In these troubled times of containment, the ways of working on a daily basis have been disrupted.
For those who are still able to carry out their professional activity, the question arises of using the right tools in order to continue to follow up on their clients and carry out their daily tasks.
Of course, the online channel is the most suitable in this type of situation, which explains the interest in using CRM-type cloud software.
What is the purpose of a CRM?
CRM is a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool, which will record all actions and opportunities related to the follow-up of customers and prospects and thus ensure traceability by keeping a history of all actions performed.
Ideally, the sales, marketing, accounting and general management departments should use it to take advantage of the tool’s collaborative functionalities, and thus work as a team more efficiently. CRMs also include functions for marketing campaign management, document management and even project management.
Why use a CRM?
Since it is possible to consult all the actions that have been carried out, communicated, and created for a customer or prospect, such a tool makes it possible to limit internal meetings, since all the information is available and usable at any time.
Moreover, if an employee leaves the company, the customer history remains in the tool, which allows the company and new employees to start up much more efficiently and quickly.
A CRM also allows advanced management of the customer portfolio, in order to take strategic decisions. For example, by detecting customers in a particular sector who have more orders, decide to increase the marketing budget in this sector in order to conquer new market shares.
However, attention must be paid to data security, which is a particularly sensitive subject when talking about systematic telework for all or part of the company’s staff.
In fact, knowing that data transits between employee devices and the company’s servers, it is necessary to ensure that the chosen CRM solution guarantees data hosting in datacenters ensuring end-to-end data encryption, meeting the latest cybersecurity standards in force, as well as detection and protection in case of malicious actions coming from outside.
In short, a CRM makes it possible to get through the Covid-19 crisis efficiently, while maintaining activity. Let’s bet that many companies will think about it when the activity will return to normal so as not to be caught off guard at the next event requiring their staff to telework.
L.C