Customer Relationship Management (CRM) can greatly benefit an organization if it is used properly.

In this article we will list a number of benefits that CRM workflow can help bring to your organization.

CRM is now becoming the main focus of many organizations who are beginning to realize that it is much cheaper to keep a current customer and make sure that they are satisfied rather than continuously burning through customers and not focusing on efficient customer service.

One of the most under utilized (and most powerful) capabilities or any CRM system is workflow that is correctly implemented.

When workflow is properly implemented it changes your CRM from being a passive glorified rolodex into a proactive revenue generator that automates your business's best practices..

A good example of workflow is a lead nurturing campaign. Usually when a salesperson works with a prospect that is not going to be making a purchase for at least 3 to 6 months the salesperson makes that prospect a very low priority even if that is not really their intention. When this happens the prospective buyer often goes elsewhere when they are ready to make a purchase.

What if your CRM were able to send a pre-written set of communications to the prospect automatically over say the next year with the goal of the communications being to educate and move that person along in the sales cycle without requiring any direct involvement by the salesperson?

What would happen is that you would have more prospects think of your organization when they are ready to buy and studies have shown that at least 55% of prospects will make a purchase in the next 12 to 18 months.

What if you automated exactly how you wanted to treat your new clients during the first 90 days and automated the steps you were confident that they would all be done with EVERY new client?

Workflow can also be used in the customer service department to automate any open customer service incidents that have not been resolved in say 2 or 3 days.

All of this and much more is possible through the use of workflow.

The results of workflow can be increased revenue through a better follow up of leads that are not ready to buy today, a better experience for new clients and a better experience for those clients who have customer service issues therby reducing customer attrition rate with the system doing a lot of the work automatically.

CRM workflow on this level gives you a transparent view into all these processes so you can easily see any recurring patterns in your business that are causing your organization not to run as efficiently as it should..

CRM workflow can also give you extensive data reporting on your customer inquiries. For example, if there is a specific question that your customer service team repeatedly has to answer, you can cut down on your CSR cost by implementing a FAQ sheet with your product.

Customer service data reporting will also help you improve on your product by being able to provide data on any complaints. Understanding customer inquiries and being able to predict what issues you might have post-sale will also help you tailor and customize your customer service training in a more effective way. Uncovering small problems in your business can help you make decisions that can have immediate impact on the profitability in your company.

Customer relationship management software can also automate administrative tasks such as sending e-mails and status notifications. It is very important that you automate as many processes in your business as you possibly can in order to improve the productivity and profitability of your organization.

Taking the time to implement CRM work in this area will prove to be a very strategic decision.

Need help automating your best business practices into CRM workflow? We can help, for more information give us a call at 858-541-1820 or by email at info@rbdata.com