My husband and I have been running a small business together for just over a year or so. It hasn’t been the easiest first year on record but we persevered in making sure that we got the initial foothold into the market and then chipped away at it to cement our place more firmly. Obviously the main focus during the last year has been clients: obtaining them, supplying them and keeping them and thanks to the personal way that we conduct our business we have more clients then we could have dreamed of, especially for our first year. The next thing that we had to look at was how best to store and use all of the information that we gather on our customers and that’s where CRM online has come in. 

Customer Relationship Management or CRM online is a specific system that is provided by a CRM company that helps you store and manage your customer and sales data in the best way possible. It is perfect for a small business like ours because there is no need to purchase and install software onto the work’s computers (of which we have several different types and operating systems) and we have been able to get rid of lots of the filing cabinets. The biggest benefit of CRM online for us though is that we have been able to input all of the information into one database that is accessible to everyone in our company no matter where they happen to be.

So to give you an example of how we put CRM online to use, as I previously mentioned we pride ourselves on dealing with our customers in a personal way. As we were getting started we had index cards of information such as birthdays, preferred drinks, sports teams, kids’ names and much more. Because it was all on index cards it was hard work for us to keep on top of it and occasionally a birthday was missed. CRM online prompts us to tell us when birthdays are, it will send automatic emails if we promise to respond by a certain date and it can even tell us whether we should be making tea or coffee when a specific client comes to visit. 

However, it is not just about making the client feel valued and welcome. CRM online can be used to analyse data about which of our clients are the most profitable; which of our product lines are the most successful and which are not, etc. These reports are invaluable when it comes to organising targeted marketing campaigns or doing an overview of stock lines or even identifying those customers who have the most potential for development. 

CRM online has become a valued employee of our company and is used all of the time by everyone to ensure that we are working in the best way possible. It really has made so much difference to how we run our business that we all wish that we had made the decision to use it much earlier!

John Jason have been successfully using CRM systems for a long time and he is glad to share his experience.