Almost all companies today use a CRM software system to manage their customer relationships. But is your company making the most of it? To ensure you are getting the best of out of your CRM system, we provide our top tips and tricks.
Internally, we use Salesforce CRM software, so many of our top tip are based on how we use this platform, but you are able to apply them to almost any other CRM software.
Tip One – Managing Data Reliability
There are four key aspects to assuring data reliability: useful data, access rights, requirements rule and data consistency.
Useful Data: as with most CRM software systems they can only hold so much data, even if it is a vast amount. That in mind though, you don’t want to be filling it up with irrelevant data. For example, if you have a lead for a company that has now dissolved – delete it! It is just taking up space, which one day you will need.
Access Rights: every company has different levels of seniority and with seniority usually comes more access and responsibility. CRM software works in the same way. For instance the main administrator will control all other profiles and will grant access to different features or company data based on user profiles. For example, access to HR files would be restricted to HR personnel.
Requirements Rule: a company can control the input of data through various means. For example, by using ‘required fields’, users cannot save records, or make changes to a record until they have completed a ‘required field’. Another method would be to create validation rules, which ensures that data being saved follows certain patterns, thereby preventing users from saving text or letters, where a validation rule shows that the field should contain numbers.
Data Consistency: The use of picklist fields is a perfect example of how to ensure that inputted data is consistent. Users are only able to select from a predetermined list of choices, and cannot save data until they have made a choice.
Watch out for our next top tips which will be on user adoption.