5 Things you can automate using a CRM

One of the biggest dai­ly chal­lenges of a com­pa­ny is to increase effi­cien­cy and, at the same time, to min­i­mize expens­es. Unques­tion­ably, a busi­ness can only oper­ate and exist suc­cess­ful­ly if prof­its are gen­er­at­ed. In order to build a finan­cial­ly “healthy” com­pa­ny and suc­cess­ful­ly estab­lish it on the mar­ket in the long term, it is essen­tial to con­tin­u­ous­ly mon­i­tor both mon­e­tary expen­di­tures and rev­enues, as well as to spend time on var­i­ous process­es and keep­ing projects on the radar.
The process of uncov­er­ing ways and means to save time and to accel­er­ate work is called busi­ness automa­tion. With the intro­duc­tion of the appro­pri­ate and ver­sa­tile tech­nolo­gies, the automa­tion of busi­ness process­es has tak­en the world by storm.

There are over a thou­sand dif­fer­ent meth­ods and tools that can help you work faster and smarter in order to achieve the desired goal or out­come. While many com­pa­nies have already fig­ured out how to auto­mate time-con­sum­ing process­es, unfor­tu­nate­ly, they often stop short in imple­ment­ing minor improve­ments that would col­lec­tive­ly sig­nif­i­cant­ly increase effi­cien­cy. This arti­cle high­lights some pos­si­bil­i­ties where busi­ness process­es can be auto­mat­ed with the help of a CRM. You may think that you already have ful­ly auto­mat­ed your busi­ness, but there are cer­tain­ly a few things that will make your work­ing life even more enjoy­able:

You may think that you have already ful­ly auto­mat­ed your busi­ness, but here are some things that can make your work­ing life even bet­ter:

1. Appointment reminders

Do you strive to give your cus­tomers opti­mal ser­vice while also try­ing to max­imise your prof­its at the same time? Appoint­ment reminders are texts and emails which are sent to cus­tomers who arranged an appoint­ment with you or one of your team mem­bers. Reminders help your cus­tomers remem­ber the agreed time and date and they help your busi­ness min­imise down­time.

Appoint­ment reminders are par­tic­u­lar­ly use­ful for ser­vice-provider com­pa­nies such as doc­tors, hair­dressers, con­sult­ing firms, craft work­shops, com­mu­ni­ca­tion agen­cies and many more. Today appoint­ment reminders are val­ued by many cus­tomers because they show that per­son­al atten­tion is giv­en to every cus­tomer and they also make it pos­si­ble to eas­i­ly keep track of dif­fer­ent appoint­ments dur­ing a life full of events and meet­ings. At the same time, as a com­pa­ny, you can be sure that every hour of the work­ing day is paid for and your employ­ees won’t have to wait for appoint­ments.

Appoint­ment reminders can become an indis­pens­able part of a work process for com­pa­nies who pre­vi­ous­ly have to record huge loss­es due to missed or for­got­ten appoint­ments. When reminders are auto­mat­ed in the CRM, your cus­tomers will be remind­ed in advance of the upcom­ing dead­line — auto­mat­i­cal­ly and with­out the need for fur­ther action on your part. You and your employ­ees can con­cen­trate ful­ly on their core tasks, while your CRM helps your clients be in the right place at the right time.

2. 1. Call-back requests

Anoth­er minor process that can be auto­mat­ed are call-back requests. If the cus­tomer does not want to call you or does not want to fill out the con­tact form, it is impor­tant to offer anoth­er option, so you do not lose the poten­tial cus­tomer- offer the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a call-back. This is an easy and quick way to gain a poten­tial lead and saves time for the prospec­tive cus­tomer. Such requests are rout­ed direct­ly to a pre-defined respon­si­ble employ­ee rather than being stuck in the company’s gen­er­al hold­ing point. As a result, valu­able time can be saved, and the inter­est­ed cus­tomer will then be con­tact­ed.

Set­ting up a call-back request func­tion on your web­site only takes a few min­utes, but it will have a big impact. Give your cus­tomers the feel­ing that you are always avail­able to any­one who gets in touch.

3. 1. Recurring invoices

If you have a work con­tract or recur­ring invoic­es, you can set your CRM to auto­mat­i­cal­ly issue and send invoic­es at pre­de­fined inter­vals. Automat­ing recur­ring invoic­es saves time and ensures that pay­ments con­tin­ue to arrive in your account. As more and more indi­vid­ual com­pa­nies are found­ed, auto­mat­i­cal­ly gen­er­at­ed invoic­es rep­re­sent an impor­tant tool for entre­pre­neurs.

Stop wast­ing time cre­at­ing copies, man­u­al­ly edit­ing and send­ing invoic­es. Once recur­ring invoic­es are gen­er­at­ed and cre­at­ed in the sys­tem, you can “for­get” that part of cus­tomer man­age­ment and focus on all the oth­er things that you and your cus­tomers val­ue.

Undoubt­ed­ly, many entre­pre­neurs can con­firm that at the begin­ning of self-employ­ment send­ing invoic­es on time is often some­thing that is over­looked. Ulti­mate­ly, there is a risk that liq­uid­i­ty will suf­fer despite an ade­quate amount of orders or occa­sion­al­ly, com­plet­ed work will not be charged for as it is sim­ply for­got­ten. With the appro­pri­ate automa­tion, you will nev­er for­get to send an invoice and every hour worked will be charged for.

4. 1. Reengage with customers

Some­times it seems that an oppor­tu­ni­ty (Oppor­tu­ni­ty in the CRM = a ver­i­fied and qual­i­fied sales oppor­tu­ni­ty) is lost; how­ev­er, in truth, it could be recov­ered. Dur­ing cus­tomer reen­gage­ment, for­mer or inac­tive cus­tomers are reac­ti­vat­ed. Are there any cus­tomers in your sys­tem who made a pur­chase but did not come back? Or are there any new prod­ucts or ser­vices that you think might be of inter­est to your exist­ing cus­tomers?

The idea of ​​remar­ket­ing is based on the premise that famil­iar things are eas­i­er for the human brain to accept than com­plete­ly new ones. If a cus­tomer has already con­tact­ed you in the past or has pur­chased your prod­uct or ser­vices, then he or she may not remem­ber it, but invol­un­tar­i­ly they will inter­nal­ly store the infor­ma­tion about you. If you then con­tact this cus­tomer again after a time, you will inad­ver­tent­ly be more appeal­ing than com­peti­tors who have nev­er been in con­tact with them before (CAUTION: With­out a doubt, this is only applic­a­ble if your past work with the cus­tomer was very good). With the help of appro­pri­ate soft­ware, you can seg­ment cus­tomers into dif­fer­ent groups and then win them back with dif­fer­ent tech­niques such as a newslet­ter. Or you can con­nect your Google AdWords and Face­book Ads accounts to your CRM and run reen­gage­ment adverts for the select­ed cus­tomer groups.

5. 1. Recurring tasks

If a team is work­ing towards a com­mon goal, it is essen­tial that all team mem­bers are on the same page. When team mem­bers miss dead­lines which, from the out­side, makes you look bad and jeop­ar­dis­es the future of the entire project, you either have to become a bet­ter project man­ag­er or use a tool that will do the project man­age­ment for you. For exam­ple, you can use the recur­ring tasks fea­ture in Bitrix24 to auto­mate task cre­ation. Just cre­ate a task, acti­vate the reoc­cur option, set the fre­quen­cy of reoc­cur­rence, assign the task to a respon­si­ble employ­ee and you’re ready to go.

Recur­ring tasks elim­i­nates the need to fol­low-up and remind peo­ple that reg­u­lar tasks are due. For exam­ple, wages and tax­es have to be paid every month at the same time. Recur­ring tasks such as these can save work­ing time and there­fore mon­ey through automa­tion.

Summary

By using appro­pri­ate automa­tion, both com­plex and unnec­es­sary steps in the busi­ness work­flow can be sim­pli­fied and elim­i­nat­ed. You can cer­tain­ly do this man­u­al­ly by strate­gi­cal­ly decid­ing which steps to remove or ignore, but new tech­nolo­gies and sys­tems can do the same for you.

How­ev­er, it is impor­tant that you under­stand that using a new tech­nol­o­gy or sys­tem will be chal­leng­ing and time con­sum­ing. A CRM offers so many var­ied ways to auto­mate your busi­ness process­es that it is not uncom­mon for you to get lost in the wealth of func­tions. There­fore, it is essen­tial that you have a strong part­ner by your side, one who will guide you and show you the big­ger pic­ture.

It is our belief that “sim­ple col­lab­o­ra­tion” is the effi­cient, future-ori­en­tat­ed key to your company’s suc­cess.

We are hap­py to answer any fur­ther ques­tions you may have. Please do not hes­i­tate to con­tact us.

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