4 challenges of implementing a CRM strategy and how to overcome them

If you are the owner of a small business that has gradually increased its sales and you plan to expand, but you have difficulties determining and controlling the productivity of your sales team, you need to adopt tools to solve it.

A platform for customer relationship management will help you successfully overcome these challenges, since you will be able to have all the customer information in one place and provide tools to improve the productivity of your agents.

Knowing how to overcome the challenges of implementing a CRM strategy helps you make a difference, making your business proposal more attractive and converting more prospects into loyal customers of your company.

Read on to discover how to implement a CRM strategy to provide the best experience for your customers.

What is a CRM as a sales strategy? 

A CRM as a sales strategy refers to the use of the customer relationship management tool to obtain a complete and updated picture of each customer, which allows for more personalized and effective communication and facilitates the monitoring of prospects and opportunities . selling.

Knowing how to implement a CRM strategy helps identify patterns in consumer behavior and contributes to improving decision making and sales strategies.

Effectively managing the relationship with your clients implies that:

• listen to their comments and suggestions;
• you use the data you obtain from them for their benefit;
• solve their problems quickly.

For this, it is necessary that the processes and technological tools in your company are aligned , which can represent a challenge.

However, overcoming the challenges of implementing a CRM strategy will allow you to:

• anticipate the needs of your clients;
• optimize profitability;
• personalize new customer acquisition campaigns;
• increase your sales. 

Companies using CRM systems increased lead conversions by 17% and agent productivity by 21%. Given these figures, it is worth overcoming the challenges of implementing a CRM strategy.

3 types of CRM

When integrated correctly, a CRM strategy can increase company ROI by up to 245% . 

However, reaching this number may not be such a quick process, as there are several challenges in implementing the system due to lack of knowledge of its functions, including choosing the right CRM software.

Operational CRM

It is a centralized system that supports sales, marketing and customer service functions through a shared interface. This is usually cloud-based software , allowing access to all databases from anywhere. 

This type of CRM helps the company’s salespeople, marketing analysts, and support agents (level 1 and level 2) .

With an operational CRM, companies can:

• know the customer’s purchase history and previous inquiries;
• know your product preferences;
• Track all customer interactions, such as phone calls, emails, chats, social media.

These features can be used to anticipate customer needs, offer personalized recommendations, and quickly resolve any issues or queries.

Analytical CRM

This CRM is responsible for collecting, storing and analyzing all the data that the company processes and allows you to transform the information into useful data for your business strategies. 

For example, you can obtain data on the location, age, gender, marital status and income of your customers and group them into consumer segments to predict who can represent greater profitability for your company.

This type of CRM is widely used by data analysts, accountants, and business intelligence teams.

Learn what market segmentation is and how to personalize your marketing strategies .

Collaborative CRM

With collaborative CRM, all teams will have access to the same up-to-date customer data, no matter which department they work in, helping to maintain fluid communication inside and outside the company.

The importance of collaboration is evident. In fact, according to Zendesk’s aforementioned CX Trends 2023 report , 72% of companies believe that merging teams and responsibilities around customer experience will increase efficiency and improve CX.

Here, collaboration tools enable conversations between internal and external teams to boost productivity and get updates on new tickets in real time.

It is a useful resource for sales representatives, account managers, and support agents, among others.

6 useful practices to overcome the challenges of implementing a CRM strategy 

If you are looking for continuous improvement in your business processes so that the experience you provide to your customers is always cutting-edge, there are some practices that will give your team the advantage it needs:

1. Implement a contact management platform 

This will allow you to unify the databases you use, in addition to tracking and resuming interactions with your customers. Having all the information centralized will help you design personalized customer acquisition campaigns and anticipate their desires and needs.

2. Provides comprehensive customer service

It stores all your data in one place so that it is accessible to all agents in the company. This helps keep processes organized and reduces the time agents spend troubleshooting. 

3. Automate repetitive tasks

The implementation of a CRM strategy allows you to automate repetitive tasks such as:

• customer follow-up by sending emails and reminders;
• maintaining an updated contact database;
• record of customer interactions such as phone calls, meetings and emails, helping to maintain a complete communication history.

This practice will result in an increase in the productivity and efficiency of the agents’ work. A McKinsey report showed that productivity can increase by up to 50% in companies that automate simple tasks.

4. Provide care from your mobile

A strategy from mobile devices makes it possible:

• provide a quick response to the customer, since you will be able to access their information from any mobile device;
• personalize the solution to the customer by having real-time data, such as purchase history, past interactions and preferences.

With this you can guarantee that the service is always available to the customer and improve their experience with your company. In fact, according to the aforementioned Zendesk report, 70% of consumers spend more with companies that offer seamless and personalized experiences.

5. Embrace omnichannel

With omnichannel support it is possible to unify all the communication channels that the customer uses (such as email, chat, messaging on social networks) and centralize their information to solve their problems more efficiently .

In addition, omnichannel allows you to save customer time, which will increase their satisfaction. See how it works:

6. Analyze data and generate reports

Measure communication reach as well as conversion rates and other data in real time with efficient data analysis and accurate reporting.

Set up your CRM to integrate with analytics tools like Google Analytics . This will allow you to track and analyze web traffic, conversions, and other relevant metrics. You can generate accurate reports that combine CRM data and metrics. For that:

• Determine the metrics you want to include in your reports, such as conversion rates, revenue per customer, number of new customers, or those you consider appropriate according to your objectives;
• use CRM export functions or integrations to obtain necessary data such as contact information, sales, customer interactions;
• If necessary, incorporate additional data from other sources, such as web analytics, social networks or external marketing campaigns to enrich your reports and give you a more complete and accurate view.

According to the aforementioned Zendesk report, 59% of consumers want companies to use their data to create personalized experiences. Therefore, knowing how to implement a CRM strategy will optimize the CX and profits of your business.

4 challenges of implementing a customer service CRM strategy

Now that you know what the CRM challenge is, we will tell you what the main challenges of implementing a CRM strategy are and how to solve them: 

 1. Data migration 

During the implementation process, it is key to clear incorrect and old data , so that it does not harm the entry of new and valuable information. 

Among the challenges you may encounter when migrating data to your CRM system are:

• the structure of the data: perhaps you have information structured in a way that needs to be reviewed and adjusted to match the current tool;
• The volume of data varies depending on the size of the company and its sector;
• staff training: it is necessary that all your employees become familiar with the system and learn how to use it effectively. 

Keep in mind that 50% of the teams that overcame the challenges of implementing a CRM strategy reported improvements in their productivity.

2. Find the right partner

Some companies give up when they do not find an adequate CRM implementation process, however, 64 % of companies that use CRM think that the tool has a great impact on their organization to improve customer service.

Of this percentage of companies:

• 74% improved access to their customers’ data;
• shortens the sales cycle by 8 to 14%.

It is important to evaluate the company’s needs and ask what it needs in order to choose the right CRM provider.

A good CRM solution should be easy to customize and offer a hierarchy of information, allowing you to filter the data according to your needs.

3. Lack of direction in objectives

Your company’s objectives should be specific and clearly established before the CRM implementation process. This will allow you to:

• know your goals exactly to implement actions and make the right decisions to achieve them;
• customize the CRM appropriately to meet your customers’ expectations;
• define metrics to measure customer experience and track to evaluate actions and make adjustments.

Focusing on offering benefits to your consumer, while increasing the productivity of your team is a combo for success. According to a report , companies that use CRM software increased customer satisfaction by 74% and improved sales by 87%.

Once you know what the common implementation failures are, we recommend reading: CRM strategy from scratch: step by step to sell more .

4. Tool configuration

Adjustments and updates can be made in the early phases of CRM implementation. It is important to involve the employees who will use the system and live with the CRM strategy day to day so that they achieve greater effectiveness in working with this tool.

It is advisable to configure fields, labels, workflows and control panels according to your requirements, in addition to establishing user roles and access levels within the CRM to guarantee that each team member has the appropriate functionalities .

Correct CRM configuration allows:

• improve organization and facilitate access to information to make customer service more agile;
• avoid errors by ensuring customer interaction is handled efficiently with a predefined workflow;
• Quickly view customer data and history to offer you the best possible solution.

Success story: how Producteca overcame the challenges of implementing a CRM strategy

Producteca is a company that is establishing itself as an integrative solution for the most important e-commerce processes in Latin America. Through it, companies from various sectors synchronize catalogues, stocks, prices, sales orders and logistics information. 

After great growth in 2020, it was necessary to create a strategy to strengthen the customer service area . 

The company already worked with other support platforms , but its customer information was not centralized. Data analysis was difficult and had to be done manually, which took time and money. 

On the other hand, the system it used did not allow complete visibility of the customer journey to understand their specific needs.

After almost a year of correct implementation of a CRM strategy , Producteca achieved significant improvements in various indicators in the Customer Service area:

• Reduced their response times by 75% (from 8 to 2 minutes) and first response times by almost 83% (from 6 to 1 minute). 
• The duration of chat conversations decreased by 37% (from 65 to 41 minutes), and the abandonment rate was also reduced from 6% to 0.3%. 
• The customer satisfaction index increased between 96 and 98 points, against an industry average of 84 points.

After understanding the challenge of CRM, the Argentine company obtained a comprehensive vision of its customers’ journey, from discovery to post-sales , which allowed it to have information to personalize its customers’ experience..

Zendesk helps you successfully manage your customer relationships

In this article you saw how the challenges of implementing a CRM strategy can affect the experience you provide to your customers. If you want to ensure seamless, contextual, and personalized interactions at every point in the journey, Zendesk can help.

With Zendesk Service you are able to:

• Bring together multiple service channels in one place;
• Give faster responses to customers;
• Track interactions and establish support priorities;
• Get information about previous events and conversations;
• Let customers find help on their own in personalized help centers;
• Automatically generate analysis and reports;
• Integrate messaging applications through social networks, such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger.