Benefits of CRM automation
Businesses often struggle to juggle the many aspects of customer relationship management. Manual processes like data entry, sending follow-up emails, and remembering customer preferences eat into valuable time. Without CRM automation, staying organized and efficient can feel like an uphill battle. It can lead to missed opportunities, frustrated clients, a chaotic sales funnel, and ultimately, lost sales. Small business CRM offers a lifeline, streamlining workflows and ensuring valuable customer data is centralized and accessible.
With a CRM like automateCRM in place, you can streamline many mundane tasks. You can leverage its unlimited capabilities such as lead management, communication, sales pipelines, reporting, task management, email & whatsapp marketing, and many others. So, let’s understand how CRM automation benefits your business.
Understanding CRM automation
CRM automation steps in as your secret weapon to help you manage and streamline repetitive tasks across the organization. But first, let’s start with learning about CRM automation itself.
What is CRM automation?
Did you know that over 40% of businesses reported data inaccuracy due to manual data entry? CRM automation simplifies the entire marketing-sales-operations cycle by automating similar time-consuming, repetitive, and mundane tasks to avoid errors and boost efficiency.
Here are some basic CRM automation examples:
- When a new lead is captured, it is added to a drip message sequence, which automatically sends engagement messages to leads at defined time intervals.
- When a client accepts a quotation, the quote amount is captured in the Opportunity and Opportunity is marked as Closed Won, updating the targets and pipeline.
- When a Project is created, Tasks are automatically created and assigned to team members based on the Project Type.
- When a support ticket is created, a checklist of items gets attached & an acknowledgement email is sent to the assigned team member. Similarly, when a ticket’s Status changes, the customer is automatically notified.
These tiny automation instances relieve your team from mundane tasks, allowing them more bandwidth to work on other crucial tasks.
Top CRM automation features
If you are on the lookout for an automated CRM system for your small business, it is crucial to ensure it has the following features.
Multi-channel lead capture with Integration capabilities
In a typical business with limited resources and a constant scramble to attract new customers, capturing leads across various channels can feel overwhelming. This is where multi-channel lead capture, a key feature of small business CRM automation, becomes a game-changer.
Imagine a system that effortlessly collects customer information from all your touchpoints – your website, social media pages, Google Ads, WhatsApp, email marketing campaigns, offline events, and lead generation portals. It allows you to capture leads wherever they interact with your brand, ensuring no potential customer slips through the cracks.
By simply integrating all your online platforms with the CRM, you can easily bring all your leads under one umbrella. As a result, distribution and qualification can be streamlined.
Simplified internal lead distribution with Assignment Rules
Assignment rules is a prominent CRM automation feature that automatically assigns incoming leads to the most suitable sales rep based on predefined rules. No more lengthy email chains or confusion about who should handle a new lead.
You can set up rules based on information like lead source, industry, or product interest to automatically assign leads to the most qualified salesperson, ensuring a smooth and efficient handoff. Especially for small businesses with a lean sales team, simplified lead distribution ensures every lead gets assigned carefully, maximizing the effectiveness of your limited resources.
Finally, by automating lead distribution, CRMs allow your sales team to spend more time on building relationships and closing deals, rather than administrative tasks.
Call activity logging with Cloud Telephony integration
By integrating Cloud Telephony providers into the CRM, businesses can centralize call data. Unlike traditional phone systems where you must log calls and take notes manually, and remember every conversation, this CRM automation feature keeps track of call details.
What’s better is the improved call routing capabilities – You can gain insights into call volume and peak calling times. This data allows you to optimize call routing strategies, ensuring calls are directed to the most appropriate salesperson or department. Call logs with timestamps and caller information allow for prompt follow-up, ensuring no potential customer slips through the cracks.
Additionally, some Cloud Telephony solutions offer a feature that helps you record and analyze call recordings to identify areas for improvement in communication skills and sales techniques. This data can be used for coaching and development of your sales team.
Moreover, with AI you can even automate updating call summary, provide call quality feedback & take benefits of AI suggestions on next actions.
Tracking inactive leads and deals
In a business setup where each minute counts, it is crucial to ensure that no time is wasted on cold leads. Assume there is no activity on a lead for 30 days, for example, they haven’t responded to your email or the lead status hasn’t changed. The marvel of CRM automation is that you do not have to keep checking manually. Instead, set up a CRM workflow automation that marks the leads as ‘Inactive’ or deals as ‘Dormant’. This workflow can also notify you about lead inactivity.
By inactivating irrelevant entries, you gain a clear picture of your actual sales pipeline. This allows you to focus your efforts on leads with a higher potential for conversion. Please note that inactive leads does not mean they do not want to buy your products or services. You can focus on the ones that are interested, and revisit the inactive leads later.
Drip campaigns and email sequences
While drip campaigns may be used to build brand awareness and promote special offers, email sequences are designed to nurture leads through the sales funnel. Both types of campaigns allow you to stay top-of-mind with your audience without overwhelming them with constant communication.
Drip campaigns can be automatically triggered by specific actions taken by leads or customers, such as a signup form submission might trigger a welcome email or an abandoned cart could initiate a reminder email. On the other hand, a 3-part welcome email sequence can be designed to nurture new subscribers and encourage them to make their first purchase.
Quote PDF generation from PDF templates
Gone are the days when you needed to create quotations, invoices, sales orders, etc., from scratch each time. CRM automation has taken over the task by providing predefined PDF templates. These templates are readily available in the CRM and all you need to do is populate the details and send them over to your clients. However, the templates can be further customized as per the branding requirements of your business.
Automated time-based reminders on unattended tickets
Imagine your CRM automatically triggering actions based on pre-defined timeframes. For example, a rule might be set to notify the reporting manager if a customer support ticket remains unacknowledged within 24 hours. These automated reminders and escalations keep tasks on track and ensure nothing falls through the cracks.
The main advantages of these time-bound rules is that they hold team members accountable for timely responses, resulting in a positive customer experience.
Automated reminders to customers
Imagine a system that automatically sends personalized notifications to your customers via their preferred channels – email, SMS, WhatsApp, or even calls – based on pre-defined triggers.
For example, a notification might be sent to a customer via email upon dispatch of their order, or a WhatsApp message might be sent to remind them about an upcoming renewal. This feature ensures your customers are kept in the loop at every touchpoint of their journey with your business.
Automated project kickoff on order closure
The transition from winning a sale to delivering on your promises can be a complex one for small businesses. Manually creating project plans, assigning tasks, and setting milestones after every order closure can be time-consuming and prone to errors. This is where one of the best CRM features comes into play.
Imagine this: A customer places an order for a custom website design. The moment the order is closed within your CRM, the system automatically triggers the creation of a project associated with that order. This project includes pre-defined milestones (Eg., design phase, development phase, launch phase) and pre-assigned tasks for each milestone (Eg., gather client requirements, create wireframes, develop website code, conduct quality assurance testing).
This automation eliminates the need for manual project setup and task creation, freeing up valuable time for your team.
Automated task allocation and notifications
This CRM automation feature streamlines workflows, eliminates manual task scheduling, and keeps your small business running smoothly. You can automatically assign tasks to team members based on predefined rules and send real-time notifications to ensure everyone is informed and on track.
Let’s understand this with an example:
Upon project initiation, the small business CRM automatically assigns the project, milestones, and tasks to relevant team members. Next, the CRM assigns tasks, such as sending reminder emails for deliverables or booking resource allocation meetings. Team members receive notifications about upcoming tasks, ensuring they stay on top of their workload and prioritize project activities.
Scheduling reports over email.
In the dynamic world of businesses, staying informed about key metrics is crucial for making data-driven decisions. That’s why CRM automation simplifies report generation, so that you can receive them at designated time intervals such as weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, and so on over email without any effort. This ensures you have the data-driven insights to make informed decisions and propel your small business.
Choosing the right CRM with automation capabilities
Apart from having the features discussed above, your CRM needs to fulfill many other criteria to suit your needs. Let’s check them out!
- User-friendliness: businesses often have limited technical expertise. The ideal CRM should be intuitive and easy to learn, with a user-friendly interface that doesn’t require extensive training.
- Scalability and affordability: businesses are dynamic and anticipate growth. The CRM should be scalable to accommodate a growing team and customer base. Pricing models should be affordable and cater to the needs of smaller businesses, often offering tiered subscription plans.
- Focus on core functionality: CRMs must streamline core processes like lead management, sales pipeline tracking, and customer communication. While some CRMs offer a vast array of features, small businesses should prioritize solutions that excel in these essential functionalities.
- Integration capabilities: The CRM should integrate with existing business tools such as email marketing platforms, accounting software, or project management tools. This ensures a smooth flow of data and eliminates the need for manual data entry across multiple systems.
- Mobile accessibility: In today’s mobile world, the CRM should be accessible from smartphones and tablets. This allows your team to manage customer interactions and access crucial data on the go. However, this completely depends on your requirements.
- Customer support: Reliable customer support is essential for small businesses that may not have dedicated IT staff. Look for a CRM that offers responsive and helpful customer support options.
- Security: Customer data security is paramount. Ensure the CRM has robust security measures in place to protect sensitive information.
- Deployment options: CRMs come in two models: Cloud-based and on-premise. Cloud-based solutions are generally more affordable and easier to maintain for small businesses, while on-premise solutions offer greater control over data security. Choose the deployment option that best suits your priorities.
- Free trials and demos: Most CRM providers offer free trials or demos. Take advantage of these opportunities to test drive the software and see if it feels intuitive and meets your specific requirements.
Benefits of CRM automation
As a result of the automation, your business can reap myriad benefits. Here are the top most advantages of incorporating CRM automation:
Simplified customer data management
Customer data is the lifeblood of any business, especially for small businesses where building strong relationships is crucial. However, managing customer data effectively can be a major challenge for small businesses due to limited resources, limited budgets, lack of expertise, and other factors.
Enter Unified CRM. It centralizes all your customer data, ensuring accuracy and manageability, also eliminating the need for manual updation. Details such as what stage your lead is in, their interactions with your team, customer complaints, purchase history, and other relevant information are stored under a single record, instantly giving you complete insights into customer preferences and behavior. Additionally, the centralization makes it easy to forecast sales, predict customer behavior, and close deals faster.
Increased productivity
One of the primary CRM automation benefits is that it allows your team to free up their valuable time to focus on what truly matters. Here’s how – Your sales team members can automate follow-ups with leads and customers. They can make a quick nudge through pre-scheduled emails or reminder calls. This level of streamlined communication ensures a potential customer is never missed. Moreover, tasks such as generating reports, confirming appointments, closing deals, etc., can also be automated, enabling you to work smarter, not harder.
Improved pipeline performance
Small business CRM streamlines and automates your lead capturing from sources such as websites, social media, landing pages, etc. It helps with lead qualification by automatically assigning lead scores based on website behavior, demographics, and other relevant factors. This helps you prioritize your efforts and focus on nurturing qualified leads with higher conversion potential.
Moreover, with automated lead assignment, you can ensure that high-value leads are managed by the highest-performing salesperson, resulting in faster deal closure and increased sales. Similarly, you can assign enterprise client accounts to the best operations team member for improved retention.
Simplified data analysis
Small businesses can say goodbye to lengthy and confusing spreadsheets, thanks to
CRM automation. Automated data collection, pre-built reports, and pre-populated dashboards allow you to visualize customer behavior, track sales trends, and identify areas for improvement without the need for extensive data manipulation. Besides, advanced cleaning and filtering help identify and get rid of duplicate records.
AI enabled CRM solutions offer predictive analytics that can forecast future customer behavior and sales trends. This enables you to make data-driven decisions about marketing campaigns, resource allocation, and overall business strategy.
Improved customer satisfaction
There are multiple reasons why CRM automation can boost customer satisfaction and retention. A prime example of CRM marketing automation – social media integration allows almost all social channels to be brought into the CRM. This helps view customer interactions and reply to queries on your business’ social media profiles directly from the CRM.
The most common communication channels such as WhatsApp, emails, and phone calls can also be integrated into the CRM, centralizing customer conversations. Finally, the integration of a chatbot to your small business website allows customers to ask questions easily and your support teams to access these queries and reply from the CRM.
By simplifying reachability, fostering quick responses, and centralizing conversations, small business CRM automation can boost customer satisfaction to new levels.
Final thoughts
CRM automation empowers businesses to streamline workflows, boost efficiency, and ultimately achieve more with less. By leveraging automation features, small businesses can gain valuable insights, improve customer relationships, and make data-driven decisions. However, choosing the right CRM requires careful consideration of your specific needs and budget. Here’s where automateCRM comes in.