So, you hate CRM…

Many people feel the same way. But why?
Review this page to learn more about common CRM frustrations and your options for solving them.
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7 Common Complaints About CRM

When data is segmented and reporting is limited, it makes it nearly impossible to draw accurate conclusions around sales analytics, marketing insights, and service patterns. CRM is meant to support and streamline your work, not make it more difficult.

When you pay a fortune for your CRM and don’t get the ROI you were promised, it can be frustrating. Either the CRM is a poor fit for your processes, its features and user experience are lacking, or it’s not scaling appropriately to your growing business. To uncover which issue is plaguing your CRM ROI, you must assess the CRM against your current processes and long term business goals.

Your CRM should act as an automation powerhouse. When a lack of automation takes users through endless screens and clicks, it makes them less likely to use the system at all. This results in poor user adoption and lagging productivity, which can easily translate to lost sales.

Today’s successful businesses are omnichannel. Customers connect through the Web, in person, via social media, and with chatbots. These communication pathways build on one another’s data to reveal a complete customer profile. If your CRM is not aggregating information from all of your contact points, you’re missing out on the full potential to personalize interactions and anticipate needs.

Too much manual data entry can deter employees from using the system. The CRM should make data entry easier and faster through intelligent data enrichment and low code automation. These features help teams fill in the gaps and complete tasks with less hassle.

Does your CRM make it easy to build workflows? Does it offer intelligent predictive tools? AI and advanced analytics features? How about streamlined lead and opportunity management? CRMs that lag behind in features and functions put businesses at risk for falling behind their competition. If your competitor can see patterns and report on data that you can’t, it’s time to up the ante.

Many businesses use complex customizations to try and fix their CRM pitfalls. When an upgrade occurs, these customizations can easily break. Upgrades can also have an impact on solutions integrated with the CRM, thereby adding to slowdowns and system downtime. A CRM that better fits your processes could help avoid these issues. Or, a partnership with a CRM consultant could give you the opportunity to offload those stressors on a team of qualified experts who can resolve the issues for you.

Effective Enablement

A CRM should act as a multi-faceted solution for your business. It must help all your teams streamline and automate work, focus their initiatives, and pull useful metrics.

CRM Should Help Teams Sell More…

CRM Should Enable Tailored Marketing…

CRM Should Modernize Customer Service…

Must-Have CRM Features

A CRM with low code automation engages your teams further by allowing non-technical users to build the most effective processes to streamline their work. It also frees up your IT department to focus on bigger, more complex tasks.

Data enrichment helps you build more complete customer profiles by using the information you already have to fill in the blanks on customer data. Enrichment pulls in insights like recent social media engagements, business addresses, company news, etc.

An interface that’s easy to navigate and learn is more likely to be used your teams. Otherwise, your CRM becomes a wasted investment.

In an omnichannel world, we all need to pull data from multiple touchpoints. Your CRM should integrate seamlessly with supporting business applications.

Field sales and remote work demand remote access to real-time data. Users should be able to view, edit, and add to CRM data on the fly with a powerful mobile app.

More CRM solutions are adapting their offerings to speak to sales, marketing, and customer service, with individual tools and interfaces custom built for these users.

Artificial intelligence reveals the unseen patterns in your CRM data. The CRM solutions of our future either have AI functions built in, or easily enable connectivity to solutions that enhance AI.

We’re all here for the analytics. A modern CRM should provide dynamic, visually engaging, multifaceted analytics.

Data governance and privacy standards are requiring every business to accurately monitor customer data. A solid CRM tool should streamline these functions.

A CRM should allow your teams to orchestrate customer engagement across all channels, both offline and online, with ease.

If your CRM isn’t stacking up, we can help you uncover why.

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Fixing Your CRM Problems

If your CRM is doing more harm than good, you have one of two problems:

It’s the Wrong CRM

Sometimes businesses choose a CRM solution because it demos well and seems to have all the bells and whistles. However, they later uncover that it is lacking in some crucial features and/or integration capabilities. This most often happens when there have been errors in the requirements gathering phase of CRM selection.

If the software is not providing the ROI you expected or offering the features necessary to grow and scale, it’s a strong indication that you may need to switch CRM solutions. An experienced CRM consultant can help you avoid making the same mistake twice.

Strategic CRM selection narrows the best potential options by aligning your processes to the right CRM features and eliminating any solutions that won’t meet your priorities and budget. In the end, you choose a CRM that better aligns to your business and has the capabilities necessary for your company’s growth.

Sometimes businesses choose a CRM solution because it demos well and seems to have all the bells and whistles. However, they later uncover that it is lacking in some crucial features and/or integration capabilities. This most often happens when there have been errors in the requirements gathering phase of CRM selection.

If the software is not providing the ROI you expected or offering the features necessary to grow and scale, it’s a strong indication that you may need to switch CRM solutions. An experienced CRM consultant can help you avoid making the same mistake twice.

Strategic CRM selection narrows the best potential options by aligning your processes to the right CRM features and eliminating any solutions that won’t meet your priorities and budget. In the end, you choose a CRM that better aligns to your business and has the capabilities necessary for your company’s growth.

It’s the Right CRM, but it was Poorly Implemented

Aside from selecting the wrong CRM altogether, poor implementation of the right solution can also cause failure. A great CRM that was implemented poorly can quickly turn into an obsolete CRM. Teams are not motivated to use it, the features aren’t working as promised, and the support to fix issues is severely lacking.

To manage this roadblock, you must identify all places where the gaps exist. These gaps could be from poor training, lack of data cleaning and preparation, poor utilization of add-ons or customizations, integration and data transparency issues, or even a fragmented administration experience.

Once you understand what is missing, a strategic plan to rescue and redeploy your CRM can relaunch the CRM as it was meant to function for your business.

Aside from selecting the wrong CRM altogether, poor implementation of the right solution can also cause failure. A great CRM that was implemented poorly can quickly turn into an obsolete CRM. Teams are not motivated to use it, the features aren’t working as promised, and the support to fix issues is severely lacking.

To manage this roadblock, you must identify all places where the gaps exist. These gaps could be from poor training, lack of data cleaning and preparation, poor utilization of add-ons or customizations, integration and data transparency issues, or even a fragmented administration experience.

Once you understand what is missing, a strategic plan to rescue and redeploy your CRM can relaunch the CRM as it was meant to function for your business.

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What is Your CRM Really Costing You?

You expect ROI from all your other business investments, why not your CRM? Learn about CRM ROI factors and how to calculate them in this eBook.

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CRM ROI eBook

CRM Feature Requirements

When narrowing CRM features for sales, marketing, and service, it’s important to use a ranking system. Why? Because giving features a numerical ranking helps you pick the solution that best supports the way you work and how you want to grow. Download our selection criteria to start ranking your features.

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About TAI

Technology Advisors Inc. (TAI) is a Chicago-based digital transformation company with more than 30 years of experience helping businesses select and successfully implement CRM solutions. Our goal is to help you choose the best software for your business goals and then maximize your investment by supporting you throughout your CRM lifetime. Our team offers strategic planning, support and training, customization help, integration, and free ongoing education to further your team’s skillset. Check out what our customers say about us below!

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