beginning, according to the Zoho CRM blog entry “5 Pitfalls to Avoid During CRM Implementation.”
Overall, successful CRM implementations require a thoughtful and strategic approach. If you’d like to learn more about choosing the right CRM platform and maximizing your ROI, our trusted advisors would be happy to help you. We have connections with leading CRM suppliers and can leverage in-depth knowledge and advanced tools to produce objective comparison matrices showing the pros and cons of all your options.
Take the first step toward better customer relationship management today by calling 877-599-3999 or emailing sales@stratospherenetworks.com.
