Customer Relationship Management Best Practices

Customer relationship management (CRM) is no longer just a transactional process. Now, it’s a must for any business looking to thrive in this customer-centric era. To shed light on effective CRM practices, we’ve consulted with entrepreneurs who have distilled their experiences into actionable insights. So, let’s learn how to forge enduring connections with your clientele.

Proactive Engagement

As the e-commerce landscape has revolutionized, customer expectations — especially regarding service delivery — are sky-high. Today’s business climate doesn’t just demand meeting customer needs but exceeding them at every possible touchpoint.

In this light, we propose an innovative practice — proactive engagement. Rather than waiting for customers to contact us with issues, we proactively reach out to them with potential challenges or offer help before they even realize they need it. This move towards anticipation can drastically elevate customer satisfaction and loyalty and enhance service efficiency.

At Simple Fulfillment, we recently implemented a system that alerts us when a customer’s order may be delayed due to supply chain disruptions. Instead of waiting for the customer to inquire about the delay, we proactively notify them with an apology, an update, and an offer for expedited shipping on their next order. This has improved our customer satisfaction ratings and led to an increase in repeat business.

The concept of proactive engagement, when properly executed, can create a ripple effect, resulting in customer loyalty and positive word-of-mouth. For entrepreneurial success, it’s a differentiating approach that can help any startup stand out in a sea of competition and win customer hearts for the long term.

Virginia Miller, spokesperson at Simpl Fulfillment

Automation

Automate your text messages and emails for every scenario. Automate your text messages to go out for every client’s birthday. Automate follow-ups and remind your clients that you are always with them, not just when you sell a product.

Ensure you automate the entire sales process from start to finish. This will not only be the best practice to engage and be available to your client base, but it will also free up your time and streamline all processes.

Lisamarie Monaco, co-owner of InsuranceForBurial.com (Twitter)

Implementing AR

Consider integrating augmented reality (AR). Imagine offering clients an AR experience to virtually tour potential properties or visualize financial data trends. This adds a modern flair but also deepens the emotional connection between clients and your services.

AR-driven CRM can provide interactive property showcases, virtual financial consultations, and personalized data visualizations, enhancing satisfaction and minimizing uncertainties. Embracing such innovative technologies not only sets you apart in the industry but also establishes a memorable and valuable connection with clients, strengthening your position as a trusted expert in real estate and finance.

Alyssa Huff, owner of Sell House As Is

AI Video Social Listening Tool

Aggero is an innovative AI Video social listening tool that allows unprecedented customer interactions in the creator economy. Our technology now allows brands to understand how and when influencers speak about their products as well as how customers react to what they say or even show in videos (think about a product demonstration).

Today, future entrepreneurs can use our innovative technology to get real-time customer feedback on their products to either make them better or learn from the feedback to better future products. They can now skip expensive and time-consuming surveys to get real-time data from customers or potential customers in a creator economy that’s only going to grow and shape how we purchase things in the future.

So, my tip is to keep an eye on what creators and audiences say about your product or service as you launch to get true market insights that benefit product development and ultimately lead to data-based business growth.

Adrian Lauruc, Content Manager at Aggero

Art of Welcoming New Customers

One of the best practices in customer relationship management is welcoming new customers in such a way that leaves a lasting impact. Many brands tend to forget or take new customers for granted. They think they can rest easy after acquiring new customers. However, it doesn’t work that way.

New customers can switch to a new brand if they feel less valued. Thus, brands should welcome new customers and show their gratitude for getting them as customers. They can utilize personalized onboarding emails to do that. Such emails should contain a note of appreciation and details of tools or services that can aid customers.

Rory Donadio, CEO of Tribeca Lawsuit Loans

Customer ID Access

One innovative approach to CRM deals with username access vs. customer ID access.

Customer IDs are unique numbers and letters that define the primary customer record. Usernames are unique but can change.

Usernames should be editable at any time during the lifecycle of the relationship.

I see this too often with start-ups; someone says, “Oh, the email address is unique.” Well, people change email addresses. People are fired, quit, get married, and die. Email addresses should not define your relationship to your B2B customer. And as obvious as this is, people keep doing this.

Another element I’d add is recovery information for a customer account. This should involve USPS, voice cellphone authorization, and global email notifications. A CRM is only as secure as access to email. Tack on phone numbers and USPS verification, and you are now advancing the level of security.

Neil C Fennessey, president & CEO of fourmangos

Data Governance and Maintenance

Deploying a CRM requires lots of planning and time, but it won’t be worth much without ensuring that your data is up to standard. Client information, sales figures, lead lists, and marketing insights need to be carefully entered into the CRM platform.

You need to start using a data standard as soon as possible and record it on the CRM platform. Performing a CRM audit every quarter is also a must to keep your data clean. Data is the sustenance of a healthy CRM platform.

Alister Wood, owner of VisitUs

Uploading Historical Data

One of the best practices I can share is uploading historical data. For those new to using a CRM, I suggest taking the contacts from Outlook or Gmail and uploading them into the CRM system. Before doing this, it’s important to refine the exported list by removing any contacts that aren’t relevant.

Your high-quality leads could include existing customers, referrals, past prospects, or a new list of targeted contacts. If you’re new to using a CRM, you might find it convenient to let the system

automatically add these individuals once your sales reps email them again. However, if you have these contacts in a spreadsheet or CSV file, or if you can organize them into one, uploading your contact, company, and deal information becomes straightforward and efficient.

Alan Redondo, founder of Ardoz Digital

Educating Your Team on CRM

Once your CRM is up and running, a great practice is to educate your team on how to leverage it effectively. One of the advantages of using a CRM, like HubSpot, is that it operates in the background for sales representatives. This means that instead of manually entering email

conversations into the CRM, they are automatically recorded and linked to the appropriate contacts, companies, and deals. However, this doesn’t eliminate the need for your reps to actively use the CRM. It’s crucial for them to track their deals in the correct stages, which is a key habit they should develop. For instance, HubSpot’s CRM offers some free reports within

the system itself. These can be very useful. Additionally, they have a paid reporting add-on that allows for more detailed and complex analysis of your sales and marketing funnel. This feature can be incredibly helpful in understanding and optimizing your business processes.

Lucas Ochoa, founder & CEO of Automat

Personalized Engagement

One of the practices for managing customer relationships I can recommend is to make sure each customer feels valued and like they are my only client. When a new client comes on, I note their “client anniversary” date, anything unique to that person or business, especially something that we may have connected over personally in conversations. I then use that information when I reach out to them, checking on how their service has been, acknowledging their annual client anniversary date with a business gift, and just connecting with them both on a business and personal level.

Most everyone appreciates a live, human connection and the ability to reach a real person when it comes to a service they are paying for, and it helps build loyalty and trust when I go out of my way to connect.

Laura Spawn, owner of LeDetailWP.com (Company LinkedIn)

Quality Assurance

Prioritize quality assurance (QA) in the contact center. Right now, only 2% of interactions are typically monitored with traditional QA processes. This makes it extremely difficult to identify the areas that can very quickly improve customer experience, as well as other issues (e.g., failures in compliance). It’s also difficult to measure the impact of any improvement actions being taken with such a small sample of data. To truly understand the issues and behaviors that are positively and negatively impacting the customer experience, call centers need to leverage interaction intelligence to monitor every interaction on every channel. These insights need to be

delivered in an actionable way, at a speed and level of efficiency that enables leaders in both the contact center and wider business to put them to use.

Jaime Scott, co-founder & CEO of EvaluAgent

Customer Self-Service

I started a global branding and digital marketing firm 22 years ago, and CRM has only grown in importance, especially since the pandemic. The best brands leverage CRM to improve customer experience and ensure high levels of customer satisfaction, starting with self-service. 

This is usually a collection of features that allow customers to help themselves without bothering human reps, like using FAQs where people can get answers to simple questions. There are also customer portal features that can let customers do things like check the status of orders. By offering customers the option to help themselves, you limit the number of customer interactions with yourself or your team.

The whole point of a CRM is to take over a lot of easy work so as to free up your people for more challenging tasks. So, don’t neglect to set up the customer-centric side of your CRM system. It’s a customer-facing platform with numerous customer-friendly features. Use these features to encourage customer feedback and participation to improve the customer experience and give you tools to assess customer sentiment.

Paige Arnof-Fenn, founder & CEO of Mavens & Moguls

The Virtual Concierge

The virtual concierge economy is an inventive strategy for future business owners to take advantage of. Entrepreneurs may create immersive and customized virtual concierge services by fusing virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and personalized algorithms. Assisting users in real-time with context-aware recommendations and advice, these digital assistants would also anticipate their needs.

This strategy improves client engagement, contentment, and loyalty, whether it is used in the retail, hospitality, or service sectors. Entrepreneurs have the opportunity to transform client interactions by providing individualized virtual concierge services that are accessible on several platforms. The virtual concierge economy redefines the bar for individualized customer experiences by streamlining operations and preparing companies to provide unmatched, customer-centric services in the increasingly digital environment.

Nick Robinson, co-founder at PickandPullsellcar