SMS configuration with CRM

CRM can be configured with SMS integration to work with inbound SMS responses from customer or sales agents.

Maple CRM provides flexible SMS integration solutions and ensures that SMS communications can effortlessly keep running and it can provide continuous and consistent SMS delivery.

SMS marketing is considered to be one of the few marketing techniques that is used to reach the targeted customers at anytime and anywhere.

Consider a sample SMS configuration to know how it could help in a typical business flow. Company A is into telemarketing where it deals with generating leads and scheduling meetings for the sales executives.

With a well placed CRM, you have the records of all your contacts, leads and customers. You can easily monitor whats happening with a lead, which sales agent is working on it and how interested the customer is in your product/service.

But many a times it so happens that the meeting which is scheduled with the Sales Agent often gets postponed or cancelled and it goes uninformed to the sales agents resulting in loss of time and confusion.

So what if you have a system that could confirm both customer and sales agents time schedule and cancel if none responds. So if they receive SMS notification regarding the meeting and if they respond back to the SMS, then only the meeting time is confirmed. This process could happen few hours before the actual time scheduled. This can avoid Sales Agents to travel till the client’s place unnecessarily. This also saves up the time of your sales agent.

Such SMS integration can happen with SMS templates which could be even more easier when things are all automated and responses are sent automatically based on the time duration.

Read more on CRM with SMS integration.

 

Web Based Small Business CRM Software

Large businesses have different goals and plans where as small organization have different goals and different plans. Small Business CRMs are quite helpful in increasing revenues, it smoothens the sales cycle, improves lead conversion rates, provides better customer retention and brings in improved profits etc.

But before implementing such a CRM software for business the entrepreneurs should ask themselves a few questions justifying the need and requirement of a small business CRM like – Why CRM? – Do you even need a CRM solution? and How to choose best CRM? etc.

Small business CRM software are available online thus improving your overall working model as well as it is cost effective. The Web based CRM for small business can be implemented much faster than traditional on-premise CRM systems. Business persons just need to subscribe for required features and pay the minimum subscription amount. Almost immediately the small business online CRM application can be accessed and used in a secure hassle-free manner, without expensive installation or customization. Also, they are location and computer independent, so CRM users can access the software from anywhere at any time.

Web based CRM is a flexible and cost-effective business model. This model is said to decrease cost and allows a company to focus more resources on its main business areas. The operating costs are much lower as web based CRM systems are maintained by the provider and not by the subscriber. Data backup and other security, software upgrades, and application maintenance are all taken care by the provider itself so it requires no additional on-site staff to be employed for maintenance purpose.

CRM improves the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, eases the sales process by automating the procedure and provides a satisfying customer support experience. It also helps in analyzing the business growth and understanding the sales and marketing activities and gives a clear cut view of the business life cycle.

Thus small enterprises can also make use of CRM effectively for their business growth and profitability. CRM is more than a necessity for small to medium to large companies when it comes to managing sales activities and customer service.

CRM Software for Small Enterprises

You may often keep thinking whether you really need a CRM software when you are running a small business. Small Business is where the Sales, Marketing and Customer Service requires more importance. You cannot afford loosing a business here. So you would need to concentrate more and put the right strategy to get more customers as well as maintain the existing ones. This would definitely need a system where everything can be maintained and tracked rather than manually doing it.

One thing a small business owner knows is that most customer relationship management (CRM) systems and solutions go well over their heads and budgets. For the most part, CRM software has been an enterprise application -the kind of solution that requires a dedicated team to develop custom CRM modules to fit the business, another team to analyze the resulting data and reports, plus an IT staff to handle costly upgrades and deployment. The difference between an enterprise CRM and small business CRM software is not only the IT requirements, pricing, the tools and features of the application, but also amount of data that is handled by the system.

CRM software is not a big company application. It is a necessity when it comes to managing sales activities and customer service. Let’s say your business is slow and you need a pickup, if you are utilizing a CRM Software, you can look into your database and see who are the most likely prospects to buy again. Say you were offering products and one of the lead liked it but the price was little out of her range. Given that it was good business time that you were having and you had no reason to drop the price but you had noted it down in your CRM software and forgot about it. Now when you actually need business and you are okay to reduce the price, you go to your database and search for such possible leads and find this prospect and appropriate notes that were added. You contact this lead and make the offer and you may get the deal. You can also send promotional emails for such interested leads and get the deal using a CRM software.

That is just one example of how valuable a CRM Software system can be for your small business. Your database and your customer list are the most important things to your business. Stay in touch with customers periodically and they will remember you and recommend you. Definitely, small businesses need CRM Software as much as the big enterprises!

With SaaS (Software as a Service) model, CRM applications have been able to serve small and medium sized organizations in much more flexible way enabling cost effective and fastest way of using CRM for businesses. The other option of CRM software for small businesses is to have OnPremise CRM where the software will be installed in the company’s location and IT employees are responsible for installing all hardware and software components and integrating it with existing systems. This is considered to be expensive and not a good option for small businesses as this involves costly initial investments and having people working on the software for maintenance and upgrades. This could be eliminated with Cloud based or Online CRM software (Saas) where hosting service provider or the CRM vendor takes care of this whole process and the pricing would be based on monthly or yearly payment.

Having a CRM software system for business allows companies to improve employee productivity, shorten sales cycles and increase revenue, while cutting sales and marketing related expenses.