CRM software has become common in many businesses, but these platforms are often built on out-of-date technologies designed to promote transactional sales. Traditional CRMs can appear outdated and lack flexibility when it comes to customizing their features. Investing in a modern CRM platform with venture capital design expertise can help streamline the training process, encourage team adoption across the firm, and provide your team with more customization options tailored to your specific requirements.
An important role in the modernization of CRM is played by modern UX design. It is difficult to overestimate its importance in doing business. Combining CRM with UX design can revolutionize the way CRMs are used in your business and make it easier than ever for efficiency and customer relationships.
Is UX Design Important for CRMs?
CRM design is one of the most important aspects when assessing sales success. While the CRM Sales and Impact report 2021 study by Arlington Research showed that 52 percent of sales leaders reported CRM platforms costing them revenue opportunities, with figures increasing up to 65 percent in some industries, it is clear that optimizing CRM design could have a major impact. Combining UX and CX, as suggested by UsabilityGeek, can be key in this optimization process.
According to research by Jacob Nielsen, it leads to an average increase of 83 percent on important KPIs such as marketing, sales, and service. Implementing CRM design correctly can therefore lead not only to increased revenue but also lower training time, reduced support costs, and improved customer satisfaction.
How to Improve CRM with UX Design?
The ultimate goal of a successful CRM system should be to have a great customer experience (CX). Improving the user experience can certainly help in achieving this goal, but it is not the only important factor. Together with UX, organizations must acknowledge and address any inhibitors that become evident so that CX within their CRM systems truly reaches its maximum potential. Ridding any such impediments further reinforces the connection between good UX and satisfactory CX for everyone involved. For this reason, aside from enhancing UX, we must recognize any inhibitors of our CRM systems to reach optimal CX levels.
Choose an Uncomplicated CRM System
Deal teams that don’t have excessive time to dedicate to training and onboarding should find a CRM that is recognizable and intuitive. Affinity is one such CRM as it leverages the familiarity of spreadsheets with the power of automation and relationship intelligence for a more comprehensive experience. With an affinity, teams can quickly access what they need using familiar features within cells, while automated data capture ensures that the information available is always up to date. This way, deal teams need not settle on a tool that sacrifices accuracy or accessibility.
Encourage Adoption
When a CRM is easy to use, your team will be more likely to use and rely on it, resulting in a higher return on investment. The success of any CRM implementation depends heavily on user adoption so investing time in finding a platform that is both robust and intuitive is essential. A reliable system should automate activity tracking and data entry allowing users to quickly find the information they need while cutting down on heavy manual effort. This encourages usage and prevents data from becoming stagnant or obsolete, leading to greater usage rates of the system.
Working towards features that are user-friendly yet satisfactory goes a long way in promoting adoption within teams who may have traditionally relied on simpler processes. Understanding user preferences and building features that are tailored to those makes for an invaluable project as it leads not only to high adoption rates but also to repeatable usage that adds value to your organization.
An intuitive dashboard design with configuration by role and position, as well as prioritized activities and suggested actions, are vital components of an effective CRM. The functions offered by a platform must meet the needs of the organization; sales managers will require deep customer insights while territory managers will want to assign locations to reps. Product tracking, inventory management, and FAQs that resonate with customers are also indispensable. Furthermore, a system should be devised so that data can be analyzed for deep-rooted insights into trends and patterns, providing the foundation for salespeople to close deals quickly and service execs to answer customer questions swiftly. A pipeline view is one example of such an approach where each stage in the sales process can be examined along with other necessary features.
Focus on Flexibility
Large-scale enterprise systems are complex and require multiple people to implement, develop, and customize for optimal use. This is why a platform designed for accessibility should make adjusting user experiences easy on an account or system level. The ability to add or modify columns to fit your team’s needs eliminates the hassle of waiting for third parties and allows you to effectively manage relationships with limited partners, support existing portfolio companies, and review new deals all in one place. Underlying this is the common goal of ensuring your team members are well versed on how the system works, decreasing their training time and leading to more productivity overall now and in the future.
Make Content Logical and Useful
Content is a critical component of any application, particularly in an enterprise environment where the app is used by numerous employees with varied tasks and objectives. As such, the system must be flexible and customizable to accommodate the particular processes of businesses. To that end, many CRMs currently integrate data from departments other than sales and marketing, such as accounting, purchasing, personnel management, and more. Aside from these technical requirements, there is another factor for designers to consider: internal business terminology can vary greatly from one company to the next.
When crafting a custom CRM design, the designer must utilize terms that are employed within their client’s organization instead of adhering to industry jargon. For instance, a potential customer may be referred to as an “opportunity” rather than a “lead” within the company; this example illustrates just how important taking local language into account when creating a product can be.
Create Perfect Interaction Tracking
It is often the case that gaps in communication between customer service reps (and even within the internal team) can act as a major source of frustration for clients as well as employees – minor issues can easily cause a breakdown in the service process, which could have disastrous results on the company’s reputation. Consequently, this underscores the unmatched importance of interaction tracking – especially in Customer Relations Management solutions.
When businesses grow larger and client workflows become more complex, seamless interaction tracking capabilities become even more essential – as it allows sales reps to stay on the same page about client requests and enables timely communication for overall better customer experiences. Robust interaction systems also allow for recording emails and calls and providing status updates. Clear and efficient systems of interactive tracking can therefore help maintain quality standards like no other feature.
Conclusion
In conclusion, customer relationship management systems are essential in today’s digital world for helping businesses stay connected with their customers. By utilizing features such as flexible user experiences, logical content design, and seamless interaction tracking capabilities, businesses can ensure that their customers receive the best possible service and experience.
