How To Track Your Customers With The Help of CRM?
Editorial StaffJanuary 21, 2024
It is the dream of any small or medium business (SMB) to have a long list of customers in its database. But most companies mismanage when the list starts to grow fast.
They do not have a process or system to log all the details and recover them quickly when the customer calls. What they need is customer tracking software.
According to a survey, 69% of the customers chose not to do business with a company they had already dealt with because the staff did not have their information.
The customer had to provide all the information again and face an attitude of indifference from the sales staff.
Remember, if your company doesn’t treat its customers right, somebody else will fill your space. So, let us look at how your company can track all the customer details efficiently.
Track Customers with a Customer Relationship Management (CRM):
A CRM system manages your company’s relationship with the customer, both current and potential. Having great relationships with customers is the foundation for growing a business.
CRM is not just about contact and sales management. A well-rounded CRM system manages a customer’s complete interaction cycle, including marketing, sales, digital distribution, customer support, invoice and payments tracking, and communications, and presents the data in the form of visual reports.
An integrated CRM system tells you which stage within the sales funnel a particular deal is. All the features of a CRM are easy to scale up whether you have a few hundred or a million customers in your database.
What To Track About Your Customers?
Tracking customer information is not limited to their name, contact number, and purchased product. There is a range of parameters you can track and use the information to fine-tune your marketing and sales efforts. Here is a quick list –
#1. Purchase History
The sales data in the CRM not only tell what the customers bought but also a range of other valuable insights. Know which products sell the most and at what times during the year.
Check if there is a connection between the type of products and the customers’ age, gender, and location. This information will help your marketing team create meaningful campaigns at the right time.
Using this information, you can send relevant newsletters to upsell or cross-sell the products. For example, someone who bought a laptop may also need a bag and other accessories.
#2. History of Tickets Raised
Any question or complaint by a customer is logged as a ticket within the CRM system. This information is extremely valuable in improving the quality of your service and products.
You can find out if some of your products are getting more complaints than others. If yes, either the supplier or the product needs a change.
You can also derive reports to determine how much time your staff takes to resolve each ticket and whether that matches your target KPI.
#3. Referrals
Many companies run referral programs for two reasons – to maintain existing customer loyalty and gain new customers with a minimum cost of acquisition. You can leverage the customer tracking information within the CRM system to run referral programs and offer discounts or incentives to existing customers.
This not only increases customer loyalty but also adds to your marketing efforts with minimal investment.
#4. Downloads and Subscriptions
Did your customer download the free e-book or subscribe to the weekly delivery of groceries? Track the downloads and subscriptions that happen on your landing page. This information, when logged into the CRM system, helps your marketing team target certain demographics or psychographics.
#5. Contact Information
Customer contact information includes mobile phone numbers, email, addresses, and social media accounts. The information you track could be all or a combination of these.
This will help you prefill quotations and invoices in the future without asking for information from your customer. Your marketing teams can use this information to segment the customers into buckets and send targeted newsletters.
#6. Traffic Channels
It is important to know where your customers are coming from to optimize the marketing spend.
By using tracking mechanisms such as Google Analytics, pixels, or urchin tracking modules, you can pinpoint where the traffic is coming from. This tracking information gets you the best return on investment (ROI).
#7. Sales Funnel
From a new load to deal closure, every customer goes through a sales funnel. You can track each segment of the funnel and know which processes within the company need improvement and which ones are working great.
Using this CRM tracking information, you can fine-tune your internal processes and systems to serve better.
#8. Email Metrics
Emails are powerful metrics to track customers and how they engage with your content. When customers receive your email, they consciously open it, fully aware that they can delete it without reading it.
A successful email campaign will generate an open rate between 15 and 25% and a click-through rate between 2.5 and 3%.
How It Ties in With Other Benefits of a CRM System:
1. Manage Customer History
CRM provides you with the entire customer history in a few clicks. This includes purchases, returns, payment modes, service tickets, complaints, and resolutions.
Marketing teams and CXOs can leverage this data to do predictive analysis on demand and proactively deal with problems before they occur.
2. Organize Your Data
CRM system creates a unique view of every customer – a single account capable of sending emails, managing tasks, and passing tickets or requests to other departments, and calendars.
Organizing the data on this level is not possible in MS excel or any other method.
3. Quickly Scale Up
If you are planning an expansion of the company to new geographical locations or increasing the size of your product portfolio, a CRM system can help.
A cloud-based CRM system can scale up quickly and seamlessly, and you can access it from anywhere over any device. Keep tracking customers at the same efficiency as you scale up the operations.
4. Proactive Sales Management
Automate repetitive tasks to save time and use dynamic management tools to deliver exceptional service to the customer. Track each team member and the task they are involved in to give timely responses to customer questions.
5. Social Media Integration
Integrate seamlessly with the social media channels of the company and chat directly with the customer.
The AI-based chat either resolves customers’ questions automatically or raises a ticket in the CRM system for the customer service team.
By tracking customer interactions, you can further optimize the system to serve the customer better.
Wrapping Up:
The biggest mistake businesses commit is trying to acquire new customers and not paying enough attention to the ones they already have. By tracking existing customers on various predefined metrics, you can nurture them and significantly reduce the overall cost of acquisition.
Next time when the customer calls, delight them with their history of tickets raised, payments, and purchases from the CRM system.
Prospur provides a CRM platform for small businesses to acquire, engage, and retain customers and close more sales. Click here for a FREE Demo to learn – how Prospur can help you grow online.