Collaborative CRM for the remote-working world

Customers’ growing expectations are a hot topic for business, and it may seem that customers demand extraordinary things. In reality, the complexity of their requirements is in their simplicity—above all things, customers want convenience. They want to quickly find what they want using a convenient channel, pay with a convenient payment method, and choose a convenient delivery option. 

But here’s the catch—their journey is of an extremely fragmented, hop-on-hop-off nature. To keep up, companies face an overwhelming task of connecting multiple dots, linking accumulated data on customers with their real problems and needs.

In such a situation, companies cannot rely on isolated efforts of separate teams to fully address customer expectations. Instead, it needs to be a collaborative effort between multiple departments, focused on shared goals and powered by customer experience technologies. 

CRM implementation, delivered within the scope of CRM consulting by Itransition, is one of the most effective solutions for connecting customer-facing departments, empowering each employee with collaborative tools, and putting customers in the center of all the efforts.  

Why collaborative CRM?

The way the world had been working changed overnight and put an enormous strain on companies and their employees. Seminars turned into webinars. All in-person interactions migrated to Zoom. Employees had to think how to arrange home offices and share the space with their housemates. In such a situation, business leaders had to think of a solution that would help teams stay connected and efficient and meet changing customer expectations. 

Cloud-based collaborative CRMs became an ideal foundation for distributed teams’ remote offices in the new work-from-anywhere world. The platform let teams continue doing what they were doing—sell, support, or generate leads, with a single view of potential and existing customers. Unfortunately, watercooler conversations are gone but collaborative tools built into a hosted CRM can keep teams talking (with feeds and chats), on the same page (with real-time notifications, alerts, and recommended actions), and resourceful (with access to shared assets).

Major advantages of collaborative CRMs

The pandemic has shown the importance of having a toolset that can help face any disruption and evolve together with the business. Collaborative CRMs became such enablers during the crisis and promise to support companies in the new normal. 

Everything in one place

When employees manage a number of apps and processes on their own, a good share of information ends up in personal folders or isn’t captured at all. Collaborative CRMs can be integrated with legacy systems and necessary apps and functions following a data migration strategy, which will allow keeping all processes, data, people, and communication in one place. 

Employees won't have to switch between a number of external apps, trying to find some information or help customers. It will also create a digital open space where it’s easier to connect departmental silos due to the absence of communication barriers. What’s more, a gentle push in the form of common feeds and notifications will encourage collaboration and turn it into a habit.

Effortless work from anywhere

When employees found themselves working remotely, business leaders realized that designing a work-from-home infrastructure and adapting digital workplace experiences weren’t the hardest thing. The major challenge was to make distributed teams work as one centralized unit. 

Collaborative CRM made it possible by providing a single view of the customer for any employee in addition to a barrier-free space for communication. This way, whatever channel customers choose, they can be sure that their issue will be resolved in the most efficient manner as any team member has all the necessary information at their fingertips. At the same time, when working within the same platform, IT personnel can quickly address various issues just by accessing the employee’s account remotely. 

In case the workload is growing, such a platform can help delegate repetitive and time-consuming tasks to the built-in AI. Coupling AI with low-code CRM customization, it’s possible to build workflows, configure relevant notifications, receive recommendations based on past actions, and get assistance in onboarding or learning. 

Plus, it may sound counter-intuitive but a perfectly fine-tuned remote work via a collaborative system can actually reduce the number of calls, which exhaust people far more than face-to-face meetings. When teams are always updated on what is going on in different projects and constantly connect with colleagues via chats or in-context comments, they have less gaps that should be filled during calls. 

In-built collaboration

Finding new customers and closing deals are not a one person’s job anymore. Successful selling is now the result of excellent teamwork that consists of a number of behind-the-scenes operations of multiple teams and requires looking at problems from different perspectives (which is hard when working on your own). 

For instance, to nurture leads in a new service segment, marketers connect with product managers to get insight into the new topic, understand what works best with certain leads, and then pass this information to sales and customer service reps who will join in at further stages of the customer journey. Meanwhile, the legal department develops a procedure for contract negotiations, and executives together with the finance department think of a new pricing policy. 

To connect all these efforts and provide a seamless customer experience in real time, there should be collaborative tools already built into the system—the way it is with collaborative CRMs. What’s more, when the company changes the way it works, it’s much easier to tweak in-built tools (one effort for all the platform users) than make changes in each external app that employees use. 

Better customer experience

It may seem that the final goal of collaborative CRM is to create an efficient space where all employees can work together. It’s certainly one of the goals but as it’s still a customer relationship management platform, the final aim is always customer success, and it’s true about any CRM type. 

In collaborative CRMs, coordinated efforts are directed at situations where customers connect with a company via different channels and expect consistent experiences along with a personalized approach. As a result, company representatives can pick up any ongoing conversation, make customers feel heard, and provide the fastest issue resolution possible. 

Higher productivity

Usually, when team members have to participate in several projects simultaneously, it affects their productivity. When it comes to collaborative CRMs though, joint efforts don’t only make communication more efficient but also help teams save time and boost productivity. 

Instead of gathering all the information on their own or spending extra time on tasks due to limited access to data, each employee can view problems from different perspectives and have a full picture of customer relationships and internal management processes while sharing just their part of work. Such a collaborative atmosphere where it’s encouraged to share feedback, best practices, ideas, and even constructive criticism helps everyone learn and grow individually and as a team.

Business will survive through collaboration

CRM platforms with in-built collaboration tools turn companies into interconnected ecosystems where professionals can benefit from each other’s work, save time, increase productivity, and get a single view of each customer. Such an environment is a great foundation for successfully dealing with disruptions, developing agility, and achieving better market positions.