Three Ways Businesses Can Smooth the Customer Journey with CRM

As part of Solutions Review’s Contributed Content Series—a collection of contributed columns written by industry experts in maturing software categories—Joe Greenspan, the VP of Commercial Operations at Act!, outlines three ways CRM can help businesses streamline the customer journey.

The evolving economic landscape compels smart businesses to get closer to their customers and to outshine their competitors by out-servicing them. Regardless of the industry, providing a meaningful, memorable (and consistent) customer experience is one of the most critical factors in ensuring long-term success. In fact, research from PwC revealed that 73 percent of customers say their experiences directly influenced their purchasing decisions. 

Developing and delivering world-class customer experience begins with delving into needs and priorities to unearth opportunities: 

• What topic areas are driving genuine interest in prospects and customers?  
• What communication tactics drive measurable engagement? 
• What tools/processes exist to meet these needs effectively? 

Technology solutions like CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software can help to centralize data, customize outreach, and craft experiences. Meet customers where they are to forge stronger relationships. Automate personalized campaigns to ‘speak to every client’ at scale and ensure that every touchpoint is targeted. Here are three specific ways a CRM platform improves the customer journey, fosters greater loyalty, and yields actual returns.

Leverage Technology 

Whether your business is just starting out and needs to mount prospecting campaigns to attract new business or is swamped with multitudes of client activities to juggle, centralizing, organizing, and categorizing customers is a critical function.  

Simple, affordable technology allows businesses to benefit from modern marketing tools like landing pages, automated email campaigns, and workflows. Leveraging this framework, a company can simplify prospect approach, selling activities, and client follow-ups—no more losing contact data, missing opportunities, or losing sleep.    

Take the next step and start to segment leads to add context to their targeting, ensuring relevant information is sent to the right prospects at the right time. Customers can be segmented into different groups based on demographics, purchase history, and customer lifecycle to drive highly personalized email campaigns that elevate the customer experience, engendering brand affinity and ultimately unearthing upsell opportunities to increase CLTV and revenue.  

Keep Everything Straight 

Not every organization enjoys excellent data integrity, with every customer record complete and correct, shared but secured. For most of us, data doesn’t live in one place, forcing several stops in any attempt to get the whole story. For older companies, data might be recorded in several disparate (and outdated) systems or, worse, stored in file folders and Post-it(™) notes. CRM brings data organization to every organization. When integrated with customer records, customer interactions provide real-time reporting and long-term trend analysis. Learn when clients might be leaving by examining the ten lost clients; leverage business data to make better decisions.  

By integrating other business systems into a CRM solution, brands can save valuable time and enable more productive workflows. For example, some common small business integrations include platforms like QuickBooks and DocuSign. Consolidating these workflows ensures vital information flows seamlessly, saves time, and informs action. 

​​​Réal Thibault, a hairdresser, and stylist, found a more personalized approach to improve customer service with his CRM platform. For years, he recorded customer details by hand, either on paper or in books, until he decided to computerize his business to optimize his customer experience. As a result, he can work more efficiently and integrate his other applications so his business “appears bigger than it is.” 

Streamline the Customer Journey 

Building a better on-ramp for interested prospects to become lifelong customers is the first job of any business seeking growth. Ironing out any obstacles along that entire customer journey provides a more impactful customer experience and speeds up time to revenue. From the first contact point, every prospect needs to be tracked.   CRM users can monitor these engagements across various channels, including every human interaction. This provides a holistic view of the buyer journey, enabling businesses to maximize every touch point, optimize internal workflows to use resources best, and nurture more prospects. 

Selecting the right CRM platform for your business is critical to maximizing the potential this technology can bring. For example, startups might prioritize an affordable platform that can grow with them, while larger organizations might prize broad functionality or deep integrations with other systems. Each business should seek solutions that match their needs but without a bevy of irrelevant features.

The most impactful CRM solutions are customized to save time, boost productivity, and reduce costs. CRM solutions can bring affordability, scalability, and flexibility to any business with customers and can be leveraged to smooth the customer journey for more prospects to become customers. Set your business apart from competitors using canned responses and cookie-cutter templates by using personalized automation to influence more prospects and win more business.