Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software has grown substantially in popularity in recent years. Its comprehensive features and ability to connect businesses with consumers make it a solid investment.
While the long-term results are often profound, the first phases of integration can come with difficulties. Here are five ways to streamline the situation and quickly put CRM software to use.
1. Create an integration team
Acknowledging that installation and getting everything up and running will take time should prevent you from getting behind. It’s common to experience some issues and glitches along the way, so having a team of capable individuals well prepared should minimize complications.
If possible, you should have a small team work solely on installation and integration and assign others cover their duties for the time being. This should reduce the stress on everyone involved and help your business return to normal operations ASAP. Whether your integrating a sales-based CRM or an ecommerce CRM, allocating team resources is the first, and is also one of the most important, steps you can take towards successful adoption.
2. Have tech support on standby
Most quality CRM providers will provide their clients with a knowledgeable support staff while implementing software. Make sure you can conveniently contact whomever you need via telephone, online chat, or email, and that should defuse minor problems before they escalate.
In some cases, vendors will even send out a company representative to your business for a fee. If you have the money for direct support, it’s really beneficial.
3. Import whatever you can
Since moving customer data to a new software platform manually is an arduous task, you should import as much as you can. You should also double-check the fields on your CRM software to ensure that everything appears as it should. Otherwise, you could run into trouble if existing data gets altered.
4. Set up automatic updates
Like most kinds of software, there’s likely to be an ongoing series of updates that are required to maintain optimal functioning. Going ahead and scheduling automatic updates from the beginning will take the burden off you later so you can focus on more important things. It will also ensure that your software stays current and is less prone to technical errors.
5. Keep testing
Even if everything appears to be working correctly, it’s smart to perform ongoing testing for at least a few weeks after installation. A mortgage rate company would want to check its client list to make sure that contact information is correctly in place. It would also want to check on banking and financial data to ensure that nothing has become skewed.
