How To Boost Work From Home Productivity With Your CRM

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought on the era of remote working. More than 50% of businesses have adopted the remote work model in some capacity.

Although it has proven to be a lifesaver, work from home can be challenging for employees new to it. Therefore, employers must provide their employees with the right set of tools to enhance their productivity.

Prodoscore’s yearly research in 2020 showed an increase in the implementation of digital applications.

• The usage of CRM systems rose by 176%.
• Email interactions saw a 57% increase.
• Chat messages also rose by 9%.

Prodoscore also discovered from its company’s records that the overall workforce productivity enhanced by 47% in 2020, though the business was operating online.

How Can A CRM Support Online Workplaces?

From your real estate sales office to the official lender, CRM can simplify the selling process. With its ability to sync with various platforms, it can record customer activity and sales data in one application, improving realtors’ performance and saving them time for searching multiple software. It can automate processes beginning from email marketing to the checkout process.

Here are a few ways through which CRM can boost the productivity of your remote workforce.

1. Provide a Centralized Point of Data Access

With your employees working online, they must be able to access business data relevant to their fields from anywhere and at any time.

Accountants would require daily records about sales made to calculate revenue generation, marketers would require to keep track of traffic flow to their marketing campaigns, and sales would require to monitor visitor behaviors to identify qualified leads.

All of these processes can be integrated with the help of your CRM software, allowing your workforce to access information from a centralized application.

This would save them time from observing data records on multiple applications to find trends.

For example, realtors using Real Estate CRM can observe customer preferences such as location, property, apartment, etc., to send customized suggestions that fit the requirements of their clients. 

2. Third-Party Applications Integration

A cool feature of CRM is that it can integrate with other business applications required by your remote teams. For example, CRM for retail can be synced with billing and invoice applications, email marketing platforms, and accounting software.

This improves the productivity of employees as they can retrieve vital information from a single platform.

Social media platforms and mobile applications can also be integrated with the sales and marketing process, which can boost the productivity of sales professionals by around 11-14%, according to a Nucleus Research Survey.

Even marketing productivity can improve as these integrations allow marketers to analyze customer behavior, enabling them to make better campaigns that can boost lead conversions.

3. Customer Profiles

Another great feature of CRM is that it can sort your clients through your brand’s email list based on factors such as customer interests, age group, location, etc.

Through this process of email segmentation, they can refine their marketing techniques that target a relevant audience of a specific location.

For example, a cellphone company can send personalized emails to customers searching for smartphones based on their budget and smartphone requirements.

If their preference is a mobile with a higher storage capacity and high-resolution camera, then your sales team can send product recommendations to the customer, boosting the conversion rate.

4. Increases the Efficiency of the Sales Process

From customer activity records, interactions, and transactions made, the CRM can help your company’s sales executives to identify what your customer’s motive is.

This will help your remote employees to continue conversations with older prospects and offer them complimentary goods or better promotions related to their previous purchase if made.

Hence, the employee’s time is saved from conducting a long search of previous data records. For instance, if a customer purchased a study table from an online furniture store, sales officials can suggest a study chair or a table lamp which can entice the customer to make another purchase.

5. Automatic Sales Report Generation

Before the creation of digital applications, managers were required to make regular status reports regarding sales and marketing activities, causing them to put hours in data collection, analysis, and identifying data trends for making conclusions.

However, CRM removes the need for this hectic task with its ability to automate the creation of weekly reports related to marketing, sales, accounting, etc.

So, your managers would only require to identify the strengths and weaknesses that they can address to their remote teams to help them improve their performance.

Train Your Workforce In The Use Of CRM

Your CRM plays an essential role as a data hub and customer journey monitoring; however, if employees are unaware of how they can use its functions, your CRM investment might cause more harm to their productivity.

Though your workforce has access to data records, if they aren’t able to use the CRM functions to analyze them and make status reports, it can result in them wasting their time.

Remember, without adequate training given to your company’s employees; no benefit can be gained from the CRM application.

Conduct online meetings to explain how CRM can bring changes to your employees’ tasks and business processes.

Start with those business sectors which require CRM the most, and provide training to enable them to take maximum benefit of the CRM.

Your workforce will feel more comfortable in adopting the new technology when they understand the advantages it can bring to them and your company.

Wrapping Up

Every business has the objective of enhancing workforce productivity and generating profits. This may seem impossible to achieve with remote working; however, there are several digital applications available that prove otherwise.

Introducing a CRM application to your remote workforce and providing adequate training can enable them to take full advantage of the CRM’s functions.

Providing central access to business data, your employees wouldn’t require to go through different applications in search of data records.

With its ability to sync with third-party software, it enables employees to retrieve data related to marketing, sales, or accounting from the CRM itself.

Your customers can be sorted according to various factors, enabling sales and marketing teams to design the best technique to improve conversion rates.

Through proper implementation of your CRM, you can boost your remote workforce’s productivity.