Welp MagazineA powerful CRM (Customer Relationship Manager) is a great tool for any business that values Internet leads. Managing a segmented list of subscribers is essential to following up with leads in a timely manner, providing them with the service they are seeking, and convincing them that your brand is trustworthy. Dealerships have unique needs when it comes to managing leads, and there are plenty of CRMs out there that cater specifically to the automotive industry.
What Is A CRM System?
A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system helps manage customer data. It supports sales management, delivers actionable insights, integrates with social media and facilitates team communication. Cloud-based CRM systems offer complete mobility and access to an ecosystem of bespoke apps.
Why Do You Need A CRM For Auto Dealers?
CRM for car dealerships lets you capture more leads, track them more efficiently, reply to them sooner and earn their trust quicker. For example, you can build a database that can easily be accessed through a dedicated mobile app; then you can use that mobile app to quickly contact past and potential customers to respond to questions or address issues.
Having a CRM can save you from spamming your past customers with outdated information. With a CRM system, you can keep track of your contacts and how to best serve them. A CRM will make your sales reps more efficient, and increase the gross revenue per employee.
CRM can also be used for internet marketing, email marketing, direct marketing, selective marketing and database marketing. CRM systems, therefore, find applications across a comprehensive range of marketing channels.
But I would like to bring your attention to something you might not have considered.
Many auto dealerships have a website, per the trend of internet presences. What you may not have considered, is that Auto dealerships also need an internet presence in social media.
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest & LinkedIn all can be a huge help to your business.
The reason is simple: In today’s day and age, Customer Service has to have a social media aspect to it.
When a customer has a question or just wants to drop you a note to say hello or share an experience, they’re doing it on social media.
Without a presence on social media, you are losing out on important business interactions.
For example, you’re at a car show at a local hotel. Some car enthusiast has a question about a product or wants to know more about your business.
Social media is where they turn to get their answers.
Social media socializes your business. Social media bridges the gaps between you and your buyers. If you’re not on social media, you’re making it more difficult for people to connect with you and you are missing out on key opportunities to interact with your target audience.
Benefits of a CRM For Auto Dealer
Most auto-dealerships would be grateful for any sort of help in the matter of Customer Service, and CRM is a great way to streamline the process and make it more efficient.
It’s easy to assume that when you buy a new car from a dealership, any questions you have about the vehicle are taken care of by your salesman. Unfortunately, however, that’s not always the case, especially if the person leaves before the sale is complete.
With CRM, you can eliminate the gap in customer service by making it easy for past customers to reach someone quickly, and by setting up auto-messages.
If a customer has a question about a certain aspect of their vehicle, rather than having the customer call the dealership and wait on hold to talk to someone, a customer-service rep can use the customer’s records to look up their contact information and send a message.
In addition, by using the system to keep track of past inquiry, you’ll have everything in one place. The last thing you need is to head down to the lot with someone only to have the employee who worked on their vehicle a year ago.
3rd Party Apps for CRM in the Auto Industry
While working under the assumption that you are buying a new vehicle and that it has already been sold, some customers might still have questions about how to handle a specific aspect of the vehicle (such as programming a nav system, perhaps).
Creating customer profiles that can be customized to a degree can help your team quickly send customers the information they need. Locate them in the system, send them a message with a direct link to documentation. Maybe they’ll have a question and need to call or walk in, but that’s easier and less time-consuming than having them search through the entire system for the information.
A CRM system reduces the amount of time it takes to respond to customers and increases the efficiency of the process itself. When a customer has a question about a certain aspect of their vehicle, rather than having the customer call the dealership and wait on hold to talk to someone, a customer-service rep can use the customer’s records to look up their contact information and send a message.
In addition, by using the system to keep track of past inquiry, you’ll have everything in one place. The last thing you need is to head down to the lot with someone only to have the employee who worked on their vehicle a year ago.
There are plenty of third-party apps that can help you with your CRM system. For example, Google Maps can help people find your lot. By putting it in your Google account, you can add a link to Google Maps, which can be found anywhere you’re making contact with people.
Another third-party product that is a great match for auto dealerships is Contactually, which combines CRM with follow-along apps like Trello, Asana and Evernote to help your system run smoothly.
By taking the time to take care of your system, you’ll find it helping you out when you’re working with clients. Give it a shot and see if it can’t help!
Knowing which CRM to purchase for your business involves knowing which software best fits your marketing company, with the flexibility to adapt to future needs.
There are 4 main types of CRM when it comes to marketing:
- Customer Relationship Management
- Product Relationship Management
- Marketing Relationship Management
- Sales Relationship Management
A customer relationship management (CRM) system helps you keep track of customer details and helps you communicate quickly and flexibly at all stages of the customer journey. The many features of CRM software can provide a level of sophistication for marketing-sales activity not available through other tools.
Sales Relationship Management (SRM) software allows sales organizations, sales reps and sales managers to easily keep track of sales leads, manage proposals, track email campaigns and collaborate. Businesses can choose from a variety of sales relationship management software for their specific needs.
CRM Software
CRM (customer relationship management) software helps companies track and manage leads and prospects through sales lifecycles. CRM software enables marketers to focus on the right marketing activities that generate sales, while automating tasks that don’t bring in revenue.
The solution includes software, training, and consulting for all of the tasks associated with obtaining and managing contact information. The platform offers an integrated approach to capturing and nurturing leads, communicating with prospects and managing customer relationships.
Sales Relationship Management (SRM)
If a marketer wants to help its sales reps be more effective in gathering and communicating information about customers, a sales relationship management (SRM) software is a viable option. The system is designed to assist sales teams in managing the CRM by capturing, storing, and utilizing data from the CRM. Sales reps access and use the data gathered and captured from the CRM with the goal of being more productive than their competitors when it comes to the sales process. SRM software typically works in conjunction with a CRM system and offers the ability to enhance the productivity of salespeople, track revenue and exchange data between salespeople, customers and marketing tools.
Marketing Relationship Management (MRM)
Marketing companies might find a marketing relationship management (MRM) system to work best. Rather than making sales the main focus of a relationship management platform, MRM software focuses on the customer lifecycle and helps marketers nurture relationships leading to the point of purchase for all company engagements. Relationship management software assists marketers with customer relationship management, campaign management, and business contact management.
Product Relationship Management (PRM)
Marketers at manufacturing companies tend to use the product relationship management (PRM) system for customer relationship management (CRM). The system allows companies to organize product data, automate the management of sales and customer relations and capture and leverage product information by country or territory.
Software forms the basis of a CRM. Step back and consider what you need your software to do. Do not get swayed by flashy features or catchwords or promises of a right-off-the-shelf fix to all your problems. Document your business processes and discover what you need your software to do for you.
The first step in selecting the type of CRM that is best suited to your business is to take a long hard look at your business processes and the existing customer management and marketing processes. The second step, which we will take up shortly, is to find a system that best suits your business processes, your present customers and your future plans. Ask the following questions:
- Do you have a physical shop or do you run your business online?
- What do you do? What products or services do you provide?
- Who are your customers?
- How do they learn about you? Do they find out about you through word of mouth or do they find you online?
- Do you run loyalty programs?
- What type of calls, enquiries, messages or emails do you currently get from your customers?
- What documentation do you have from your customers?
- What do you use for phone numbers, e-mail addresses and details of when customers buy the products?
- How do you get that information in the first place and who enters it into the system?
- What are the names of your customers?
- How are you going to collect all the relevant information about your customers?
Let us start with the term CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and you’ll see a big difference in the definitions of the term. The most basic meaning, and the one I will use here, is that CRM is the “cornerstone of a customer-centric organization.” That means that the organization is in alignment with the needs of its customers and the needs of the brand reputation. You’ll see in the next paragraph that there are many different definitions of CRM, and a lot of them are very technical and full of acronyms and terms that industry insiders have used for years.
Briefly, Customer Relationship Management describes an individual company’s marketing system that keeps data about customers and their interactions with the company. This data is organized so that the company can follow customers from the moment they are first introduced to the company until they become customers, put down payment, receive a product, and then move on, or return as loyal customers. Companies that use CRM, try to ramp up each development step of that process, and make it easy for clients to buy from them every time.
The most basic definition of CRM is that it is the organization of a business’s information about customers, so that the business can keep track of their interactions with customers and respond to their needs in new and creative ways.
Customer Relationship Management is a system that is used to organize customer data and track your company’s relationship with each customer.
CRM handles customer data. It helps you keep track of each customer or prospect. It also helps you manage your sales, web and social media efforts, email marketing, etc. With a CRM, you can follow the steps of your sales funnel, and serve the best customers more effeciently.
A Customer Relationship Management tool is an integrated system that helps a company manage customer information, such as names, addresses, email addresses, phone numbers and purchasing records, as well as marketing data such as location, interests, or buying patterns. CRMs can be accessed from any computer with Internet access, and you can easily share information with colleagues, suppliers, or partners.
A CRM lets you store and manage every aspect of your customer’s contact with your company.
CRM software can run on your on-site or off-site server, and is used to streamline your business workflow.
CRM refers to a computer system a company installs that automatically processes customer information and automates all aspects of customer interactions.
A CRM is an integrated system that brings together information from various departments of an organization in order to streamline the way a company interacts with its customers.
CRM is a company’s database that holds all customer, prospect, employee, and company information in one place and lets employees of the company access that information to communicate with various customers.
Bernard Marr, in his book The Orange Code, defines CRM as “a system that enables a company to understand and engage with customers in such a way that they are happy to keep buying and return often.”
In Bill Inmon’s definition of CRM: “CRM is the art and science of creating and maintaining successful relationships with your market.”
There are quite a number of different definitions for CRM, and they range from very technical and focused on the functionality of the software, to extremely general and wide-ranging. Some definitions are simple and matter-of-fact while others are rather colorful and creative. They all have one thing in common, however, which is that software is not a CRM. CRM necessarily includes data, information, and technology, but CRM is not just the methodology that supports the software. Rather, CRM is the end-result of integrating data, information, and technology to support organizational strategy. In other words, CRM is not just “a system,” it is an approach to customer engagement, how you support your customers, and the relationship you build with them. You can build a CRM system without having a CRM, but you cannot have a CRM without implementing a CRM system.
Beginning in the 1970’s, CRM system software had the simple task of keeping track of wholesale and retail lists. It was fairly dull stuff. The idea was to keep track of sales reps and their activities, store the addresses of customers and list them by category so the sales people could remember to target particular ones, and so on. This primary task of CRM systems has really not changed much over the last 20 years. There has been quite a bit of improvement in the quality of software, of course, but not a lot in the basic functionality.
This changed around 2000 when the Internet was incorporated into the system, and CRM became a mass communication tool. With this big improvement came a lot of complexity, but sales leadership and executives really liked what they saw — emails and phone calls directly from prospects and customers were coming through the system, and everyone knew how often each sales person was being contacted by prospects and customers. But sales personnel were still expected to call and make the first sales contact, after all, that was how big-time salespeople had always operated.
The addition of social media is what has changed everything since then. In 2011 Facebook and Twitter came into mass usage, and people found they really liked interacting with brands. The brands with good customer service responded not only to customer feedback and complaints, but also to compliments and positive comments. The brands that did this best were the ones that got fast growth in their Facebook and Twitter accounts, and they claimed loyal followers who spread the word that they had a great company.
The other trend happening in the market today is the increase in the complexity of relationships. Gone are most days when businesses could be simple one-stop shops for a customer’s needs. Today, if a customer buys a product from a business, there are usually other products and services that he needs or wants. The sales people probably keep track of which previous customers have suggested new business or advised referrals, but they have no way of knowing whether or not the customer purchased another product or service from the business. And if they do go back to the customer, they can’t remember what the customer was interested in today, or whether he was a current customer or just a prospect.
In addition, all the different sources that feed into the CRM system can cause conflict in the way it imports information. An order made by phone will probably be entered in as “phone,” but an order made by a salesperson in person at an event will probably be entered as “mail,” and an order made on the web will probably be entered as “web.” The first question that a customer service person asks when the customer says the product is not available is “did you call?” The customer service person wants to know if he can blame the consumer for the error.
The most significant trends impacting CRM are social media. The many non-profit organizations that have created a strong following on Facebook and Twitter are now translating those followers into customers. That’s because the rules have changed so that companies selling products can now offer a “social” component as well.
Think also about the proliferation of smartphones. Such phones are part work and part play. As a result, a mobile CRM application can play a big role in the CRM arena.
