5 Tips to select the right CRM solution

Have a open and honest discussion with your team mates who will use the CRM. Make a wish list of TOBE scenarios they are expecting as a solution from the CRM. Make one of your Team mates as the process owner for the CRM implementation in your organization

Segment their requirement into three buckets – Marketing, Sales and Customer Service. Further drill it down into Must Haves, Good To Haves and Nice to Have. Create a three years road map for this. 1st Year – Must Have, 2nd Year – Good to Haves, 3rd Year Nice to Have.

Identify a CRM Expert who can be an external consulting company to implement this over a period of time. Remember CRM Tool is only 20% of the ROI factor. 80% is the process that is mapped in the CRM tool. Hence don’t focus too much on what is the tool to be selected, rather focus on the shortlisting the CRM Expert who can play a major role in aligning the best practices and then implementing that using a CRM tool. The CRM Expert will be in a better position to suggest you a suitable tool.

Ideally a CRM Expert will suggest you a Cloud based SAAS CRM which is seen as an nominal operational expense. You should consider it as a component of the Sales Persons Expense per month rather than seeing it as a CAPEX(Capital Expenditure). Hence it should be an OPEX. Based on the OPEX you create the Sales Targets for your Sales team.

Finally remember engaging a CRM Consultant is not only for implementing or customizing a CRM tool. It is more to handhold you and implement the best practices of CRM on top of the tool. Hence post implementation of the tool, do engage the CRM Consultant on a ongoing support over a period of three years minimum to reap the benefits of the CRM implementation.

Components of a cost effective value added CRM Implementation

CRM Product cost: A cost effective CRM will be around $10 (Rs. 720) per user per month for a starter edition
CRM Implementation Effort: Around 100 hours for a basic package

Features that you may want to have in a CRM Tool

Marketing Module:

Enquiry Management ( Leads) which can be directly linked to your contact me page on website using WebForms

Email/SMS Campaign management to be periodically in touch with your Prospects and Customers

Social Listening – Listen to what your prospects or customers are talking on social media and create those posts as leads

Computer Telephony Interface- To make and receive calls directly in CRM and review the call logs of the team.

Remember the marketing process should generate a consistent source of leads for your organization.

Sales Module

Deal Management which includes Meetings, Quotations, Negotiation till closure as part of Pipeline management

Forecast and quota’s. Help you to set goals and measure against that periodically(monthly, quarterly or both). Remember what gets measured gets done.

Customer Service Module

Issue management (Case) which can be directly linked to your support page on website.

Web chats with an answer bot(having a list of FAQs) which can be included in your website to the chat logs can be converted as a case

Customer portal, where a customer can login themselves and track their issues, find solutions etc.,

Mail rooms where common email support ids can be shared to receive and respond back.

SLAs – service level agreements that can be linked to resolve case on time with escalation process.

Service contracts – to create service engagement with customers. Like Annual Maintenance Contract etc.,

Assignment rules – to assign case based on various criteria or round robin basis.

Appointment Pages – where customer can themselves choose a time slot to have a meeting with you.

Based on your priority, select the modules in phase wise and implement it over a period of three years.

Happy CRMing,