Written By | allonline365

If you don’t understand CRM and why you need it – this is for you

Whether your business is in the industry of food distribution, retail, construction, NPO, or you have multiple sales agents making their way through a long list of calls each day – Customer Relationship Management (CRM) should be one of your focus areas.

What is CRM?

Customer relationship management is a data-driven software solution that improves how you interact and do business with your customers. CRM systems help you manage and maintain customer relationships, track leads, marketing, pipeline, and deliver actionable data.

Why Implement a CRM Solution?

CRM solutions increase your profitability by streamlining administrative processes in your sales, marketing, and service divisions, and letting you focus on building and maintaining the customer relationships that matter. A strong CRM solution is a multifaceted platform where everything crucial to developing, improving, and retaining your customer relationships is stored. Without the support of an integrated CRM solution, you may miss growth opportunities and lose revenue because you’re not optimizing your operating processes or making the most of your customer relationships or sales leads.

Imagine misplacing customer contact information, only to learn that your delay resulted in losing a client to a competitor. Or, picture your top two salespeople pursuing the same prospect, resulting in an annoyed potential customer and some unfriendly, in-house competition. Without a centralized and automated CRM system, your people can lose track of customer interactions and miss business opportunities.

Why use Dynamics 365 for CRM?

With Dynamics 365 Sales you get a flexible solution that’s customizable to suit your business requirements. Choose a stand-alone application to meet the needs of a specific line of business, or use multiple CRM tools that work together as a powerful integrated solution. Here are some of the integrated tools you can expect to enjoy.

1.  Marketing: Improve your customers’ journey

Generate multichannel marketing campaigns, nurture sales-ready leads, and align your sales and marketing teams with planning and tracking tools that integrate with your existing apps and services.

Foster leads

• Run multichannel campaigns featuring email marketing, web content, and events.
• Target matched audiences based on LinkedIn interactions using Dynamics 365 Connector for LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms.
• Personalize the buyer experience by customizing customer journeys on user engagement.

Make better decisions

• Gain Insights into your brand reputation and market through real-time data analysis.
• Prioritize leads using multiple scoring models.
• Build custom dashboards to analyze the data that matters the most to your business.

Adapt quickly

• Automate processes for better service engagement experiences.
• Use artificial intelligence (AI) to guide your business decisions and drive innovation.
• Rely on the Microsoft cloud platform to reduce operating costs and simplify deployment across your infrastructure.

2.  Sales: Empower sellers to drive personal engagement with customers

Go beyond sales force automation to better understand customer needs, engage more effectively, and win more deals. Sell smarter with embedded insights, foster relationships, boost productivity, accelerate sales performance, and innovate with a modern and adaptable platform. Use AI capabilities to track customer relationships and automate sales execution with contextual prompts that drive sales strategy.

Grow business

• Improve win rate with a dynamic, event-driven sales process.
• Build pipeline with high-quality leads and prospects from a variety of sources.
• Measure the past and identify leading indicators for the future.

Stay focused

• Find the right prospects and customers.
• Always know the next best action to move relationships forward.
• Build a high-performing sales team.

Win faster

• Engage and collaborate around strategic deals.
• Align with the buyer’s journey to deliver personalized engagement.
• Work anytime, anywhere.

Customer Service: Effortless service through any channel

Deliver guided, intelligent service and support on any channel with a unique ability to work with your existing systems. Empower customers and agents with the tools they need to ensure quick and accurate resolution, every time.

Improve engagement

• Let customers connect quickly and easily through multi-channel service options.
• Use the AI of service bots to increase service availability and free your agents for more high-value interactions.
• Resolve issues quickly using data analysis and predictive care.

Personalize your service 

• Deliver value with every interaction with a complete customer view.
• Guide agents’ actions toward optimal outcomes using intelligent automation.
• Create upsell or cross-sell opportunities using contextual customer data.

Streamline your customer service

• Improve service based on survey feedback, discussion forums, and social listening.
• Onboard new agents quickly and with in-app learning options.
• Optimize your service staff by allocating resources based on service trends that you can monitor in real-time.

Field Service: Empower your agents to create a better customer experience

Streamline scheduling, inventory management, and on-site efficiency. Offer quick and transparent communications and tracking functionalities to keep customers connected to your field agents.

Improve operational efficiency

• Use the Internet of Things (IoT) to detect and solve problems faster.
• Reduce costs using predictive maintenance.
• Automate work orders, scheduling, and dispatching.

Empower field agents

• Boost on-site efficiency by providing technicians with mobile access to home office data.
• Understand customer preferences and history to deliver more personalized service.
• Enable technicians to work hands-free by using innovative technology like mixed reality headsets.

Build trust

• Provide customers with real-time technician location tracking and appointment reminders.
• Share quotes, contracts, and scheduling information quickly and easily.
• Let customers self-schedule appointments and monitor service with a customer portal.

Project Service Automation: Improve project profitability with integrated planning tools and analytics

Empower your employees to anticipate resource demand and work together with collaborative tools that are easy to tailor to your business.

Improve project management

• Visualize costs and revenue using robust project planning capabilities and intuitive dashboards.
• Anticipate resource demands and forecast project profitability.
• Build customer trust using a customer-centric service delivery model.

Optimize resources

• Make the most out of billable resources using real-time dashboards to measure utilization.
• Improve skill-based assignments with a unified scheduling engine.
• Empower service professionals to apply directly to relevant projects.

Increase productivity 

• Foster collaboration across teams by integrating with Office 365 applications.
• Simplify the contracts process and collaborate seamlessly with customers through a secure portal.
• Submit, process, and approve time and expenses anytime, anywhere for faster customer billing.

CRM can cater to all industries and can be tailored to suit your business needs. Contact allonline365 today and let us guide you on the correct tools to use for your business. Customers are the heart of your business, make sure you are doing everything to make your business grow. Call  +27 (21) 205 3650 or email  info@allonline365.com.

Resources: Microsoft