4 Ways CRM Software for Sales Increase Revenues

With the continual introduction of competitors into the market, it is imperative to stay ahead with a large base of loyal customers and their repeat purchases. CRM is a cardinal pivot for all activities associated with sales in a firm such as automated lead conversions, sales quotas, opportunity pipeline and customer communications. Handling these activities should serve as the top priority for increasing sales and result in a highly profitable company. Now the question arises as to how a CRM solution can assist your business in directly increasing revenue.

CRM software plays a key role in analyzing customers’ purchasing patterns, inquiries and response to various kinds of marketing campaigns, which fine-tunes the way you interact with them to deliver better services and leverage revenues.

1. Offers, Leads and Opportunities

The data derived from a CRM software endows one to create targeted offers that consider each customer’s needs and preferences. This offer might be a special discount on a product that already exists or an introductory discount on a new product that suits the person’s requirements. Once finalized, an offer can be instantly converted to a lead along with all its pertinent details which are automatically populated for the new record through field mapping. CRM solutions facilitate speedy access to accounts, collating and sharing information and analyzing opportunities by following the history of activities like tasks, appointments, telephonic conversations, etc. This kind of precision brings an increase in the likelihood of a sale. Reviewing the outcome of various sales as well as marketing campaigns assists in identifying progressive factors and designing targeted campaigns to generate better results and thus generate higher revenues.

2. Product development and enhancements

Creation of new products is an intricate procedure, if firms dispatch products without taking into account the needs of customers, they stand a high chance of failure. Assessment of data in a CRM software enables users to diagnose trends, study product feedback and pinpoint advantages that address the needs of a larger base of customers. Incorporating this kind of information into the new product's strategy, leverages the probability of a successful launch and thus builds a durable stream for revenue. Reporting and analytics enable identifying popular/ unpopular products and features through close analysis of customers' social media posts, product feedback and purchase history.

3. Nurturing and valuing customers

An effective CRM solution is facilitated to compile all the activities connected to customers into a single window and automate communications with customers through dynamic mailing lists and auto-populated templates. This assists in nurturing existing and prospective customers in an effective manner with personalized marketing messages, automated multi-channel responses and special occassion greetings. This is done in accordance with the customers’ interests, activities as well as habits. By carrying out an analysis of customers’ purchasing trends through the CRM solution, it is easy to recognize the most frequently purchased products and accordingly stock up warehouses. The revenue contributed by each customer can be increased by boosting iterative purchases and accurately identifying cross selling products based on an understanding of customer's needs.

4. Sales efficiency

The role of CRM solutions in assisting the sales team to shoot up the revenue cannot be surpassed, as it works a long way in elevating productivity and efficiency. The CRM software has a centralized base for customer related data which assists managers and sales representatives to work collaboratively with an eye on Service Level Agreements to ensure a better experience at every customer touchpoint. Automation for assignment rules, escalations and conditional alerts ensures everyone is paying attention to their core activities to improve win rates.

Sales automation and effective lead management are heightenend with a successful CRM implementation through a hugely cost-effective increase in conversions, loyalty, advocacy, repeat buying and lower churn rates in the mid and long term.

Preventing Data Leaks from CRM Systems

CRM's Validation Widget response to user inputs

All CRM enhances organizational efficiency by efficiently collating diverse data and processes. While efficiency gains are important, a likely consequence of such organized data is 'data leak', leading to large customer churn and sometimes litigation. With an effective strategy for the security of customer information, businesses can confidently put more qualitative data about their customers on their CRM without fearing data leaks.

Compared to how data processing services were provided to business years ago, CRM technology is light years ahead today.  It used to be that programs ran on a centralized computer systems, usually in the same building.  A main frame or mini computer from which users had access through a computer screen and keyboard (called a terminal) was the mode of the day.  Distributed processing between desktop and laptop computers back to the main company over the world wide web was still in its infancy!

Looking at a typical CRM software
Today, computer systems and data networks operate freely, sharing information over the internet across the world.  Anybody that has a home computer or laptop or even a tablet and an internet connection can make a connection with virtually any other computer system on the internet via Web Portals and VPN (virtual private network) connections. Access speed and data security remains an issue for companies that are sharing data with business partners all over the globe.  Current CRM solutions, should provide the latest state-of-the-art secure data leak protection available today to prevent information from falling into the wrong hands.

Currently, CRM software is able to provide its many IT services to enhance customer experience management using the latest secure web application technology.   The .NET FRAMEWORK is a web applications environment that is utilized in many leading edge secure applications, most implemented CRM solutions inherit the features and facilities that enable data acquisition and manipulation through the most secure means available to this environment.  A web CRM solution's environment can be accessed simply by typing a URL (web address)  into any internet browser, making it extremely portable for any web server farm that is ASP.NET enabled.  Behind the interface, users see a web CRM software which has a secure encrypted Database channel at the core that feeds it.  This is significant because SQL (System Query Language) is a robust relational database environment that lends itself to secure encryption of data and fast input and output of desired data queries.  This state-of-the-art technology is the compatibity standard for web application development in today's world.  Even other front-end web application languages like PHP work with this secure database foundation.

Web CRM inherently allows for handling multiple simultaneous connections from virtually any location to facilitate business partner access to information because it is compatible with current Secure Portal technology.  Adherence to current data security standards is critical to maintaining excellent customer relations on every level.  Because a ASP.NET web app CRM solutions lends itself to operating through Secure Portal and VPN technology, all business partners can be assured of complete protection for all data communications from remote users back to the source company. So, not only is this kind of CRM tool for use on multiple levels of corporate operation, it is compatible with the sophisticated protection aspects in current VPN (Virtual Private Network) and secure web PORTAL access. Third party validation and secure certificate technology is fully implemented in CRM solutions.


I must emphasize that any CRM solution doesn’t have to recreate the wheel to provide it’s own unique and secure access to its services. This kind of CRM solution is seamlessly compatible with existing secure protocols such IPV6, SSH & VPN that already are in use over the world wide TCP/IP based internet. This is because 3rd party secure compatibility is the issue here and this kind of CRM solution inherently conforms to current security standards!  The current secure corporate WAN/INTRANET technology is an international standard that any ASP.NET/ Web App CRM solution fully conforms to.  It is important to understand that this kind of CRM application development will integrate seamlessly with existing secure technology so that the issue of data leaks and controlled secure access will be at par with the latest and greatest levels of security available on the global internet today. Specifically unauthorized access is screened through the use of multiple keyword validations (known as Advanced Data Leak Protection). 3 tier validation utilizing unique passwords along with specific personal keyword requirements known only to the individual user, along with specific provision of dated transactions must be provided for user access. Current CRM solutions can therefore be fully  PCI Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliant by virtue of ASP.NET standards to which they conform.

Ensuring data security
Effective data leak prevention allows companies to implement a holistic data security policy to limit the extent of data that users can view based on the level of their authority and function. It also allows the administrators to set security gateways to ensure access to specific information only on validation of some critical information. To illustrate, you can set data leak prevention in a financial CRM Software to ask for a valid phone number and date of birth from a customer before displaying/ sharing requested details. Only if the user enters the correct details, they can access the customer's complete record.

7 Ways CRM can Enhance Customer Experience at Call Centers

Today’s business scenario is a tough one. The term ‘Customer is King’ has attained a whole new dimension now, when, with the click of a button, they can share their experience on the web, with peers or on social media websites. This 24/7 connectivity coupled with customer awareness brings a double-edged sword for businesses. 'Customer experience' or 'Cx' is critical. In such a situation, two scenarios can be possible:

Scenario 1: positive Cx
With a consistently good experience through your call center and other channels, a customer may recommend your business to their peers and become a great brand ambassador. Their loyalty towards your organization may also be cemented, resulting in continuing business with you. This hence becomes a win-win situation, wherein you can not only retain the customer, but may even get additional business through their recommendations.
Scenario 2: negative Cx
This is a scary situation to be in. If it so happens that your customer’s experience is less than satisfactory, customers may call the support center to register a complaint. In case their complaint is not resolved satisfactorily or there is a considerable delay in the turnaround time, your business faces the risk of losing the customer. In such a scenario, earning the trust and loyalty of customers may have taken you years, but, losing it may take less than a day. In addition, your brand may take a severe beating when the customer vents their frustration or anger among peers or their entire social network. Your reputation may be tarnished seriously in this case leading to large churn rates.

CRM to the rescue!
For obvious reasons, all businesses wish that they are always in Scenario 1. But, you have to admit, Scenario 2 always remains a possibility. To eliminate this risk, it is necessary to reinforce your customer service employees and call center with the optimum technology that enables them to deal with customers in a satisfactory way. Call centers are known to be at the hub of customer service and work with multiple departments to exchange two-way information between customers and their organization.

The call center employees may not be responsible for poor customer experience in entirety..Maybe, the volume of calls was so high that many customers ended up holding for a long time or being unattended entirely. Maybe the call center employee took time to find the details of the customer due to multiple software being deployed on his terminal or the application was not user friendly. Whatever be the reason, the result is one: a dissatisfied customer. It may take no more than two or three similar experiences to make the customer go to your competitor. What the employee needs is a system that removes the roadblocks or hurdles and enhances their abilities and skills. What can be the solutions to all these issues? The answer is simple: an effective CRM for customer service. A strong CRM solution for your call center not only eases the path for call center employees, but also ensures a consistent customer experience.

• Computer Telephony Integration (CTI): This facility enables the interactions with customers on a telephone and a computer to be integrated or coordinated, allowing call centre employees to efficiently manage and pull up customer information. Employees are able to see relevant details about callers as soon as the call is received, and can enter information about the call into the system with ease.
• 360 degree view of the customer: Past interactions and preferences are made available through activity manageent and rolled up objects' records to the customer service representatives. Many times, this information allows the employees to effectively deal with a customer in such a way that they have an excellent experience and their issues are resolved within SLAs.
• Auto/ manual escalations: A major issue faced by the customer may sometimes be out of bounds for the customer service representative attending to him. In such cases, a good CRM solution in the call center allows the employee to escalate the issue to the next level.
• Solutions database: A lot of automation features within CRM softwares also allow call center representatives to automate many of the functions, due to which they can work at a faster pace and solve the query of the customer instantly. For example, pre-approved solutions can be displayed based on a Case's Type and Category,  the most appropriate one can be selected by a user for a particular case.
• Cross-channel functionalities: CRM for customer services and social CRM allow customers to contact the call center through phone, web (including social networks) or email. This flexibility provides the customer more convenient/ practical choices and enhances their experience.
• Secure customer records: A unified solution allows call center representatives in different roles a specific set of CRM operations, allowing different people rights to open, close and update records related to customers on the basis of their assigned roles. This activity ensures that customer records remain secure at all times through read/ write configurations.
• Inter-departmental collaborations: In addition to call center employees who are involved in customer service, sales and marketing teams can also utilize customer data from the CRM system to pursue relevant leads and execute relevant marketing campaigns. Other departments within the organization can also utilize the common CRM solution to maintain effective communication with customers and improve products by analyzing customer feedback.

CRM software solution for call centers can be more than just a business tool to manage customer information, they can empower your employees to cost-effectively retain and satisfy existing customers. The effect of this positive customer experience will reflect in the following:

• Repeat purchases
• Referrals
• Word-of-mouth advocacy
• Feedback for improvements
• Better cross-selling opportunities
• Positive employee morale

In the long run, your brand will become stronger and better through consistent customer experience optimization, regardless of which channel a customer chooses to share their request, opinion or issue with your teams.

How CRM Solutions can Lower Customer Churn in the Healthcare Industry

People often feel that the healthcare sector is all about large corporate centres running up unnecessary bills for patients that do not really need such extravagant treatment. And unfortunately, in many cases, this was the exact scenario that was playing out. However, now with a number of corporate hospitals offering state-of-the-art treatment catered to patients by doctors with multiple foreign degrees, the competition is cut throat. This is the reason why hospitals need to turn themselves into dependable brands and for any brand to survive, the most important factor to keep track of is 'customer satisfaction'. Unfortunately, this is where hospitals are lacking most.

A queer problem
An incident that took place a few years ago caught the eye of the healthcare sector like never before. A well known healthcare facility in Washington noticed that many hospitals were reporting cases where patients that had been supposedly treated and discharged just weeks ago were returning with similar symptoms to the ER. The doctors treating the patients felt that perhaps better patient management the first time itself would have prevented this from happening. They said that many readmissions of these patients could have been avoided if better post-op and follow up care had been followed. However, there was no significant way of knowing or predicting which patients would return with an illness again. The situation worsened when Medicare, the American insurance company for elderly patients, decided to penalize hospitals for patients that were falling sick and needed to be readmitted in less than a month after being discharged.

To deal with the problem at hand, rather than consulting with physicians and surgeons, the hospital decided to rope in a computer scientist who also happened to be a physician. Rather than overworking the residents with writing down and filing data, the scientist and his colleagues built an analytical tool that could analyze more than 300,000 patients' visits to the ER. This system tried to predict patient outcomes as well by forming correlations between 25,000 variables including patient medications, vital signs and their attending physicians.

During the data analysis there were quite a few surprising findings. Firstly, it was noticed that the tipping point in the ER was seen to be 14 hours; which meant that any patient that was in the ER for a period longer than 14 hours had a higher chance of being readmitted. Another unexpected finding was that patient charts which had the word ‘fluid’ written on it had a higher chance of being readmitted.

All of these findings were then added to a program that is called the Readmissions Manager, which a top software vendor sells as part of its solution specially designed for healthcare providers. It is said that software like these help to produce a patient forecast on the whole, including the treatment success rate and the patient’s chance of readmission. Also, a physician can assess and decide follow up appointments on the basis of this forecast.

The lesson learnt
It is said that around every one in five patients in an American hospital needs to be readmitted in a month’s time. This simple inefficiency costs Medicare (a calculation that can be extended to the regular taxpayer) around USD 17 billion a year. The situation is even worse in hospitals in developing countries like India. The amount of data that is lost, which could otherwise have been used to map out an accurate prognosis of any patient, is often astounding. Patient allergies, precautions, medical contraindications and treatment response, if all compiled, stored and made easily accessible will not only allow patients to go home safely knowing that they won’t be coming back anytime soon but also prevents several lawsuits for the hospital. More so, this data can always be used in journals and has tremendous potential to be used in research for vaccine and medicine responses in the future.

Enabling holistic Knowledge Management

One of the most effective ways to store and access data from a centralized location randomly is with a CRM software. The reason why CRM solutions in healthcare are considered to be so important is that they make essential patient information so easy to find and collate. This makes the work of the physician and the nursing staff trouble-free. This way, even if a patient calls for an emergency consultation, rather than having to wait for a relative to come by with the required information regarding his previous prescriptions and allergies, the doctor can easily view all the basic information related to the patient through a single interface and offer the right treatment course effortlessly.

However, one needs to understand that CRM is a software that must be updated on a regular basis; all the interactions, medications and treatment options of each patient needs to be entered into the system. This includes details of the in-patient and out-patient areas, accessible simultaneously from a single interface.

To simplify through an example, if the hospital in Washington had discovered all the readmissions were due to a specific drug prescribed by their doctors, they could instantly create a mailing list of all relevant patients, add personalized email/ SMS messages and simultaneously blast all of them through the CRM software solutions. The software would also track message deliveries and generate an alert for pending/ cancelled deliveries. In addition, from day one, a special group of experts could monitor social sites to track and respond to all user generated content related to this grave issue through social CRM, thereby lowering rapid customer churn.

Managing large amounts of data may seem cumbersome at first, but, with the help of a practice-led CRM software, this can become an easy and systematic endeavour. A secure Document Management System (DMS) and Content Library will equip physicians and administrators with the tools to take well informed decisions and remain in-the-loop about any changes to important documentations. Also, users can attach notes, documents, images and URLs to any record, ensuring a holistic analysis of expectations and needs.

Empowering staff across departments and roles within a hospital with CRM software will ensure clearer pipeline visibility, targeted marketing campaigns, better collaborations, sentiment analysis, centralized repositories of solutions/ collaterals and other beneficial features.

Top 8 Benefits of Sales Force Automation for Growing Businesses

If you’re a small and steadily growing business and thinking of putting a CRM solution in place, the concepts of CRM and sales force automation to the uninitiated can sound technical and daunting. Yet, at some point, the savvy business owner recognises the need to take their business to the next level. To do this, systems/ software/ solutions are needed. Systems that track sales, customer trends, keep track of stock levels and so on.

It makes sense to have business intelligence software that gives the business owner the accurate and useful information he needs to help grow his business by identifying top customers, new social trends, bottlenecks, popular products, successful campaigns, etc.

What is Sales Force Automation: an outline

Sales force automation (SFA) forms part of the overall Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system which can also include marketing automation, workflow automation and email automation.

In a nutshell, Sales Force Automation or Sales Force Management are information systems that efficiently automate the sales process and management of the sales force. SFA manages all stages of the sales process from initial customer contact to closing the deal.

Effective SFA ensures full integration among all departments. The sales person is not the only person dealing with the customer, various other departments such as marketing, customer service, accounts and technical experts are also involved. If all these different departments are communicating with the customer at the same time or worse still, sending duplicate information to the customer, you’ll end up with one frustrated customer. Excessive communication is a sure-fire way to irritate the customer. SFA ensures that the right hand knows what the left hand is doing – all departments have easy access to see what interaction the other has had with the customer.

Ultimately, a successful CRM implementation's sales force automation tools should maximise the sales team’s efficiency, productivity and lead to increased sales.

How does SFA enhance performance?

Effective sales management

Some of the key benefits for growing businesses from sales force automation:

•  Contact management and diary management - clear visibility for accounts' contacts through a centralized repositoryion. The customer’s contact information and details (name, address, telephone, email, etc.) are stored in a compact way and scheduling appointments and follow-ups can happen easily with the calendar and diary application.
• Account management - holistic view of accounts with their related contacts, contracts, cases, opportunities and much more. Keep track of customer interaction, track the status of opportunities, view past sales history and get a good idea of the likelihood of closing the next deal.
• Driving leads and managing opportunities - automated lead conversions to accounts, contacts and opportunities with related mapping for fields to reduce non-core activities. SFA systems pull possible leads from various sources such as marketing communication, email campaigns, website visits or outbound calls. Once first contact has been made with a prospect this translates into a sales lead. The system prompts the sales rep when new leads become available and the rep can quickly and easily view all leads on a daily basis and schedule a time to contact prospects.
• Generating quotes and managing orders - streamlined quote conversion to lead and sharing with others. The sales rep is now enthusiastically making contact with all prospects and giving the sales pitch. Once the customer bites and expresses an interest, the rep is now ready to provide a quote. Remember the faster he acts, the faster he can close the deal. Unlike in the old days when the rep had to wait until he got back to the office to type up a quote, today thanks to CRM, he can produce a quote instantly while out on the road. Efficient and impressive to the customer!  The customer looks over the quote and decides to order. Again, the rep quickly with the touch of a few buttons converts his quote into an order. Smooth, seamless quote-to-order conversion! In next to no time the new customer will have his product in hand and is impressed at how quick and efficient the company is. And a happy customer is likely to become a loyal and regular customer.
• Sales forecasting - effectively predict future sales with the tools provided by SFA. The best predictor of future sales is past sales. SFA measures past sales history, current trends, number of orders and opportunities in the pipeline to provide an intelligent projection of future sales.
• Tracking competitors - gaining an advantage over your competitors to avoid churn and encourage customer advocacy. SFA helps monitor trends and the reasons why a deal has been won or lost, and if lost – to whom and why. To make effective use of this tool, the sales rep has to be diligent in updating the records with the reasons deals were lost or won and input relevant competitor information. Reports pulled from this type of information will highlight certain trends and problem areas and the business can take steps to remedy the situation. Marketing campaigns can be adjusted or products can be improved.
• Reports and analytics - view system reports with real-time information or create ad hoc reports. Generate accurate reports ranging from a birds-eye view of across the board sales to drilling down into specific sales territories, per sales rep, geographical regions or demographics. Easily create charts and graphics and export reports to MS Excel or PDF. Sales reps can even schedule the date and time they want reports to be emailed to their sales managers or executives, so that even if he is out of the office, the report will still get sent on time. Valuable information is gleaned from the data in reports. Information that will either tell executives that the business is doing well - so don’t fix it, if it’s not broken, or, result in a re-evaluation of business principles and change of direction, if it is not doing well.
• Mobile applications - ensure customer information is available through web enabled phones from any location. Sales people spend most of their time out in the field. In today’s world of smartphones, CRM solutions have also become mobile. Field staff can now have instant access to information and leads while being on the road, rather than waiting until they are back in the office to access vital information about customer interaction. This has changed the game quite significantly for businesses.

To summarize, sales force automation streamlines the sales team’s job, making the end-to-end process faster. With the increased efficiency in conversions and closing deals plus the reduced effort on non-core activities, sales professionals can build better rapport with leads and contacts, request referrals and cross sell - increasing your bottom line in the short term through quicker sales and in the long term through customer retention!