5 Questions CRM Can Help You Answer

5 Questions CRM Can Help You Answer
CRM systems, such as StarterCRM, allow you to store a great deal of customer and prospect information in one location that otherwise might have “lived” in different programs. While the ability to store large quantities of data is useful, combining it to produce reports that give you insight into your business is where CRM systems truly come into their own. StarterCRM is no exception and with just a few clicks of your mouse, you can quickly generate a wide range of reports that will help you address some key questions your business is facing such as:
1. Which of my products and services are my customers purchasing?
You can use the answer to this question to help you:

• Identify products which aren’t selling which may indicate that there’s an underlying issue with the product that you need to address.
• Create cross-selling and up-selling opportunities by identifying customers that are not taking advantage of products that may complement their existing purchases

2. How often are they making those purchases?
This answer will help you:

• Identify patterns in customer purchase behavior which may indicate that there are seasonal influences on demand for your products.
• Adjust your marketing plan to address seasonality in demand.

3. Who’s Buying My Products and Where are my customers located?
Answering this question has a number of benefits and means that you can:

• Identify parts of your sales territory that may need additional sales or customer service support.
• Determine areas where demand for your products is weak and create focused sales and marketing campaigns to spur demand.
• Couple this data with your marketing campaign data to assess the success or failure of previously executed marketing campaigns.

4. What issues or problems are my customers experiencing with my products and services?
Being able to identify customer service issues with individual products and services will help your business in a number of ways:

• You’ll be able to identify recurring problems with your products which in turn will help you to Implement appropriate product “fixes“ in a timely manner.
• You can use the information to drive improvements to future product releases
•  You can build a knowledge-base of issues and create a library of “fixes” to help and guide your existing customers.

5. How long does it take a member of my team to respond to a customer request?
Customer service response time is a key element in your customer retention strategy. Determining response times to your customer’s issues will help you to:

• Identify “bottlenecks” in your existing processes which may be slowing down your customer service response time
• Improve customer service by highlighting and prioritizing critical customer issues 

If you'd like to learn more about how implementing a CRM solution can help your small business, visit www.startercrm.com and sign up for a free 30 day trial. 


Shaun O'Reilly is Director of Marketing for StarterSuccess - a suite of web-based applications designed to help smaller companies more effectively manage and grow their business. Within this suite, StarterCRM provides small businesses with a cost-effective and easy to use customer relationship management system.