When you think of customer relationship management (CRM) systems, you probably picture big businesses with tens of thousands of customers to look after. But the usefulness of CRM is by no means limited to large companies. Modern cloud-based platforms cater for organisations of any size, with prices to suit.
Nor is CRM limited to traditional sales and support functions. While the “customer” part of the name might suggest a focus on direct selling relationships, CRM solutions can help in all sorts of jobs across a whole range of industries, from legal advice to fundraising and financial planning. Simply put, any business that needs to maintain relationships with external parties can benefit.
Getting started is easy. There’s no need to worry about having to roll out new software; all that’s needed is a browser, and there’s usually a free trial on offer so you can test out how a package fits into your business before making a commitment.
What is CRM for?
At its core a CRM platform is a database of contacts, but it stores far more than just names and addresses. It’s a dynamic, comprehensive record of your relationship with every customer – past, present and hopefully future – tracking every interaction you’ve had with them, and even ones you plan to have at a later date. This ensures team members all have access to the same information, support staff can see what their colleagues have been doing, and marketers can track touchpoints between the business and its customers. The CRM software can also instantly generate statistics and reports, so you can monitor how the business is going on a larger scale, and spot emerging trends.
These capabilities can be applied to almost any organisation. Coeliac UK, a gluten-intolerance charity, uses Workbooks CRM software to manage its contacts with politicians, NHS trusts and government departments, as well as tracking its own lobbying of clinical commissioning groups.
Accountancy firm Aston Shaw uses CRM to manage ongoing obligations such as compliance tracking, job management and real-time reporting. And STV (previously Scottish Television) revealed last year how it switched from manually keeping records and maintaining databases to Workbooks CRM, enabling it to streamline its workflows and reduce the time staff spent on administration.
Even in a micro-business, or for solo workers who don't need to collaborate, a CRM system can be a powerful tool. It eliminates the need to keep notes in paper or digital files, serving as a rich, searchable knowledge-management system. It can help you track both new prospects and late payers, and you can even use it to host online sales and customer services. The range of features available depends on your platform and subscription, and how much of it you choose to implement. Many platforms can be extended using add-on integrations with popular tools (see "Essential Integrations", below).
Working with existing tools
Assuming you already have some method of managing external contacts, you might be concerned that introducing a CRM platform into your business will mean "reinventing the wheel". In practice, it's more likely to help you standardize and use the right tools for each job. For example, if you've previously stored your purchasing records in Excel, you can move them to the CRM and leave the spreadsheet software to do what it's best at. Address books will likewise survive CRM's arrival, just not as the authoritative company-wide record of its contacts.
Nor do you have to replace existing messaging systems. Most CRM platforms integrate directly with email clients, calendars and even social networks, to pull in messages and update the point of last contact. For example, when you sign in to Copper CRM using a Gmail account, the contacts from your last 90 days of correspondence (or your last 1,000 emails) are automatically matched up to existing records within the CRM - or if the sender isn't already known to the system, they're captured as a prospective lead.
As well as being better suited to the job at hand, using CRM prevents information from being trapped in silos. It eliminates the risk of different departments developing parallel sets of records, or working from outdated sources. And since all records are stored in a single centralized database, compliance and data governance are greatly simplified. There's no danger of sensitive data being discovered in an old spreadsheet, or accidentally made public on a shared server; it's all managed with centrally administered access controls.
A full range of features
While your initial investment in CRM may be focused on a particular purpose, the platform will usually It offers scope for you to expand over time. The City UK, a private-sector industry body for the UK’s financial services industry, says it initially started using Microsoft Dynamics as a “glorified address book”, but developed it into a central source of key data as part of a broader upgrade of its systems.
And because CRM is designed for long-term relationship tracking, it’s a perfect fit for marketing and fundraising activities. A museum that relies on regular contributions could create a view that highlights past benefactors who haven’t donated lately, in order to send them a gentle reminder – and thank those who have deposited funds. More creatively, the CRM software could deliver metrics to highlight which contributors would most likely be receptive to a plea for additional funds.
In the Smith, head of governance at The Place, London Contemporary Dance School, spends her working days inside Salesforce CRM. She told us she initially used the platform to pull together a lot of disparate record keeping, so that we could bring data from different departments onto a single system, and create a unified database of everyone that we were working with, in any way”.
Such a system was sorely needed, as many contacts had had evolving interactions with the organisation. “Someone might buy a theatre ticket, take a class and progress into training – then become an alumnus or even an artist producing work in the same theatre,” Smith explained. Before adopting Salesforce, each department, from the theatre to the school, university and development department, kept separate records. One person would frequently appear in several different places, leading to fragmentation that could waste time and hide valuable connections.
“Having lots of different bits of information in separate places was no good for efficiency or productivity, or being able to make the best use of that information,” Smith said. “We wanted to have just one record for each person, detailing all the different ways that they’d interacted with us.”
The CRM gave all departments easier access and a clearer view of who they were dealing with – and it also gave managers a better insight into their own operations. “How many of our class participants come to the school? How many of our school alumni go on to become artists working in the theatre? That information is super-important for investment, but we didn’t have any way to collate it,” said Smith. With Salesforce, all of this information was placed at her fingertips.
Another collateral benefit was being able to organise and focus workloads. “With Salesforce you’ll usually have some key metrics on everybody’s home screen, in the form of live data widgets and graphs,” said Smith. “The great thing about CRM is that you can decide what specific facts and figures are important to your business, and make them visible to everyone.” For maximum clarity and effectiveness, CRM tools let you configure dashboards at the corporate or personal level, so it’s not just about maintaining a central source of “truth” but putting the right data in front of the individuals who need it.
“You can also create to-do lists for the day or the week, assign tasks and be confident that everyone knows what they’re working on,” Smith added. “Don’t underestimate how valuable it is just to have that information always visible.”
Because CRM records every interaction with every client, it can even be used to unearth patterns and trends in the data. “Any kind of benchmark that I need to track, the CRM can tell me,” said Smith. “How many people came to our classes last year? I can tell you. I can call up the details of how many individuals, which sessions they came to, and how much they paid. Compared to working from a bunch of handwritten class registers, and maybe a spreadsheet if somebody remembered to update it, you can imagine the hours that saves.”
Although Smith is a firm advocate of CRM, she warns that it can’t run the entire business. Such systems are often designed to manage relationships with people outside of the organisation, and won’t normally offer HR functions such as managing rotas and holidays, nor full-scale financial reporting and forecasting. There are hosted platforms that can offer these services for your personnel and accounts departments, but don't expect them to come as part of the standard package.
Size and geography are no barriers
We've seen how CRM can be transformative in a mid-sized organisation, but it's in the smallest businesses where it can make the most impact. Indeed, many tools – including Dex (getdex.com), Folk (folk.app) and Nimble (nimble.com) – offer per-seat plans starting at one user. That might sound strange, but if you have one staff member who interacts with lots of people outside of the business, it's a smart investment.
Indeed, in offices of any size, it's not unusual for team members to wear multiple hats, and in fast-moving industries there may be no peers or established procedures to refer to. CRM ensures that everyone, from senior managers to new hires, can get an immediate overview of the data they need to make decisions, while automated follow-ups, reminders and notifications help staff to better manage their workloads and keep themselves on track.
CRM can also empower those working in hybrid environments. In a post-Covid world, you can no longer take for granted that colleagues will be personally checking in with one another to verify information or raise queries. There's rarely a collaborative whiteboard, and while chat and online co-working platforms allow remote staff to keep in direct contact, teams frequently work different shifts or in different time zones.
The CRM software keeps people connected, providing complete and consistent information to anyone who needs it. Where team members still use tools such as email and instant messaging, CRM integrations can simplify their workflow, let them do more with the data and ensure they remain in sync with their colleagues. No matter what size your team is, and how it's organised, the right CRM can bring clarity to every role, enabling staff to act decisively and effectively.
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