How does CRM gamification help in driving customer engagement? - Kapture CRM

Gamification is the application of game techniques in non-gaming environments to effect continuous improvement. In the context of a business application, gamification aims to improve employee as well as customer engagement.

The fundamental concept behind gamification is that it works on the human need for competitiveness and makes an individual want to constantly improve themselves and excel at their activities, and do so in an enjoyable manner. Gamification guides the individual on a desired path by motivating them with more engaging and fun processes, rather than stunting their productivity with dull and repetitive tasks.

Where there’s gamification, there’s a provision for a reward system. For your employees, rewards can be provided as points, badges, or creative titles in order to acknowledge their performance on a continuous basis rather than a quarterly or half-annually period. On the other hand, gamification for your customers can be in the form of exclusive discounts, time-based offers, etc., which may give an incentive to the customers to purchase from your business.

With the advent of the digital age, businesses are increasingly adopting technological innovations to improve their internal workings, and gamification is no different. A well-established and efficient software system allows you to capture your customer data and store it centrally, so that your company’s gamification methods can be aligned with your business objectives.

A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software service is one such tool that can be used to effectively implement a gamification strategy. When used correctly and efficiently, CRM-enabled gamification can help convert your loyal customers into the biggest ambassadors for your business.

Identify the Customer

Before engaging with the customer, you need to first identify who they are. Traditionally, marketing teams go through mountains of data to search for the relevant information about their customers, and then manually store and organize it into physical databases. By using CRM, all the monotonous work can now be automatically performed by the system itself, reducing the amount of time that a marketer wastes on the entry of data.

Now, the marketers can focus on the more important part of the process – identifying the leads and ranking them according to their profitability. With gamification, you can create internal competitions by pitting marketing groups against each other and allot rewards for the most productive time, for instance. This will keep them engaged and motivate them to work harder to produce the best results. With the CRM system, you can easily track each team’s progress and visualize it with a leaderboard-style ranking graph.

Interact with the Customer

Once the leads have been recognized and qualified by the marketing team, it’s time for your business to directly engage them and work to successfully convert them into a long-term customer. With the use of the various available communication channels – one popular medium being social networking sites – you can hold contests and raffles and invite your customers to try out your products and share their experiences with their friends and acquaintances on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. This makes the customer engagement process much more lively and paves the way for friendly customer-business relationships.

With CRM integration, you can obtain and share useful information about the progress of the various engagement activities from a single database, facilitating easier access and connectivity between the various teams. By ranking up the progress of each team based on their performance, the teams can see how well they are doing compared to their peers, which may encourage them to work harder.

Retain the Customer

Once the contests have been completed, it is time to analyze and study the results in the CRM database. With powerful CRM analytic tools, you can easily gauge the performance of each individual as well as a team, and train your weakest performers for improvement.

Your sales team can work on this data, and re-align their plans and preparation to effectively change the customer into a long-term, loyal and satisfied customer.

At the end of the day, an engaged customer can only come from an engaged employee. So it is imperative for a business to drive customer engagement with the aid of employee engagement. And gamification is a big help when it comes to achieving this major feat.

How to equip your Sales Team with Modern Toolset for 2016? - Kapture CRM

It’s a common say that accessing right tools and training could increase your proficiency by 50%. It hold especially true at game-deciding at sales arena.

For any organization or industry, sales is always one of most (if not most) competitive arena. Sales professionals are constantly challenged to outdo their competitors and peers. Although seemingly a negotiation as its key skill, one cannot succeed based on just their tongue versatility.

A modern sales professional needs sufficient skill on various levels – Juggling numbers, sales targets, challenging customers and sometimes software proficiency etc…This means that number of qualified sales professional are dwindling.

Here having admittance to right apparatuses, in a flash raises ability of every expert. For instance, consider a similarly focused proficient – Tourde a France Cyclist. Having a somewhat prevalent or second rate rigging can influence position either ways. Same could be connected to a business proficient hustling towards his own particular targets.

Here, we analyze how sales CRM could add to inventory of relevant tools for attacking any sales challenge.

Mobilize your Sales and Conferences

In a traditional sense, every meeting was limited to two possible arrangements – At office or at client’s location.

With a Mobile CRM arrangement gets it transposed to a much wider arena. Now you can respond to your client’s request, sitting at a wide range of locations.

This allows you communicate to clients at a request-only arrangement. You can readily respond to every client query based on requests and requirements, with server acting as a database of requests and requirements.

Analytics and Reporting Software

Whether evaluating one’s own or overseeing team performance, reporting needs to flawless and dependable. When a report is not comprehensive or miss-out on elements, you can track of important processes.

This comes true for situation, where deals cannot be closed overnight. A report progress helps you keep an overview of every turn and progress at your sales activity, delivering systematic optimism at every step.

Win the info-war with Cloud Management

In an age of infotainment, everyone spends an hour for research for every penny paid. Often this takes into form of comparison, product research and other related requests.

A CRM helps you win info-war through providing even last element of information.

A CRM permits you to keep fingertips on quickest item details and most many-sided item components, promptly retrievable from cloud database. It licenses you towards a more orderly premise of information administration and CRM Docs multiplication.

Get alerts about every Opportunity

A successful sales executive cannot be leisurely about meeting times or location. It needs one to follow precise time-table for pending meetings and future meetings.

Through an integrated alarm and alerts system, you gain on-time intimation about running-out-time or location overdue. Now you can confidently avoid glancing your watch, running out meetings and just being plain awkward. As you get an alert, just make a believable excuse or gently bow-out out of a meeting looking for better prospect.

Get and Manage Approvals for every Deal

For a cut-throat competitive sales arena, every sales executive acts an interlinking chain between pressing client and employer. Ie a customer sets-forth a brand new proposal; perspective employer approves it after considering due factors.

A CRM comes with inbuilt feature to manage instant approvals and claims. Now you cut-back on time between client demands, in-order to being avoided cut-short by competitors.With increasing competition, one needs right tools to make right impact. 

How is sales force automation improving your team's capabilities? - Kapture CRM

In the digital age, companies and businesses can no longer afford to rely on the conventional management methods for their sales executives and managers. Legacy functions and software are becoming increasingly insufficient for handling sales processes like lead management, inter-connectivity within the sales force, accessing the product catalogue and current promotions and offers, sales performance monitoring, etc.

Sales force automation (SFA) is the new frontier for effective sales force management. As the name suggests, sales force automation aims to improve the efficiency of a sales team by helping them automate their repetitive and time-consuming tasks and processes with a software tool. More modern SFA systems, however, are not simply concerned with handling the sales processes, but also help in managing and analyzing the outputs and the feedback.

Although some of the SFA elements may be similar to those present within a customer relationship management (CRM) system, they cannot be used interchangeably. One of the CRM modules pertains to sales, while SFA is more specialized in handling the sales activities. That being said, a business can indeed adopt both these systems simultaneously and integrate them to ensure overall efficiency in their business.

Lead Management

The sales team is responsible for bringing in more customers for the business. This process starts by the sales team retrieving all the potential leads that are generated by the marketing team. With a substantial lead list, the team proceeds to organize them based on certain predetermined criteria so that analysis and management can become easier.

For instance, leads can be categorized as qualified, interested or contacted based on how far they are in the sales pipeline. With SFA, automatically schedule tasks and events like sales meetings, follow-up messages, and emails. It can also track a sales executive’s daily plans and activities and set reminders and alarms for delivering on their commitments.

Sales Funnel

Effective management of leads requires an appropriate tool for data visualization and analysis. A sales funnel is instrumental for understanding the distribution of leads and their impact – how many leads are still unqualified, how many have been qualified, how many have been contacted, how many are more curious, how much revenue can be potentially generated from a lead on successful conversion, etc.

SFA collects all this information from the sales database and presents it in a convenient and accessible manner. The sales funnel visually depicts how far along the leads are in the sales pipeline, allowing a sales team to plan ahead and make informed decisions on who to follow-up with and when to approach them.

Data Management

Sales personnel, before attending to a lead, must get a clear view of the product or service offerings and be notified of any ongoing offers and discounts, so that they can convey it to the lead. This requires a system where information is stored and updated centrally, ensuring that each and every sales executive is moving forward with the same data.

Most SFA systems are equipped with cloud capabilities, which give the sales team quick and remote access to their product database on their mobile device, even while they’re on-the-go or out in the field. Sales managers can instantly inform their executives with pricing updates, marketing material, and research reports, making it easier for the executives to make the most appropriate proposals and quotes without a lot of back-and-forth for approval from the managers and reducing response times.

Order Management

Sales personnel can do much better with real-time access to their customer orders. This helps them monitor their inventory and deliver on their promises made to the customers. Once the customer has confirmed a purchase, SFA can automatically generate an order and push it forward in the pipeline for processing. It can also display order information such as time for processing, delivery status, and receipts.

With the aid of this tool, the sales team can help their customers with information regarding their order, without having to search through a pile of documents to retrieve the relevant information. This improves the customer’s experience and ensures their satisfaction and loyalty.

Performance Evaluation

It is important for a sales manager to understand how well their executives are doing on the field. To this end, they need to track every executive’s activities, such as leads met with, follow-ups made, sales meetings scheduled and delivered, and finally revenue generated from the sale.

An SFA system automatically obtains this information from each executive and organizes it into clear metrics, so that the managers can gain actionable insight from it and help improve an executive’s performance by taking corrective measures.

How can you integrate and streamline your Email Marketing strategies? - Kapture CRM

Your marketing mix is severely lacking without email marketing, since you may be missing out on a popular communication medium and engaging with hordes of potential customers. Email marketing, simply put, is the modern equivalent of direct mail marketing, although it is much more diverse in its reach and sophisticated in its appeal.

Email marketing, if done right, can be highly influential in improving your overall marketing efforts – especially your content marketing. Targeting your customers by email can be in the form of advertisements, informing them about upcoming events and offers, or simply to interact with them and build friendly and trusting relationships.

That being said, simply using the electronic medium to speak with your leads and customers without a clear marketing approach can be wasteful, and even potentially harmful, for your business. Delivering emails to your customers with irrelevant content and at inappropriate times can do more bad than good for your customer relationships.

• Locate your target market 

To create the most relevant, high-quality content, you must first understand who you’re creating it for. Perform detailed studies and analyses on your product or service offerings and use that data to predict the most likely candidates who will be willing to purchase from you.

Avoid borrowing pre-made lists, since they may contain a broad range of customer profiles and you can end up focusing your resources on the wrong people, when it could have been better spent on your favorable customers.

Make use of your other marketing channels to obtain more data about your leads and customers and ideally obtain a 360-degree view of them. A CRM software service can come in handy for effectively collecting all the data from your multiple sources and organizing it into a central database for quicker analysis.

• Recognize your market segments 

No two customers are ever the same. Not even the ones that you’ve identified as a potential source for business. A message that is well-received by one customer might not be as valuable to another one. This is why it is important to intelligently segment your customer list to identify and merge customers with similar tastes and requirements.

Some of the parameters on which customers can be segregated can be age groups, geographic locations, purchasing power, transnational histories, preferences, etc. Some emails might be more perceptive to young customers, while some others may be appealing to the more experienced people.

• Produce and deliver relevant content 

The aim of email marketing is to make your customers aware about you and your business, and build long-lasting relationships by providing them with value. Create email campaigns that contain useful information in the form of blog posts, info graphics, papers, or social media posts, amongst others.

By studying the individual profiles of your leads and customers located in the various segments, personalize your content to maximize the chances of conversion. A well-established CRM database with effective segmentation can be extremely helpful in gauging customer behavior and preferences, which can help you to tailor-fit your content based on their expectations.

Another important aspect of successful email marketing is delivering the mail at the most opportune time. Keep track of your customer’s behavior and study current trends so that you can understand when they are at their most approachable state. For instance, your customers might not want to receive messages while they’re at work, or while they’re away on a vacation, and sending messages to them in this time period might cause them to get annoyed and break ties with you.

With an integrated CRM software service, you can even schedule the delivery of your email campaigns so that the widest audience can be reached at the best possible time, ensuring that the message is appropriately received by the customer.

• Analyze the performance of your campaigns 

Simply planning a campaign and sending it out to the customers isn’t enough. You need to gauge how well the campaign was received, where you fell short and how you can improve your messages for your audience.

Some available performance metrics may include how many mails were opened, how many of them were actually viewed, how many customers interacted with the mail to visit your websites, social media pages, and blog pages, how many customers contacted you for further queries, and how many of them even purchased a product or service.

How can customer experience and satisfaction by enriched through CRM systems? - Kapture CRM

In the past decade or so, industries are starting to realize that they are no longer situated at the center of the industry, but rather revolve and work around their customers to ensure that they remain loyal to them and keep on providing more business.

With rapid advancements in technological networks taking place in the same period, customers are no longer limited to simply trusting salespersons on their word for providing good quality and value in their products or services. They can instantly connect with their peers who have previously dealt with the business and have shared their personal experiences.

To overcome this power shift in the market, businesses have started re-aligning their sales and marketing efforts to keep their existing customers loyal to them, instead of constantly trying to bring in more and more customers. A research conducted by Ipsos, a market research company, has concluded that retaining a customer is almost 5 times cheaper than trying to obtain a new one.

This is why a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software service is quickly gaining popularity in most business circles. Although it started out as a tool for managing the sales cycle, CRM software has evolved by leaps and bounds, with most businesses adopting it to effectively manage their customer relationships.

Connect with your existing customers

Although it is important to apportion some of your resources for gaining new customers, focusing on your long-term customers is even more beneficial for the business. Don’t limit your relationship once the sale is made and a lead is converted into a customer. Keep reaching out to them long after the purchase, provide them with value and give them a sense of trust in your business. In short, be proactive in your approach for customer service rather than simply reacting to their queries, concerns or feedback.

A CRM software service is a perfect fit for this purpose, as with its powerful automation features, you can organize each customer’s personal information into a centralized database and schedule the appropriate communication tasks based on their profiles. Inform them about any upcoming events, sales, offers and exclusives that are relevant to their age group, or geographic location, or may even be based on their purchase history.

Custom fit your business for your customers

Businesses gain information about their customers through various marketing channels, such as email, websites, social media platforms, etc. However, this kind of information is never static, since many customers may change their lifestyle, opinions, or purchasing patterns.

Proactively updating your database lets you avoid scenarios where your messages and offers become irrelevant to the customer, since they were more suited to their old self. This reduces the customer’s trust in your business, since they may feel like you don’t care enough about them or understand them.

Include your customers in the decision-making cycle

Creating a product or service mix without realizing your customers’ requirements and needs is one of the biggest blunders that a business can make. At the end of the day, if you can’t provide value to your customers, then they will not hesitate to switch over to your competitors. This is why it is important to first gauge your market by asking your potential customers a lot of questions about their needs and expectations.

Your initial product or service might not be perfectly compatible with the customer, and this gap can be filled by intelligently analyzing the obtained feedback and suggestions and incorporating it in your offerings. By showing your customers that you value their opinions sets the right business image in their mind, and makes it more likely for them to do more business with you.

Appreciate your loyal customers

If a customer feels like they’re merely being pushed into business without being provided with value, they will break ties with you and take their business to a competitor. Loyalty is an important concept, and is especially applicable for an environment that is marked by intense competition and unpredictable customers.

Show gratitude to your customers for choosing you and your business over your competitors. Structure loyalty programs to reward long-time customers and let them know that they’re an important part of the business. Delivering them freebies, deep discounts, and exclusive offers can go a long way in forging loyal relationships.

4 ways by which a manufacturing company can benefit from CRM-based operations - Kapture CRM

Less is more. The competitiveness of every manufacturing company is based on how efficient their manufacturing processes are, and how quickly they can complete a task. Apart from the internal opportunities, effectively handling the business processes is also vital for the company’s success.

Many manufacturing companies serve a turbulent market, which means that they need to proactively and precisely analyze their target segments and prepare for drastic fluctuations, all while maintaining their business and customer relationships. Trying to supervise over all these tasks simultaneously may induce errors and mismanagement, which can be devastating for the business profits.

This is why manufacturing companies are looking to adopt a Customer Relationship Management system for its useful database management and automation tools and features. A CRM software service can be valuable for streamlining the manufacturing and business processes, and creating an organic link between them.

With modern equipment becoming increasingly productive, it is no surprise that product quality is no longer a competitive metric. Since most companies can provide similar, and sometimes even identical, value to their customers, differentiation is now more and more based on how good their service is for their customers.

1. Proactive management

A CRM system allows a company to be more proactive in their business approach, rather than simply reacting to orders. By analyzing the customer database, the company can intelligently predict emerging trends and re-align their internal processes to match the market conditions. For instance, if the data shows that sales are going to be boosted for the next couple of months, the company can prepare itself for the increased demand by purchasing more machines.

2. Seamless communication

Every manufacturing company is divided into various departments that rely on each other to make it successful. This requires each department to convey the relevant data to the relevant department. By using CRM’s cloud capabilities, employees can share a document or communicate with each other through the cloud server. Since the server is centralized, each and every employee can access the conversations and documents wherever and whenever required.

3. Facilitate inter-departmental projects

Working on a long-term project can become difficult to properly manage, since the project is made up of a number of logical, progressive steps, and each step may require a different combination of departments to work together on it. All project-relevant information like meetings, schedules, tasks, documents and conversations are available and accessible on the cloud server, so teams can exchange data effortlessly.

4. Mobile capabilities for on-the-go working

Restricting functionalities to desktops and laptops can hinder efficiency for a manufacturing company. Introducing mobile devices into the mix can be extremely helpful in making quick, informed decisions. This is particularly true for the sales department, who can usually be found on the field taking meetings and making sales. Sales executives can also view the information about the products and services while moving, eliminating the need to carry along a heavy laptop for that purpose.

Apart from that, a mobile device like a smartphone or tablet can be coupled with cloud technology to allow real-time updating of data, so that sales managers can react to any concerns or even an order in the minimal amount of time.

How to overcome market saturation in competitive industries? - Kapture CRM

It is becoming increasingly difficult to enter a competitive market and convert your leads into customers, since there are a unique set of challenges associated with penetrating a market that’s over saturated. However, anyone looking to enter these markets must realize that they have their own risks and rewards.

An over saturated market usually implies a strong demand and is filled to the brim with competitors who are trying to meet it. But, at the same time, it also implies that the barrier for new competitors to enter the market is really low.

Understand your niche

If you want to create a space for yourself in an oversaturated market, you will have to create a niche for yourself, by becoming a specialized market with a highly specific group of people as your target market.Identifying and setting up your business operations to serve to your customers will help you even out the playing field.

Solve problems within the industry

A successful business is usually the one that solves a problem that’s been plaguing the industry for sometime. All industries are imperfect, and if you want to be successful in an industry, you will have to think about improving yourself. This implies that you will have to either bring out innovative concepts and ideas, or do what your competitors are doing, but be better at it.

Find out what your major customer complaints are about and try fixing it. If you continue digging, you are bound to find something of importance that will help your business grow within the industry.

Stay on top of trends

Irrespective of how saturated the market is, the demand never really stops. Hence, it is really important for you to keep yourself updated on the latest trends in the industry. However, don’t just stop at gathering and processing the information. Once you have a good idea as to what the current trends and opportunities are, you need to act on them.

Managing every industry trend can become really cumbersome really fast, so it might become essential for you to integrate the latest data management technology to your benefit – one such solution can be a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software service. Knowing how the latest trends are affecting the industry and utilizing them to your advantage can take your business to higher places.

Create value

The thing about value is that there’s no upper limit to it. You must always keep adding on value to your brand if you are trying to break into a saturated market.Create product and service offerings that provide value to your customers as well as boost your own business, making it a mutually beneficial relationship.

If implemented well, utilizing an effective CRM system will allow you to track all your customer details and obtain insight into their preferences. For instance, initiating good loyalty programs will persuade customers to stay in the loop along with encouraging purchases.

To gain a competitive advantage, you will have to be focused and look for ways by which you can provide value to your customers consistently over a long period of time. What’s important to understand is that there are always opportunities lurking behind the corner,and grabbing them at the right time will allow you to carve your own niche and create the right business image that will appeal to your targeted customers.

3 methods to facilitate employee adoption of a CRM system - Kapture CRM

What is a sales team without adequate support and resources ? Probably a team that cannot produce the desired results for you. If this is happening with your business, then now is the right time to expand and invest in better business implementations.

But let’s be practical. Professional development is pretty much a must in the context of the modern business and competitive circumstances. Whether it is your sales team or any other department, adopting the correct tactics and switching to better technology to reduce the working burden will always create a better working environment for your employees.

Customer Relationship Management software helps you to manage your relationship with your old customers, as well as cater to the needs of your prospective customers. One of the major reasons why CRM is a hot topic in today’s world is because it makes your business functions run smoother and easier. With CRM, you can boost your business efficiency and ultimately result in more sales and greater profits by streamlining your sales process.

CRM software services have radically changed the way that companies do business in the modern world. These systems enhance and enable your business to perform better and are also equipped to automate your internal business processes. As CRM brings in so much value to your business, having the right one in place will help you implement your business activities more efficiently.

In order to make the most out of your CRM system, you have to make sure that the tools are implemented properly. So how do you get it right?

The top 3 ways in which you can get your sales representatives to embrace your CRM system are:

1. Hear your staff’s opinion on your CRM system selection :

If you are planning to get CRM software for your business, then consider including your staff in the decision-making process and seek their understanding and feedback on the system.

Involving your working staff in adopting new systems will always lead you to make better decisions. If you proceed with their selection often, they may feel more committed to make it work. Whether the final decision was taken in line with the advice of your employees or not, they will still feel valued to be heard by the top management. Listening to your staff’s advice might also help you find some pitfalls that you might have otherwise missed.

2. Make the team understand the CRM system’s benefits :

It is fundamental that you make your group comprehend the methodology by which you are wanting to execute the CRM framework. Obviously address the advantages that the group will appreciate once the product is effectively executed. For example, clarify how simple it will be to track deals and commissions, and how simple it will be to oversee approaching leads and prospects.

3. Offer training options that will enrich the CRM system :

Without proper training, your team cannot benefit from the CRM system in place, as there will be no sense of familiarity. Inclusion of adequate training in your implementation program will allow everyone to reach an appropriate level of comfort with the CRM system. If possible, offer training to your employees individually so that they are more comfortable in voicing their concerns and fully understanding the system. Also, make sure that your staff is learning at a pace that they are comfortable with.

To bring out the best out of a CRM software service and to avoid overwhelming your employees, ensure that you implement CRM features gradually and surely. Don’t end up sending your sales representatives into an information overload by implementing all the processes at once.