How Automation in CRM Can Revolutionize Your Business

Utilizing CRM software is a strong indicator that your business is putting a premium on scaling and development. 

No matter the size or type of your business, your company has workflows / processes that require following the same set of recurring actions. However, spreadsheets and repetitive manual recording can only work for a while…

This is where an automated workflow comes into play.

What is CRM automation?

CRM automation is the capacity of a CRM system to automate recurring manual assignments. If done correctly, this can conveniently streamline the entire company’s workflow and drastically boost its employees’ productivity.

Automating CRM has the potential to upgrade a broad range of departments across sales, marketing, customer service and finance.

What workflows can be automated?

While every business has a distinct set of needs for its day-to-day routine, some tasks can be found across all industries. Here are some examples of workflows that can be automated.

Lead Management Automation 

Lead management and data entry are both mind-numbing tasks that are just begging for automation. An automated workflow can take the guesswork out of assigning leads to your sales representatives. 

Through CRM automation, you can set up rules or guidelines and watch as the system does the work for you. You can even create sales matches based on various criteria like region, product, and industry. 

By implementing an automated workflow, courtesy of your CRM automation system, you can easily eliminate manual errors and speed up the overall process, ensuring your leads are followed up in a timely and effective manner.

Lead Nurturing Automation

CRM automation can assist you with drip emails (if tightly integrated with Marketing Automation), follow-ups, lead scoring, metrics, and even reports. A highly efficient CRM can record sales and marketing engagement as well as set corresponding scores for every lead generated. It can even automatically push nurturing emails and take advantage of opportunities based on the data it gathers.

Calling Automation 

An efficient CRM can also offer telephony automation. This can include automated tasks like call recording, one-click calling, automatic notes, automated follow-up emails, and direct reporting on regular calls. The system can also set up tasks that need to be accomplished after every call to the relevant sales rep, increasing productivity and efficiency.

Pipeline Management Automation 

Businesses with sales pipelines involving multiple stages would greatly benefit from CRM automation. 

By implementing an automated workflow, it’s easy to simplify tasks like transferring ownership from one rep to another the moment an opportunity makes it to a new stage and creating activities every time an opportunity reaches a new stage in the sales cycle. Another example is triggering the system to move a lead to the next queue in your pipeline once it responds to an email about scheduling a sales call.

A high-functioning CRM automation system could offer you the key to improving multitasking within your company and increasing your staff’s productivity, all while establishing a dependable and winning set of best practices.

Customer Support Automation 

This is one of the crucial parts of the customer experience. A good CRM automation software can set up a system that will empower the customer support team by sending quicker responses to flagged concerns, assigning reps to particular cases, and handling inquiries from regular clients.

Finance Team Automation

Gone are the days of manually sending out every invoice to individual customers every billing cycle. With an automated workflow, you can task your CRM to trigger each time a client completes a purchase. 

The system will also automatically assign an action based on specific periods to ensure that all invoices are sent out on time. This is especially valuable for B2C companies that face a high volume of transactions. Other companies that particularly benefit from CRM automation are businesses that use a subscription model for example, where CRM can easily help automate the renewal process.

Benefits of an Automated Workflow

To better appreciate the value of CRM automation, it’s beneficial to keep in mind the distinct advantages that CRM tools and automation offer.

CRM tools are created to make the lives of their users more manageable. They are utilized to ensure that every aspect of customer relationships from external interactions to retention delivers consistent quality. 

Meanwhile, automation is implemented to free up employees’ time so they can focus on more high-value and strategic tasks.

Combined together, these two can indubitably transform any business into an industry leader. 

Here are some of the benefits of CRM automation.

Quality, Accuracy, and Consistency 

An automated workflow can drastically lower the risk of human errors. The majority of data only needs to be entered once instead of being rekeyed multiple times. Hence, errors in transcription are less frequent and can even be completely removed with a single adjustment. As a result, records can be as accurate as possible. 

With automated workflows, everyone in the team follows the same path, driving consistency and best practices across that team.

Operational Efficiency

Creating templates and distributing forms are advisable ways to handle repetitive documentation requirements. CRM automation can offer boilerplate options along with customizable templates that users can implement as and when required. 

With these solutions, the productivity in the workplace can skyrocket as unnecessary paperwork is eliminated, and employees can free up their time to work on other high-value tasks.

Superior Customer Experience 

CRM automation can deliver valuable data on earlier contact points and communication with your customers. CRM software can offer a detailed rundown of each contact made with a specific customer and their corresponding reply to those interactions. With automation, you can use the information gathered from the CRM setup to assign or designate particular triggers. This avoids duplicate messages that would inevitably overwhelm your clients. 

Automation can help ensure that the right lead, opportunity or case is allocated to the best person in your business able to manage it. You set the rules and the automation will do the rest, ensuring your customer needs are met in the best possible way.

Better Cash Flow

An automated billing process virtually guarantees that all your invoices are sent on time. You can also easily track payments and communications. After all, punctual billing typically results in faster payments from clients and, consequently, better cash flow for the business.

Final thoughts

The goal of implementing software can be broken down into two aspects. One is to provide a more streamlined organizational structure for your business, and the second is to automate the majority—if not all—of the common and often repetitive tasks. You can utilize the software to make not only your life but also the lives of your employees easier and more convenient while delivering error-free results to your clients.

CRM automation is the answer to these concerns, with automated workflows set up via this system going beyond customer relationships to reach even your business’ finance team.

Conclusion

To fully maximise the potential of your business, you must understand your market and customers, analyse trends, buying habits, and purchase history. Then, use that data to inform your customers’ interactions with your brand across the entire customer journey. It is about being relevant, timely and personal.

While automation plays an important role here, it’s also critical to empower your customer service representatives who handle client concerns with a CRM tool that contains a wealth of insight about your customers.

Ultimately, properly leveraging your CRM to enhance CX gives your brand a competitive advantage, leading to increases in customer satisfaction and sales, while resulting in a decrease in customer churn. 

For more information on CRM for Customer Service read our whitepaper.