Acticsim

What are the benefits of CRM for an IT company?

1️⃣ Better Customer Insights

🙌🏻 CRM helps IT companies better understand their customers by collecting and analysing customer data from multiple channels. This information can be used to tailor services to meet the needs of specific customers, track customer behaviour and preferences, and personalise the overall customer experience.

2️⃣ Increased Efficiency

👉🏻 CRM systems streamline workflows by automating repetitive tasks such as data entry, appointment scheduling, and follow-up emails. Employees can focus on more critical tasks and projects by reducing manual processes and increasing productivity and efficiency.

3️⃣ Enhanced Collaboration

🙌🏻 CRM systems enable collaboration across departments, teams, and projects, creating a more connected and cohesive working environment.

4️⃣ Improved Customer Support

👉🏻 With CRM, IT companies can provide better customer support by quickly accessing customer data and history. It enables support agents to resolve issues faster, leading to higher customer satisfaction rates and improved retention.

5️⃣ Improved Marketing Campaigns

🙌🏻 CRM systems allow IT companies to create targeted marketing campaigns by analysing customer data and identifying trends and patterns. It enables them to create more personalised and relevant marketing campaigns, leading to higher engagement rates and increased revenue.

5 advantages of Acticsim CRM solution

1️⃣ Intuitive logic

💬 The simplicity of use is the primary advantage of Acticsim. It is intuitively clear from installation to end use.

2️⃣ Integration

📈 Acticsim is easy to integrate with any other business system or website. Just embed a piece of code into your website to get everything synchronised. The system can also be connected to several websites simultaneously.

3️⃣ No training required

💬 With Acticsim, the entire sales department team can be instantly involved in the process due to the simplicity of the logic of system use - no time for training is required. Install and optimise your business processes.

4️⃣ Convenient plans

📈 We have developed three plans that best fit the needs of specific businesses. There is also an opportunity to build your own plan with custom solutions that Acticsim will optimise for your business.

5️⃣ Customisation

💬 The system is simply built and allows you to customise it to the needs of any business and a specific sales department. It contains hundreds of ready-made extensions already available to customise the CRM system for your needs, even without programming skills.

3 easy rules for successful use of CRM

1️⃣ All business decisions are made only based on data from CRM.

👉🏻 It is the foundation of the basics. Otherwise, nothing will work. When the company stops using this information, its quality automatically declines.

2️⃣ CRM should be a manager’s assistant.

👉🏻 It means that all the functionality and processes within the system are aimed at ensuring that the employee performs his tasks more efficiently.

3️⃣ Training, involvement and mentoring.

🙌🏻 Employees need to be prepared to work efficiently with CRM. Employees need to go through some sort of training, such as corporate courses, where they will understand how to use the system. You can also distribute instructions and some other materials at the implementation stage.

Why do CRM systems fail?

1️⃣ The goals and objectives of the project are not formed

👥 When there are no clear goals and objectives for the project, there are no criteria by which it will be possible to evaluate the result.

🏃🏻 As a result, the situation may turn out to be deplorable, to the extent that the project executor will formally fulfil the requirements and leave gracefully.

👥 For CRM to work to help achieve your goals, the participation of many people and some time is required. Change is needed within the company itself.

2️⃣ No company leader support

🏃🏻 Leadership is an integral part of a successful project. Ideally, it is the first person in the company who performs the project manager role.

👥 When a leader does not consider the implementation of CRM necessary, every employee feels it. In this case, no one will take the project seriously, and it will most likely fail.

3️⃣ Chose the wrong CRM system

🏃🏻 Sometimes, there are clear goals and performance criteria, but the customer still chooses the wrong system.

👥 For example, a top manager responsible for a project is guided by the opinions of colleagues and partners or the “beauty” of the interface instead of the company’s needs.

🏃🏻 A common mistake is buying a less expensive program with limited functionality or, conversely, an overpriced version with excessive functionality. The lack of functions and their excess is equally undesirable.

About market research and CRM

Proper market research helps companies to get accurate feedback on their performance, and different customer opinions help them to understand what customers feel about them.

So, when could market research give valuable feedback?

💬 Getting helpful information for future market growth.

☎️ Assessing the cost sensitivity of customers.

💬 Finding new features of products that can attract customers and knowing what advantages and benefits they could provide.

☎️ Identifying the main areas in which the company is leading the competitors and areas in which they are lagging behind them.

💬 Determining vital aspects for leveraging and weak aspects for making improvements to increase customer satisfaction level.

☎️ Identifying future perspectives.

💬 Assessing customer satisfaction with the company, specifically in performance, technology, quality, service, cost, and completion schedule.

☎️ Identifying market trends and reasons for these trends.

💬 Determining purchasing channels that the customers prefer.

How to use analytical CRM tools to solve common problems?

👉🏻 Problem: It is required to exclude the loss of a customer complaint.

🙌🏻 Solution: When a complaint about the quality of a product or service is received, the CRM system records the date of its receipt, the nature of the complaint, and the person responsible for its processing.

🌟 Suppose it is necessary to analyse the complaint of employees of various company departments. In that case, the responsible person can transfer the complaint to them for consideration using the CRM system.

👉🏻 Problem: A unified procedure for dealing with customer complaints is needed.

🙌🏻 Solution: in order to automate the analysis of the client’s complaint, a typical business process for the analysis of the complaint is launched, which regulates the procedure, responsible persons and terms of work on the complaint.

👉🏻 Problem: It is required to control the number of complaints, their status, and the timing of their analysis.

🌟 Solution: The manager can build a report at any time and see at what stage of the analysis any client complaint is or how many complaints were received for a certain time interval and their reasons.

How CRM changes your business

CRM is an integral part of any business. Apart from the evident advantages of organising customer data and systemising the approach to customer management, a good CRM provides many opportunities for analysis and further business improvement and optimisation.

1️⃣ Comprehensible format.

💬 It is essential for proper analytics. Properly organised data simplifies decision-making. CRM lets you access data points in easily understood and interpreted formats.

2️⃣ Leads identification and management.

🤳🏻 The CRM lets you trigger customised follow-up actions based on individual sales lead data. Such an approach optimises the time and effort of the sales team for response to every customer and rules our human factor.

3️⃣ Anticipation of customer needs.

💬 With data insights, you can easily predict the needs and sentiments of your customers. By analysing requests, answers, the mood, and the Voice of the Customer, you will indicate the points of optimisation and growth for your business.

4️⃣ Product and service improvement.

🤳🏻 Collecting customer feedback, you can see what they lack to be happier with your product. Unlike surveys, the CRM collects the data for the entire period and provides better and more accurate insights.

5️⃣ Better employee discipline.

💬 With CRM, the employees are obliged to take a more responsible approach to customer data collection. CRM brings more discipline to the workflow.

Top 5 features to look at in a CRM solution.

☎️ CRM does not just organise customer contacts. A proper set of features turns the system into a powerful marketing and sales optimising tool. It provides valuable insights into customers’ needs, allows for planning sales, and maintains customer loyalty.

There are five must-have features of a functional CRM 👇🏻

1️⃣ Workflow automation.

📞 A CRM can come with automation features such as directing a customer application, an automatic response, a notification in case of no response, etc.

2️⃣ Customisation.

☎️ Customisation helps set the CRM up to the business’s needs and optimises costs allowing to pay only for the features necessary for the team. Advanced customisation means that certain features can be set to operate for the needs of the managers.

3️⃣ Third-party integration.

📞 Connecting a CRM with the solutions already in use in your business will save you much time and effort. It will also eliminate manual data transfer and reduce the risk of human error.

4️⃣ Employee tracking.

☎️ Advanced CRM solutions offer employee activity and performance tracking as hours, tasks, meetings, sales numbers, goals, and other items.

📞 For supervisors, the CRM provides dashboards that let them view employee performance, goals, and progress.

5️⃣ Lead management.

☎️ This feature allows tracking of the customers’ actions across the sales funnel. The feature gives you insights into the sales cycle, lead generation, and the aspects requiring improvement.

5 mistakes in using CRM

1️⃣ Collecting useless data.

👥 CRM is a flexible tool that can collect any data about customers. It is all about setting the system. However, not all data is valuable for business. Useless data adds variables to the analysis and can misrepresent the results.

🙌🏻 The best way to avoid information overload is to review what data matters for the business thoroughly. By keeping only necessary information, you will also keep your employees focused.

2️⃣ Collecting incomplete data.

👥 Leaving some fields empty turns the data into a useless asset. Missing information decreases marketing potential and leads to spending more time searching for a necessary customer entry. As a result, the efficacy of crucial marketing tools gets reduced.

3️⃣ Not using collected data.

🙌🏻 Many of our customers never use the complete data set that the CRM can collect. Moreover, some companies do not use the data at all. They do not analyse data, do not make data-driven decisions, and do not use the data for successful marketing.

👥 The Acticism CRM offers an inbuilt advanced analytical tool that automates data processing and offers valuable insights that help better understand customer needs, estimate the efficacy of marketing, and optimise the strategy.

4️⃣ Not integrating CRM with other sources of data.

🙌🏻 A CRM can become a centralised hub of customer data. However, most companies use CRM separately from other sources of user information. Without integration, you will have separate data clusters that are hard to analyse and draw results.

👥 Neglecting the integration leads to incomplete data compromising the team performance, the quality of service, and the marketing efforts.

5️⃣ Lack of employee training.

🙌🏻 The success of CRM integration depends on the quality of staff training and the level of their skills in CRM usage. If the employees do not know how to use the key and additional features, the business will not benefit from the integration.

👥 The absence of knowledge, skills and relevant training result in a frustrating experience. Without proper training, employees can slip back to the tried ways of collecting and managing data.

Why the lack of a CRM system for sales can lead to losses

☎️ Sales managers and business owners cannot and should not control their employees every step of the way. Salespeople get valuable information about customers during phone calls, meetings and online presentations.

🙌🏻 Unfortunately, this data can be too fragmented: it is stored in handwritten notes, computer memory, or only in salespeople's heads.

☎️ In addition, customers can interact through a wide range of platforms, including phone, email or social media. In the flow of information, solving the problem can be significantly prolonged, and many details can be missed, which, in turn, can cause dissatisfaction among the performer.

🙌🏻 Managers lose track of what their teams are doing and promptly fail to provide customer support. It is difficult to determine who should take responsibility for the situation. Therefore, not only do sales suffer from the lack of CRM, but also the quality of customer service.

☎️ Even if the team carefully collects all the data, the person using it may have difficulty finding and understanding it. And things can be much easier when you rely on a system that provides centralised management and customer relationship support.

What is social CRM?

Social CRM is one of the most significant trends in the development of CRM technologies, aimed at integrating CRM into social networks and using Social Software elements in CRM.

Social CRM is based on three ideas: 👇🏻

📞 Many company clients constantly communicate on the Internet, discuss products, advise each other, ask questions, and share ideas. Social CRM allows you to control this process and intervene when necessary. It is an excellent opportunity to increase sales and loyalty and get feedback and new ideas.

⚖️ Having up-to-date information about interesting online conversations, for example, on Twitter or Facebook, a company employee can intervene quickly and answer a potential client’s question, causing delight with such a quick response.

📞 An integral part of any social CRM system should be its client community or portal where clients can communicate with each other and company employees. All discussions on this portal are part of the customer relationship history.

⚖️ In addition, through this portal, customers should have access to information stored in the CRM system - first of all, their orders, knowledge base, helpdesk and information about the company and its employees.

📞 The third idea is to have social tools in CRM for the company’s employees. If the CRM system works as an internal social network, valuable customer information is less likely to be lost.

What should mobile CRM have?

By itself, the class of mobile CRM is a familiar product in the software market. This niche has been around for almost a dozen years and is actively developing. Today, nearly all well-known CRM system vendors offer businesses mobile versions of their flagship products.

So, any mobile CRM should have the following: 👇🏻

1️⃣ Have a UI/UX interface optimised for mobile devices.

☎️ Mobile CRM should not just copy the functions available on the desktop to a mobile device but also have an intuitive user interface and match the user's skills to work on such a device.

2️⃣ Support a wide variety of mobile devices.

☎️ It is not always possible for a company to issue smartphones of the same type to its employees. Often, personal mobile devices are used for work purposes. Mobile CRM should allow installation of the client part on a wide range of Android and iOS smartphones with different OS versions.

3️⃣ Maintain online teamwork.

☎️ Any CRM for mobile devices should support convenient teamwork. Management must see employees' geolocation, workload, and current activity and coordinate the team's efforts in fieldwork conditions. All this helps to build reports on employees, customers, the level of solvency in a given area, etc.

4️⃣ Providing mobile access to a customer database.

☎️ Mobile CRM should have real-time access to client cards, which collect information about the status of clients in a given area and the results of recent contacts with them. A helpful feature is caching previously requested cards and other data in the application in case there is no Internet in this location.