Tech Tuesday - Customer Relationship Management

Last week, we talked about how we use Salesforce as our Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, so let's dive a little bit further into what that is and why we use it. 

A CRM is a great way for you to keep track of when and how you communicate with your customers, and to keep track of your tasks, helping you make sure that things don’t fall through the cracks. You may already be keeping track of your members through a Member Management System, like ABC Financial. But, if not, or if you’re limited on the types of things you can track in that system, a CRM is a great tool to keep you organized and working efficiently.

We use Salesforce here at PFC, but there are tons of other CRM platforms. Many of the software services mentioned in this blog use what’s known as a “Freemium” model, giving you access to most of what you need for free and allowing you to add different features a la carte that will help as needed. Features you may choose to add on include enhanced reporting and access to their prebuilt “playbook” of task automations. For example, HubSpot has a great free CRM that integrates easily with systems like QuickBooks, MailChimp, and even Facebook. 

In our CRM, we track as many tasks and notes as possible so that we can help you, our customers, grow to your highest potential. We take notes of when we’ve called, emailed, or taken an order, so that we aren’t calling you more often than necessary; this helps by saving you the headache of too many calls, as well as saving us time to allow us to have more fulfilling calls each time we are on the phone with you.

Each customer in our system has their own mini-dashboard letting us know who places orders, if they have access to our Members’ Club information, if they’re receiving our emails from MailChimp and if they utilize our online ordering platforms. We also keep data about year over year growth to make sure that you are continuing to thrive and to make sure that we are doing everything we can to help your business.

If you’re tracking your members visit frequency, whether they are working with a trainer, or any other detail about your members, you can keep those metrics in your CRM to help better serve your customers, and ultimately, your business. Having this information readily at your fingertips helps your team work more efficiently and gives your customers a better and more personalized experience.