Category: Web Applications

How To Find The Best CRM For A Small Business

October 12, 2019

In our earlier articles, we covered topics that dealt with CRMs in general, when it’s the right time to invest in CRM software and why companies decide to implement such complex systems. In this piece, we will explain what to look for in a CRM and how to choose the best CRM for a small business or a startup.

You may think that a little bit of Internet research can do the job and help you choose the ideal CRM for your company. However, that’s a misconception that is common among small business owners and managers.

The reality is that there are more CRMs than you can imagine. The market has grown astonishingly fast in recent years and CRMs now cover an enormous specter of online businesses and organizations.

With so many options available, it’s harder than ever to find the optimal solution that fits a specific business. This may cause you to look into general CRMs that can handle a wide variety of companies, but that is rarely a good decision.

While most CRMs should be able to do the job for a small business or a startup, general CRMs will require much more time and effort to run smoothly. For example, you will probably need to create lots of custom modules, features, and records, if you decide to choose a CRM such as HubSpot or Microsoft Dynamics.

Needless to say, no business can afford to lose precious time like that.

Conversely, if you choose a CRM solution specifically designed for your niche, you will have most of the necessary features pre-installed and ready for use. This alone can save you days and weeks of work on your new platform.

So, let’s delve into the matter and explain how you can choose the best CRM software for your company as well as what you should look into before making the decision to buy a CRM.

What to know before you buy a CRM

Before you buy or even start looking for a CRM, you should outline your company’s goals and objectives, in both the short and the long term.

Consider how a CRM can help your business achieve its goals and don’t hesitate to consult your sales department before you make any decision.

Your sales representatives will spend the majority of their time working with the CRM software you choose. It’s important that they’re on board with the specific solution that you have in mind.

The next step is to specify your budget.

Be realistic. Evaluate how much you can invest and calculate whether or not the investment can help you achieve the goals that you outlined. This is arguably the hardest step for most business owners because they often expect instant returns on the investment.

Keep in mind that it may take some time for your employees to fully adopt the CRM and your company to start reaping the benefits.

What to look for in a CRM

When you start researching CRMs, you’ll want to pay attention to what features and functions each solution offers. You should be looking for a solution that supports the widest array of options, which includes:

  • A customer database that allows you to save all the communication history with every client
  • Sales management tools that allow you to streamline the sales process and monitor your sales progression
  • Access control that will help you assign viewing rights and run multiple teams within your CRM
  • Task management overview of completed, ongoing and planned tasks and activities
  • Automated workflows that send out emails, updates, reminders, etc.
  • Powerful analytics that will let you assess your marketing efforts and adjust your advertising campaigns and strategies
  • Mobile support for smartphones and tablets
  • Integration with the most popular online services, including billing solutions, social media, marketing programs, etc.
  • GDPR compatibility
  • Free demo or trial version that will allow you to test the product for yourself.
  • Exceptional customer support and training program

Once you’ve covered all these features and functions, you may want to look for additional options, such as:

  • Niche-specific modules for your business
  • Mobile apps for Android and iOS devices
  • Integration with other CRMs (in case you need to switch CRMs in the future)

Source: Simply-CRM

AI Virtual Reality and Internet of Things

How Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality, and IoT are redefining the Hospitality Industry

June 16, 2018
Whenever it seems that customer expectations can’t rise any higher, they do. To continue to earn customers’ loyalty, hospitality brands are embracing technology. And in particular, they are finding that Artificial Intelligence (AI), Virtual Reality (VR), and the Internet of Things (IoT) offer a mutually reinforcing equation of excellent service:
 

 1. AI helps brands personalize the customer experience

Hospitality brands are increasingly on the hook for personalizing customers’ experiences the way Amazon recommends purchases and Facebook recommends ads.
While the idea isn’t new–rewards programs for capturing customer information have been around for decades–what’s different is that consumers expect continuity between their online and offline experiences. Guests want an offer they receive on an app to be valid at checkout, to fix an in-person service issue by chatting with the brand on Facebook Messenger, and for hotels, taxis, and airlines to remember their preferences. Because private Social Messaging conversations are asynchronous and persistent, they tie guests’ pre- and post-booking conversations together so service agents always know their history.
It can take a lot of work to unify all that disconnected data, which is why hospitality brands are investing in data warehousing and algorithms to help them know guests better than they know themselves.

2. Virtual reality allows travelers to try before they buy

VR allows brands to do more storytelling. VR is often touted for its ability to get viewers to empathize with what they’ve seen to a greater degree than is possible in video or print. This is why tourism boards from Wales to Singapore have launched innovation funds and VR documentary series to tell their stories in ways that strike an emotional chord. You may have seen the virtual reality office videos from your doctor’s clinic straight to your laptops. The impact of VR in marketing is definitely transformative and imperative for all types of brands.

3. Integrating home life with travel life

Have you heard about the Internet of things? Yes, an idea that has changed the world. You can have access to your home appliances while you are traveling or at a remote location.

Today, AI, VR, and IoT in hospitality are all converging. More connected devices mean more data. That means AI algorithms are trained on better datasets and can perform more functions. And a greater understanding of guests’ interests, desires, and experiences means more interactive and engaging VR experiences before, en-route, and at their destination.

As customer expectations rise, technology offers an answer. The challenge for hospitality brands is investing in the right systems before it’s too late.

If you’ve enjoyed reading this article, please share it with your friends and colleagues. Thanks

Chatbots

How Chatbots Will Change Call Center Customer Service in 2017

April 21, 2017
Chatbots? It’s the numero uno buzzword of 2017. Basically, we’re talking about artificial intelligence (AI) that is able to understand human language to enhance the user’s experience. Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, predicts that “the future of technology lies in human language” and that “conversation is the new interface, and bots are the new apps.”
A chatbot can have a meaningful conversation with a customer. The customer poses a simple or complex question and the chatbot is able to give a sophisticated answer. The tech industry has embraced chatbots with vigor – from large corporates to innovative startups. They all see the inherent value of this technology to their organizations especially in the realm of customer service. But are chatbots a passing fad or here to stay?
Out with the Apps, in with the Chat
 
Chatbots are most certainly here to stay and you will see a swarm of them being deployed across a range of platforms. Thanks to the natural language processor we now have a simple means of interacting with technology. We could say that our digital assistants like Amazon’s Alexa are the forerunners of this chatbot explosion. Siri also serves the function of “understanding” what we are asking for it. They can easily recognize our voice commands. Chatbots, on the other hand, respond to the text. This has been a long road of attempting to get computers to understand the human conversation. Everyone has jumped on board trying to crack the seemingly impossible code to our human language. Since 2014 we have seen chatbots start appearing to the public. There was Microsoft’s Xiaoice and Facebook’s M. The big giants like Google are also developing their own chatbots. Twitter has their chatbots interacting with customers automatically with their new welcome messages and quick replies. Large tech companies are even assisting smaller businesses with creating their own chatbots as there is a race to see who will control the platform for all chatbots. This basically means that we are sure to see an acceleration of this automated technology erupting across the web this year.
 
The Employee That Never Sleeps
With pattern recognition and machine learning the chatbot can understand a customer’s typed commands or questions. If you are a business that deals with customers on a daily basis you are well aware that there are certain questions and issues that come up all the time. Your chatbot is never going to sleep so it can handle these basic questions from your customers with ease. They can reply in real time to the customers needs raising your customer service level in the process. Your chatbot will be your best customer support agent in 2017. The movement to elevate customer experiences with “botsourcing” of basic communication is catching on like wildfire.
 
The Rise of the Call Center Chatbots?
So why would a call center, that doesn’t “sell” a product or run a chat messenger, put time and resources into building their own chatbot? The most practical use is to improve customer service. At call centers, when there is a high call volume, we frustrate our customers with long wait times and many abandon the call and head over to our competition. If you had a chatbot that could handle all of the low touch requests you could see a drastic reduction in the customer waiting and a surge in customer satisfaction.
A Gartner research study found that “only one-third of customer service interactions will require human interaction by 2017.”
This would alleviate understaffing issues especially for smaller businesses who might not have as large a budget for call center staffing as the big giants. The use of a Chatbot would substantially lower expenses for your call center. With the Chatbot taking care of the easier questions from customers, the agents would be left to offer expert customer service for clients needing more complex assistance. In this new automated digital world that we live in, customer service is the new differentiator. If you are able to offer superior service with the assistance of a chatbot, you will leap ahead of your competition.
There are many tasks that chatbots can do better and faster than humans and they should be sent to work on them straight away. But high-touch interactions still require human communication where your agent is able to spend time completely hearing what your customers ask. Chatbots tackle general communication tasks leaving more time for your agents to truly deliver exceptional service to their customers. You now have the time to do more for your customers not just rely on your chatbot minions to cover the basics.
 
From Trend to Best Practice Overnight
It might seem like a new trend that’s just starting out its life cycle and might take some time to fully take off – but that’s incorrect. In this rapidly ever-evolving digital age – useful automated technology like the chatbot will determine the future communication between customers and companies. They have entered the workplace, they are your new, efficient employees who work 24/7 and keep your customers smiling. At the moment they function as customer service enhancers but their full capabilities have yet to be realized.
2017 might be the year of the Rooster in the Chinese Calendar but in tech terms – it is the year of the chatbot!
Source: Contact Center World