Top 5 CRM Hacks to Ensure 10X Sales & Customer Service Efficiency

Why has this statement become even more popular in the 21^st century? Well, India alone has around 1.48 million companies! The competition to retain and grow customers at an all-time high. Therefore, your company must ensure they provide the best services possible to keep customers happy, else, it is almost certain that you are going to lose them.  You need to do something different that positively impacts your business, and fast. Fortunately, this article has not just one but 5 CRM hacks to increase sales and improve customer service efficiency. 

Customer Relationship Management Software isn’t new technology. In fact, 91% of businesses with 10 or more employees own a CRM. But users usually find it difficult to use the software effectively. 

Let’s get into the best practices you can deploy to get the most out of your CRM software: 

1. Optimize your dashboards

Dashboards are an essential part of a CRM. They provide an overview to the sales rep of all the tasks that are currently going on in the sales pipeline and the ones that are pending, what follow-ups need to be made, and their KPIs.  Furthermore, they provide real-time information, which can be analyzed and measured to improve processes. 

However, if you don’t set your dashboard up the way you want it, searching for information can quickly become a herculean task. And let’s not forget how looking at all the other useless data might overload your brain. Therefore, it is better to view only the essential information.

One way to allow your sales, marketing, and service team to perform better is to let each member customize the boards the way they want it, and what they find is the easiest to view. Instead of deciding a preset layout, take the team veterans’ help and figure out what information they find most useful.

Add other features you want your team to remember while creating the dashboard and voila! You’ve made the life of your sales team a lot easier. Remember, a simpler dashboard is faster to read and easier to understand. This saves time, allows you to identify pain points in your process easier, and helps reps sell better. All of this translates to faster, efficient, and better service, which is a right step in improving customer satisfaction.

2. Integrate an IVR

The next way to improve your customer service is to integrate Interactive Voice Response software or an IVR. What is an IVR, you might wonder? An IVR responds to the caller using both set voice menus and data that is continuously pulled from databases. The caller answers by speaking or tapping the phone’s keypad to communicate. They mainly serve as a coordination system to align the lead, and their requirements, to the right salesperson in charge, while maintaining a human-like conversation over a call. 

CRMs help unlock an IVR’s potential further by allowing them to play personalized messages depending on the lead’s preferences. CRMs can also allow IVRs to call each lead by their name, relay messages based on past interaction, and guide the caller to take a desired action. 

For example: MyOperator’s IVR system can be easily integrated with a CRM, such as LeadSquared, to provide voice greetings, follow-ups, and other engagements. This IVR-CRM integration improves customer satisfaction because it: 

1. Routes calls to the correct department.
2. Empowers customers with an option of self-service. 
3. Saves time in having to wait and talk to a plethora of other people before reaching the desired rep. 

Furthermore, MyOperator a leading cloud call center helps improve sales efficiency by 

a) Saving sales reps’ time by not having to pick up calls that are for others.

b) Segmenting the customers into what their needs are. This helps your salespeople have context to what the prospect is looking for to plan their pitch or conversation accordingly. 

3. Design proper workflows

Workflow automations are the backbone of every smooth-running business. In fact, a 2021 Global Customer Success Survey by SmartKararot showed that 84% of executives find automation to be crucial for excellent customer service operations.  

Efficiently designed workflow automation can relieve reps of repetitive tasks, improve process visibility, prevent bottlenecks in communication, and improve sales efficiency and team performance. They can also make your rep’s day much easier by providing clarity on steps they need to follow to move their prospect to the next stage. 

But no matter how great your CRM’s automation capabilities may be, it is all for naught if you don’t know the gaps in your current business process. Once you have identified these opportunities, you’ll be able to create much more effective workflows to boost your team’s productivity and outcomes. 

You should also get your managers, business leaders, and the veteran employees involved to help you design the perfect workflow. Here is what you should keep in mind when creating one: 

1. Identify any problems/ pain points in the current workflow. 
2. Make an inventory of your available resources
3. List your deliverables
4. Write down the steps and tasks
5. Define all responsibilities in the workflow
6. Draw out a diagram 
7. Test it on a small scale
8. Train your team
9. Deploy the new workflow. 

Following these steps will help you put the right cogs in the right place to achieve faster, efficient, and more reliable workflows, which in turn, attract more customers and improve team coordination. 

4. Link your chatbot

Chatbots are another way to provide your customers with the power of self-service. They provide answers to common questions quickly, ensuring a great experience for your users/customers irrespective of which stage they are at in the buying journey.  

Tracking questions that your customers ask on chatbots is also a great way to understand their requirements. Solutions to these doubts can be addressed by sales reps with their pitch or made easily available on your website. 

A chatbot can further be optimized to trigger different paths based on user types and add personalization to improve customer satisfaction. Furthermore, a live agent option also ensures that in the rare case that your chatbot does not have answers for questions, it can connect to a sales rep who is available online and ready to answer customer questions immediately on behalf of the chatbot.  

Plus like a few other hacks on this list, it saves your team’s time and effort. Your sales team can direct their time to productive tasks instead of manually replying to various inquiries. Users also find it more convenient to drop a question and have it resolved in under 5 minutes instead of waiting for a call back from a salesperson.  Chatbot interactions can also enable your sales team to sell better. They provide a ton of information that can be used to analyze your prospects. This allows your team to improve their sales pitch and marketing campaigns. 

5. Optimize your email campaigns

With there expected to be almost 4.6 billion email users by 2025, email campaigns are one of the most effective ways for businesses to improve conversion rates. 

However, with so many businesses using email marketing, the open rate has been down by 30% in the last few years. Therefore, effectively using your CRMs marketing features can help you avoid this situation. 

How do you effectively use a CRM’s email campaign? You do so, by:

a) Keeping the campaigns consistent 

If you want to nurture your leads effectively, then you need to consistently engage them with relevant marketing content. Scheduling your campaigns to go out every week on a particular day and at a particular time allows your leads to look forward to your emails and expect it at that time. This will increase the number of leads who move down your pipeline. 

Consistently sending out sales outreach emails can help get you more responses, for on average, even one follow-up mail increases response rates by 40%. A CRM’s automated email marketing feature can be used to create and schedule emails and follow-ups while tracking email conversion metrics on the same platform. 

b) Using and making templates

You can have weeks and even months of email content ready in advance by creating sales email templates and storing them in your CRM. Whenever someone needs to target a particular customer segment, they can quickly send emails by making minute changes to an existing template. This will keep your messaging consistent and ensure that only high-quality content reaches customers.  

And let’s not forget how it improves sales efficiency by saving time spent on outreach sales emails. Also, a good template repository can give your rep options to choose and send better targeted campaigns. 

c) Personalize email outreach 

Personalization is a crucial aspect of customer satisfaction. Your customer needs to feel like they are special and that you have sent a campaign tailored to them. Segmenting your customers based on their preferences, history, and features can allow you to effectively nurture them through targeted marketing efforts. 

Sales teams can also sell better when they know what their leads are looking for. This ensures high quality leads as well. Using personalization and segmentation may seem trivial, but it is an important tip that many businesses overlook. 

While there are a lot more tips and tricks to make the most out of your CRM to improve customer satisfaction and sales, these were some of the main ones. If you are looking for a great IVR service and CRM that can boost your sales efficiency up to 10 times, then you should check out MyOperator and LeadSquared. Together, they can provide end-to-end sales and automation solutions for your business. The greatest part? They are both customizable to ensure they fit you, and you don’t have to change your business processes to fit them!

MyOperator is a cloud call center software new-generation company that offers cloud telephony services to its customers. If you want a get toll-free number or an IVR system to take your customer service one notch up MyOperator is the spot for you.