Your organization has multiple customer-facing teams, the most crucial being sales, marketing, and customer service — and they typically all rely on a customer relationship management (CRM) software for their work.
Implementing a collaborative CRM built to break the siloes between customer-facing teams can make cross-team communication significantly easier. Today we’ll discuss the power of a collaborative CRM, its benefits, and give you a look at monday sales CRM.
What is a collaborative CRM?
There are three primary types of CRM, each focusing on a different aspect of customer relationship management. These include operational, analytical, and collaborative.
A collaborative customer relationships management (CRM) system focuses on streamlining communication between departments directly focused on the customer.
Besides sales, marketing, and customer service, this might include technical support, vendors, and distributors.
Depending on how your organization is set up, a collaborative CRM may also provide ways for customers to contact your organization and for the executive team to provide direct guidance as needed and appropriate.
What are the two main components of a collaborative CRM?
There are two main components in a collaborative CRM. These include interaction management and channel management.
Interaction management
Interaction management focuses on processes that deal with your company’s contact methods or interaction processes.
Interactions generally depend on how the customer prefers to be contacted but may include:
- Phone calls
- Emails
- Texts or chat
- Video calls
It can also include face-to-face interactions, such as scheduling one-on-one meetings or using in-person customer service options to resolve problems.
A collaborative CRM supports interaction management by providing an in-platform infrastructure and supporting information sharing on how clients prefer to be contacted.Channel management
Channel management is intricately linked with interaction management because it focuses on maintaining and improving communication channels.
For example, a collaborative CRM with channel management features may show that customers report decreased satisfaction because of long phone call wait times. This could be vastly improved by hiring one or more customer service reps to handle the telephones.
Together, interaction management and channel management help streamline communication.
Features to look for in a collaborative CRM for streamlined communication
The most crucial aspect of any collaborative CRM is supporting collaboration. This happens through the improvement of interdepartmental communication, as well as through improved communication between clients and company representatives. The exact process may vary slightly based on your company’s unique needs and the CRM software you choose.
However, the best collaborative CRM options will provide features that:
- Allow real-time collaboration within teams and across departments
- Support the collection, sharing, and analysis of customer data and key metrics
- Allow for customization based on your company’s preferences or needs
- Integrate with other essential business tools to provide more features within one centralized workspace
- Provides all these features from a user-friendly interface
Streamlining communication may be the cornerstone of an excellent collaborative CRM, but there are several other benefits your company can reap by implementing this system.
Benefits of using a collaborative CRM
Key benefits of using a collaborative CRM include:
- Boosted cross-team communication and information sharing: When your customer-facing teams can communicate with customers and share relevant information, the client experience is more cohesive. Using a collaborative CRM such as the monday.com Sales CRM, you can access customized templates, share project progress, and send client files directly through the platform. This can increase customer retention, improve your lead-to-customer ratio, and boost your bottom line.
- Streamlined routine business processes in customer-facing departments: A collaborative CRM helps streamline routine business processes by automating recurring tasks, including forms and e-mails, and allowing work in client-facing departments to be done through one centralized workspace.
- Improved customer service overall: Store information on how customers prefer to be contacted, what they like best about your communication channels, and what their pain points in contact processes are. Then, use this information to make informed decisions on how or when to make contact and where to make upgrades to existing channels.
- More comprehensive analytical picture of the customer base: When all pertinent information is stored on a single database, it gives a more comprehensive view of your company’s customers without the added hassle of accessing multiple programs or files to gather the data you need.
Examples of a collaborative CRM in use
A company decides that they want to improve customer service. Its leaders decide the best way to do this is by better supporting cross-team communication and information sharing. Thus, they decide investing in a collaborative CRM is the best option for their unique needs.
A collaborative CRM would start with a basic customer relationship management system that stores key information about each customer and how they’ve interacted with the company. But, since it’s a collaborative CRM, it would also help manage communication methods and the channels that support those methods. After training employees to use the new CRM software and making a few alterations to the company’s culture, the business can see significant improvements across the board in customer-facing departments, such as sales, marketing, and customer service. Representatives are better able to share everything from customer preferences and sales history to project status. The company benefits from an improved reputation, higher customer retention rates, and better profits.
How to start collaborating better with monday sales CRM
The monday.com Sales CRM is a cloud-based customer relationship management platform that features a diverse set of business tools that enable you and your team to nurture customer relationships at every step. This tool also enables collaboration between departments and individual team members.
monday sales CRM helps your company collaborate more effectively by:
- Enabling real-time collaboration: Team members and different departments can work together in real-time using monday workdocs. Share information, create reminders, and get input from different departments to support better decision-making.
- Supporting customized dashboards: Support your teams with the information they need most by using customized dashboards. Add as many or as few columns and rows as your company needs to provide the most essential information on a single page.
- Centralizing client communication: Integrate your favorite email provider to communicate more efficiently with your contacts. Track interactions and use personalized email templates to make interactions easier.
- Saving time: Automate routine tasks and approvals to save significant time that can be better spent elsewhere. You can also integrate your favorite business tools to reduce time spent accessing multiple applications.
By now, you likely know what a collaborative CRM is and how you can benefit from it. However, we’ve answered a few FAQs below if you still have questions.
FAQs
What is an example of a collaborative CRM?
An example of a collaborative CRM is monday.com sales CRM. The customer relationship management platform allows for real-time collaboration, data storage, information sharing, and crucial tool integrations that further streamline company processes.
What are the benefits of a collaborative CRM?
The primary benefits of a collaborative CRM include improving customer service and boosting cross-team communication and information sharing. Other benefits are streamlining routine processes and allowing for a more comprehensive analytical picture of the customer base.
Boost cross-team communication and streamline business processes with a collaborative CRM from monday.com
A collaborative CRM focuses on boosting cross-team communication by managing interactions and the channels that support them. Your company can also reap the benefits of time savings and profit increases through streamlining business processes within the CRM.
Using monday sales CRM allows your team access to the features they need most, so your organization can reap the most benefits.
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