A business’s customer relationship management team is the main line of contact customers will use when they need something from a business. CRM employees most often fall under the customer service category. No matter what type of business you run, the CRM team is vital. Below are a few things that any CRM employee can do to build a better relationship with the business’s customers.
Keep Emails Short and Sweet
A person would be hard-pressed to find an employer that doesn’t give their CRM employees their own sales email account. These business email accounts should always have a professional email address attached to them, so there is no need to worry about needing to use whatever embarrassing email account name you made for yourself back in middle school.
Now that you’ve got a business email account, it’s time to learn how to use it correctly. When communicating with customers, it’s best to keep emails short, sweet, and to the point. Try to keep your language down to an eighth-grade reading level, as this is the standard level used for most forms of written communication, even if you are communicating with adults. After all, it’s better to put something into terms that are “too easy” to understand, than something that would be too difficult for a customer to understand. Keep your sentences short (around 20 words to less) and keep the message to the point. While your email should have a professional tone, it can also sound friendly. After all, a customer is much more likely to have a good experience with a polite employee than an inpatient or rude one.
Another key component of email etiquette is making sure to reply to emails in a timely manner. This doesn’t mean that you need to reply to an email in the same instant that you get it, but you should try to reply within 24 hours (unless you get the email on a day that you are off from work). Unfortunately, you can’t expect the same response time from customers. However, if they do not reply within 48 hours, then send a follow-up email to try to contact them again. Keep the line of communication open until their query is resolved.
Automate Whatever Possible
Similar to how there are CRM employees, there are also a variety of CRM computer systems and software that business owners can pick from. These systems work to automate basic tasks to make the employee’s workday flow by more easily. However, the system needs to be set up correctly. There is not one CRM system that is perfect for every business; instead, the business owner needs to pick the right CRM system that fits their business’s needs.
When picking out a new CRM system, it’s generally best to pick the most simple system that fits all of your business’s needs. While it may be tempting to pick a system that has a bunch of extra features, doing so can sometimes cause more problems than it helps to fix. Because of this, make sure to carefully look through all of the features that a CRM software has to offer. Make sure it has what your business needs. If you want a couple of extras, that’s fine. Just don’t pick a CRM system because it has the most options. After all, there is always the chance that you will pick a system with 100+ options, only to later find out that it doesn’t have the one that you actually need.
Lastly, when working with a new CRM system, it’s best to have at least one employee be put in charge of overseeing its operations. Having a CRM employee do this can be extra beneficial, as they will know how to most efficiently integrate the system with the human-run operations within the CRM field.
Whether you are communicating with customers with genuine human interactions or leaving the hard work up to computers, using both professional email etiquette and CRM software can help to improve your business’s customer relationships.