Customer Journey in a CRM System

How can CRM mean more than sales when it’s sales that keep your business alive and kicking? Am I out of my mind when I say this? Well, actually, no. 

So, then what am I saying? Let’s explore the reason behind my previous sentence.

It has to do with the complete customer journey in CRM software, from beginning to end for all customer touchpoints and stages. In this way, we can improve the customer experience, their interaction with our brand, and provide solutions for customer expectations.

As much as sales are vital, and the pillars which keep the business up, they seem pointless without someone to sell to. This is why CRM systems nowadays focus on customers and try to understand the customer journey. 

CRM is the acronym for Customer Relationship Management. It is basically software to help you manage your relationships with your potential and existing customers. Why is this important? 

Because customers are the backbone of your business and without them, you basically have no one to sell to. Therefore, it is naturally a good idea to get to know and build a good rapport with your customers. 

Through the process of communication in a sales cycle, the salesperson is required to be on top of everything such as tracking leads, knowing customer pain points, and customer interactions which are crucial for finally closing the sale. In the meantime, either your customer list grows or the information relating to them does. 

Either way, soon you have an abundance of information to keep track of, which becomes impossible with spreadsheets and sticky notes. Imagine losing the contact information of a very important customer! Unless you implement a CRM system.

CRM is the foundation for greater things in your business, not just sales. It can be utilized to boost your business in many areas.  The great news is that CRM usage is not limited to large corporations, small businesses also benefit from them.

To us, CRM is everything around customers, and improving the customer journey is vital in a good CRM implementation. Let's have a look at what we can have around customers for creating a satisfying customer journey:

CRM for Leads and Marketing:

A CRM system integrated with the marketing cloud will enable you to automate your email marketing campaigns to the leads your CRM system has collected. Leads can be collected from your website by tracking daily visitors once they have shared their contact details. You will have a 360 view of updated information on your leads, potential and existing customers. 

CRM software can also help salespeople identify opportunities not limited to generating new customers. With up-to-date information on existing customer history and interactions, salespeople have the data they need to analyze customer behaviors and be able to create the right set of circumstances to build rapport, identify their customer’s needs, personalize their buying journey, and even determine the right time to up-sell and cross-sell. 

We all know retaining customers is much cheaper than customer acquisition, therefore customer retention is crucial to driving growth. 

The right CRM solution will offer businesses the data they need not only to boost but also to minimize the cost of sales.

CRM for Sales cycles:

Streamline your entire sales process. Set up your sales cycle stages and see at a glance where you’re at in regard to reaching your goals and targets. Managers can forecast and track targets for products or services you are selling and get accurate real-time reports, send quotations, orders, and more. All this is possible with CloudOffix Sales Cloud.

This will save your sales teams a great deal of valuable time which they can spend on what they do best – sell.

CRM for Projects:

Use CloudOffix Project Cloud to set your project tasks, milestones, assign the appropriate staff according to their relevance. Collaborate with your staff to be more efficient and productive in achieving goals. Analyze and report using various graphs and reports. Manage timesheets so you know how much time was spent on each task and project when the time comes for getting paid.

CRM for Invoicing:

Turn your orders into invoices easily with the click of a button. Follow up on payments with automated reminders. Accept payments online through ready-to-use payment gateways.

And if you’re in a country that supports E-invoicing and E-archiving, CloudOffix Invoicing Cloud supports this function.

Get live statistics regarding your receivables with reporting and analysis.

CRM for HR: 

Your sales staff now have so much time on their hands to spend on selling, that you need to hire more staff to keep up. Use your CRM of course! Collect CVs, respond, make appointments, and much more with CloudOffix HR Cloud.

CRM for Customer Support:

CRMs bring together your customers' details, your company’s offerings, your sales, contacts, calendar, and your interaction with your customers and staff through the whole customer journey. In short, they save all customer data history ready for you to utilize.

With all that valuable customer information, you have great power. And with a good CRM, you have great capacity. Since responsibility walks hand in hand with capacity and power, you now have the responsibility to deliver an amazing experience to your customers through CloudOffix Helpdesk Cloud with the support they deserve.

By knowing what they have bought, and how they interacted with your company, you’re always on the same page as your customers. That is what makes your customers' experience with your business unique and personal. In turn, it builds trust and results in perfect customer feedback.

Overall, our exploration into why CRM is more than just sales shows that they offer so much more – and that I’m not out of my mind to say it. As well as Sales Cloud, CloudOffix CX 360 offers everything around customers such as marketing cloud, e-commerce cloud, project cloud, invoicing cloud, HR cloud, Helpdesk cloud and so much more. In short, it offers you a 360-degree customer view from beginning to end, giving you many opportunities to seize the day.

With the right CRM, don’t underestimate the potential growing power that your business can have. 

Perhaps you’ve tried many CRM systems and haven’t been satisfied. Try CloudOffix. Our first and fully customizable CRM system in the cloud.