How to stay ahead in the CRM sector

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Customer Relationship Management(CRM) is one of the most critical organization and task management aspects. It focuses on customer information that helps acquire new customers and retains current ones. The PEST analysis of the CRM industry shows the pivotal factors that affect the industry and long-term growth of a company in that domain.

PEST ANALYSIS

1. Political Factors- Political factors play a significant role in determining the factors that can impact a company's long-term profitability in a particular country or market. The core functionality of a company offering CRM services is to maintain sensitive customer information; therefore, these companies have closely analyzed the Anti-trust laws related to sensitive customer information and intellectual property rights. Rules about data privacy, such as the Comprehensive Consumer Data Privacy Laws, extended to three states — California, Colorado, and Virginia — have enacted comprehensive consumer data privacy laws. Along with this, copyrights and product patents are a couple of the main factors as well.
2. Economic Factors- The economic growth of any business depends on customers. As mentioned earlier, CRM Software helps maintain critical information of a patron that helps in retaining and acquiring customers. Economically underperforming organizations need CRM application utmost. Inflation and Unemployment rates are factors that are while evaluating the circumstances for a CRM product. It affects the ability of customers, whether individual customers, small businesses, or large enterprises, to purchase new products and services. For example, in a high volatility and ambiguity period, companies would be less likely to purchase third-party services as their primary objective would stabilize their financials.
3. Social Analysis- Society and culture are fundamental forces whose understanding helps businesses innovate their products and services according to the local taste and create better customer experiences that fit the local culture. Since this product would be 100% online, linguistics and cultural barriers would come into play, and this would be more complex as you grow and expand internationally. A CRM company would solely operate on trust as it handles vital information and plans for its clients. Therefore, the product must be accessible to all companies and class structures regardless of their demographics.
4. Technological Factors- With the advancement in social media, creating a product and a website to execute this idea would not be a big task. The necessary resources and outline to build this idea from scratch are already out there in the market. According to Forbes, 80% of the employees don't work at their desks and use the internet from their mobile phones. Therefore, cloud-hosted CRM can power many virtual collaborations, more productivity, and project management can also be a tool and solution for enterprises.

COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS

Reporting and Analytics- The most standard requirement of a business is the need for analytical data and reports. Data-driven decision-making enabled by analytics is the most critical factor that helps build, render and follow the right strategies for developing and maintaining customer relationships.

Customization- Customization plays a vital role throughout the entire process of marketing and sales management. The ability to personalize communications adds excellent value to customer experience.

A Competitive Landscape with two main analyzing factors

User Research

1. User Interview- User interviews are a research technique designed to get qualitative information directly from users. Typically, interviews involve asking people questions about how they use a particular system, their behaviors, and their usage habits. Some of my interview questions were:

• What factors indicate the need to consider a CRM software program?
• What are some of the analytics processes you have used CRM software for in the past?
• Share a challenge you faced when implementing a new CRM application in the past.
• What exactly do you expect CRM to do for you in terms of data security and monitor and deliver effectiveness to your employees?
• Is there a particular style of reports and analytics you prefer, or do you intend to use general frameworks, and why?

I do not think my questions are biased as they are all general and do not lean towards my product. Additionally, these are just follow-ups questions, i.e., my main goal would be to figure out what my user's personal choices are and ask as many follow-up questions as possible so I can dig into the roots of the CRM sector. Unfortunately, I couldn't interview anyone as I was ghosted by the people I sent emails to; however, after doing some research and simulating answers on my own, I found a couple of insights.

Answer for "What factors indicate the need to consider a CRM software program?":

"From my experience, I've found that companies often require CRM tools for managing high volumes of customer information. Several factors I consider when consulting with companies considering CRM software include how effective their sales funnels are, how frequently teams communicate with potential customers, and how a CRM application can reduce costs and improve customer satisfaction rates."

Answer for "Share a challenge you faced when implementing a new CRM application in the past.":

Example: "My previous employer wanted to incorporate a CRM program with their social media promotions, and this presented a challenge when trying to integrate the CRM with the company's social media management database. To resolve this issue and create an accessible and efficient integration, I collaborated with the development team to switch our company's social media management to a tool compatible with the new CRM application. Not only did this help improve conversion tracking, but it allowed the marketing team to manage and measure the performance of the company's social media campaigns more easily and accurately."

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Mind Map/ IDEO Map :

1. FRAME:

• "How might I create a CRM product that implements better customization and simpler analytics and reports than the competitors out there?"

2. NARROW:

• Greater customization and Simpler analytics and reports

3. GENERATE:

• Greater customization- Attention to personalized needs, let the user create a framework and select the categories of work issues
• More straightforward analytics and reports- Offer more in-depth analysis, but keep it brief and to the point, less distracting but aesthetically pleasing enough to be considered professional

4. MASH-UP:

• Create a website where the user selects the services and categories of reports that he would like for him. Once that is set, the next part would allow him to choose in-depth our information and the solutions he wants.

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User Journey

The user journey is an example/ visual representation of a customer's steps when completing a specific action, such as completing a sale, signing up for a product trial, or subscribing to a newsletter—the more steps involved to meet the particular activity, the more detailed the customer journey map. Customer journey mapping tools are found in many CRM systems, and they can be created with stand-alone software or devices or even be completed with pen and paper. Customer journey mapping is an excellent exercise to learn more about channel performance, customer engagement, and customer needs. Here are some of the benefits of customer journey mapping: understanding customer needs, improving decision-making, and improving customer experience.

User Story 1- "[Any Company] is a market leader and, as such, is expected to provide the best possible customer experience. Using my CRM software, [company] has become a success story by improving both the effectiveness and productivity of its customer service center.

CRM is used to monitor customer interactions across [company] 's territories.

It allows faster response time to questions and needs raised by consumers, provides effective maintenance of the customer database, and facilitates access to customer information for analysis and strategy development."

User Story 2- "[Company] is known to gamers the world over as the brand behind some of the most popular video games out there. It has a revenue of over 100 million and has one of the largest customer bases in the world.

The company prides itself on providing a continually fantastic experience to its gamers so they can remain satisfied and enthralled long after they've made their purchase. By using Marketing Cloud, [company] monitors social media conversations that are relevant to their products, and service Cloud then helps [company] follow up on those conversations."

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Wireframes

1. A wireframe is an essential, two-dimensional visual representation of a web page, app interface, or product layout. You can think of it as a low-fidelity, functional sketch. Product designers and UX (user experience) professionals draw up wireframes to communicate how they plan to arrange and prioritize features and intend users to interact with its product or website. My product is a flexible, expanding solution that will support and sustain our vision of creating meaningful customer relationships well into the future. It will provide answers and business logic right out of the gate so that businesses would not have to wait for 1–2 years to implement their idea. From there, I hope to provide more outstanding customization options as my product takes off and add more flexibility to provide a more efficient and engaging digital experience.

Wireframe Stage-1 (Initial Look)

Wireframe Stage-2 (Functionalities)

After completing these first app drawings, I now understand how the app will work. I will try to use as few displays as possible to make things as easy as possible for the instructor. Before diving into Xcode to build the app, I'll need to convert these drawings to a design program to document the design requirements.

Conclusion

When reading this post, you may have noted that we didn't go into great depth on the technology. It's all done on purpose. CRM solutions should be evaluated and designed based on business requirements rather than technical capabilities. To avoid being sidetracked, business leaders should focus on what their CRM software should do for their organizations and their customers. Fortunately, as the rivalry between CRM providers heats up, the software is becoming more adaptable. Although implementing a CRM system is still difficult, the technology is improving, the installation process is more simplified, and the failure rate decreases.

Sources

• https://www.productplan.com/glossary/wireframe/
• https://customers.microsoft.com/en-us/story/1348476681139289992-trustmark-insurance-dynamics-365
• https://cxl.com/blog/customer-journey-mapping-examples/
• https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/10090-crm-software-features.html
• https://career.guru99.com/top-10-crm-interview-questions/
• https://pmo.selecthub.com/top-crm-analyst-report-site-vers/?user_journey