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Operational CRM helps you store customer information, deals, and leads in a unified repository.
It boosts efficiency via service automation, allowing businesses to make the most out of limited
resources.

What are the objectives of operational CRM?

Operational CRM is mainly concerned with the processes that businesses can leverage to ensure
customer satisfaction and retention. It also serves as a solution for high customer support costs.

Here are the objectives of operational CRM:

 Automation of processes helps implement best practices and cut down costs while driving
revenue.
 Enhancement of processes empowers businesses to offer a superior customer experience
without spending a fortune. This leads to a higher return on investment for businesses.

What does an Operation CRM Software do?

Operational CRM is used to integrate and automate workflows in customer service, marketing,
and sales. It is majorly concerned with customer-centric processes.

It is used to integrate and automate workflows in customer-centric processes. Let us now explore
how operational CRM streamlines processes across the customer lifecycle:

Sales-force Automation

It helps businesses to automate the entire sales cycle. Sales-force automation identifies new
prospects, keeps track of customer interactions, makes sales projections, and manages
documentation. Sales reps can specify conditions for workflows to optimize time. This allows
them to build lasting relationships with their customers and spend time on essential activities
instead of mundane tasks.

Lead generation is a significant focus of Sales-force automation apart from serving existing
customers. Operational CRM assists you in documenting all communication with prospects and
leads to convert them to customers.

Marketing Automation

It helps businesses to automate and evaluate marketing tasks to accelerate sales growth. With
operational CRM, it is easy to create tailored promotional campaigns that cater perfectly to your
audience’s needs. You can leverage customer-specific information to achieve the personalization
of campaigns.
Campaign management allows you to design your campaign, choose specific communication
channels, allocate a budget, and evaluate the effectiveness of the campaign. Sales reps can
segregate their database and decide on which type of campaign they should use.

Event-based marketing is for marketing products to customers that are relevant to the events
happening in their lives. Operational CRM improves your sensitivity to customer requirements
and helps you provide specific deals based on individual needs.

Service Automation

It empowers businesses to provide the highest quality of customer service by improving the
speed and efficiency of responses. Support representatives can leverage interaction history to
provide faster service for customer questions, problems, and service requests.

By providing access to customer information to all employees, operational CRM boosts visibility
across your business departments. As a result of this, customer complaints get faster resolution
than usual. Additionally, service requests can also be assigned to specific people.

Benefits of using Operational CRM Software

Operational CRM bridges the gap between the business and its customers.

It allows you to segment customer data enabling you to channelize your marketing activities and
simplify sales processes. Here are the key benefits of using operational CRM:

Superior customer service: Provides easy access to relevant customer data. The easy reach of key
information to all employees empowers them to offer excellent customer service and improves
your business’s agility. The reduction in the efforts of finding relevant data means that you
greatly simplify your customer relationship management.

Greater sales: The enhanced user interface and customer data support result in business processes
adopting best practices. With increased customer retention and higher conversions on new leads,
sales are bound to be good.

What's an Operational CRM & How

Is It Used?
POSTED ON JANUARY 3, 2020

As you scale your business to the next level, researching Customer Relationship
Management (CRM) software is a fundamental step.
In this guide, you’ll learn about the components of successful CRM systems, including
best practices that minimize costs and achieve higher revenue growth.

Not all CRM systems are created equal. When most people think of CRM, an
operational CRM that spans multiple business functions comes to mind.

What is Operational CRM?

There are a few primary types of CRM systems out there, often focused on one purpose
like sales, service, or analytics CRMs. Rather than focus on a singular purpose, an
Operational CRM software blends all of these business processes into one. It's what
most people think of when referring to CRM software.

Definition:

Operational CRM

A centralized system that supports the sales, marketing, and customer

service functions within a company that stores information on customers,
leads, and employees using a shared interface.

An operational CRM is designed to improve routine business operations and securely

store data on all your business activities with customers and prospects. Key CRM
features enable businesses to measure, analyze, and tailor the customer journey in
real-time.

A VoIP system integrated with a CRM would be one example of an operational CRM.
You can watch our 3-minute video below to learn more about how VoIP CRMs work:

How Does an Operational CRM Work

To understand how operational customer relationship management works, let’s peek
into the business processes of a typical business across its various departments.
1. Marketing Campaigns

To drive business, marketing typically adds and stores new leads from
tradeshows, digital marketing, or other demand generation activities into the CRM.
Online forms typically add leads into the CRM and they might even kick off automated
marketing like emails, flyers, or text messages.

For those just starting out, consider adding your existing email subscribers and past
customers from your accounting software into your CRM.

2. Sales Activities

When someone responds to marketing campaigns, your sales team engages with leads
through email, phone, and text. Ideally, people respond quickly, but reality dictates that
most of them will require follow-up.

A high-performing sales rep will document all of their interactions, relevant notes, and
next steps for each lead. They would update the contact record within the CRM. When
the prospect converts, they will need to hand them off to their fulfillment side of the
company.
The final stage in sales is to communicate a new customer's requirements to their
service and support teams. To do this, they store such information within their CRM.

Polling conducted by HubSpot points to manual data entry (23%) being the top pain
point about using a legacy CRM. Following that, the difficulty in tracking the sales
pipeline is a close third (13%) for user frustrations.

3. Service & Support

And finally, your service team has to deliver. Any miscommunication or unclear
expectations fall on the customer support team. That's never fun. Save them the hassle
—and ultimately lost revenue—by documenting customer needs clearly. A CRM retains
all this info from day one.

Traditionally, businesses have used helpdesk software or a shared email system. In

2020, the play to consolidate separate CRMs into one. One centralized view of the
customer.

You might not have an implementation function of your company such as if your
company sells insurance. But it's likely you have a service role. Even if it means for
replacement parts, repair, or technical support. When everyone accesses the same
customer record, operational CRMs allow for better customer experiences.

Market research firm Gartner recommends business owners evaluate their five top-level
CRM application categories: sales, marketing, customer server, digital commerce, and
field service.

(Source)

The firm recommends that business leaders take the time to deeply understand how an
operational CRM will advance their business strategy. Typically, businesses
underestimate their needs and this can trip up performance later.

An Example of Operational CRM

Let's look at a practical example for a moment.

Let's say you run an automotive dealership, and your marketing team is targeting
customers who want red cars. Your sales team, however, is pushing blue cars, and your
customer service team is helping drivers with yellow cars. In this case, a lot of people
waste their time and effort. This costs the business real money.

An operational CRM helps tie in these teams and align everyone’s goals. CRM
operations are best when marketing lead data is directly linked with sales goals, and
current or prospective customer data is fed to the service team, so they can provide the
best support possible.

This is really where operational CRM shines.

By aligning the various departments within an organization, businesses can automate

processes and improve the overall customer experience. This automation then allows
businesses to spend less on labor (paying employees for hours of manual
work) and strategically invest in areas that they want to grow.

To better illustrate how the CRM system automates processes, let's look at what can
be automated in a typical sales department.

Sales Automation
 Any operational CRM worth its salt will track leads, prospects, and sales. But a great
system will do much more than that, from automating initial contacts all the way through
setting up sales meetings.

Gone are the days of flipping through the phone book and cold-calling potential
customers. A well-equipped team makes sales with targeted lead data available to them
via an operational CRM system.

And it doesn’t stop at the sale. A CRM can automate upsell or cross-sell
communication, maintain a follow-up schedule, and track sales performance.

Aberdeen Research Group offers supporting data that sales automation makes a huge
difference. "Best-in-class" firms using sales automation outperform laggards by up to
217% in return on investment. The firm's research concludes that further investment in
operational CRM translates to favorable real-world business outcomes:

 52% more proposals, quotes, or RFP responses delivered to prospects (14.25 per
sales rep, per month, vs. 9.40)
 32% higher overall team attainment of sales quota (62% vs. 47%)
 23% higher lead conversion rate (33% vs. 27%)
Examples of Sales Automation

Automated Reporting
Sales teams are notoriously competitive. Imagine giving them a report each morning of
goals and productivity, contacts made, and sales closed. Talk about a push in
motivation. They love challenges—and crushing them.

From a management perspective, reporting can be reduced to selecting the data you
need and generating the report. No more sifting through spreadsheets, hiding columns,
sorting data, and trying to figure out formulas. Whenever you need to get real-time sales
data, you have it.

Lead Distribution

A practical use-case for distributing leads would be if you have a trainee or a sales lion
who closes every sale on the same phone system. You'd probably want to prioritize
more leads for the closer on the team. An operational CRM keeps your sales
pipeline flowing, so leads don't get stuck and your revenue is predictable.

Likewise, you also want to give your newer salespeople the opportunity to grow and
develop their sales skills.
Get the best leads to the best sales reps – automatically. Set your team (and your
company) up for success. Don’t let leads languish on a list somewhere until you have
time to assign them.

Lead Prioritization

Use the data available at your fingertips to prioritize leads. Classify which leads are
hottest and which are outliers and funnel those results to your sales team. Certain
marketing assets and sales activities carry more weight than others.

Save time by focusing your sales efforts on leads who are more likely to buy. Once that
list is exhausted, then move on to the other leads. It seems easy, right? But you can
only do this with prioritized lead data.

Sales Content Repository

Are your sales reps recreating the wheel every time they send a proposal? (Hopefully
not.)

Store, track, and manage content in an operational CRM so your team has quick access
to anything they might need to provide for a client. Not only does this save time, but it
helps with quality control. No more ad-hoc sales letters filled with typoes. Simply grab
one from the repository, tweak it, and send it off.

Scheduling Meetings

Managing a successful salesperson's calendar can be near impossible. Don’t make

your sales team act as their own personal assistants. Harness the power of your
operational CRM to do the hard work for them.

Find a great scheduling tool and integrate it with your CRM. Prospects can then see
your rep’s availability and book a meeting that fits in their schedule. All this without
direct involvement from the sales rep.

Marketing Automation
Your marketing team should be focused on creating powerful marketing
campaigns. They shouldn’t spend time maneuvering through painful spreadsheets,
manually analyzing data. That’s what operational CRM gives your marketing team
leverage with marketing automation.

The goal of automated marketing campaigns isn't to coerce your contacts to buy. It's to
facilitate a buying environment where someone is ready to buy, primed with the right
information. This could be through customer stories, helpful datasheets, and nifty
checklists to help them feel excited about your product or service.

Marketing Automation Campaigns

Welcome Campaigns

You have the opportunity to put your company, your brand, in the best light. The ball is
in your court. Instead of waiting and hoping a prospect chooses your company, push
them in the right direction with automated welcome emails.

Even after an introductory call, you should send a welcome message so the prospect
becomes conditioned to hear from you proactively.
Don’t depend on a person to manually send out a welcome email every time someone
visits your site or calls your company. They can’t keep up. And why waste the
manpower, anyway? Automate it with your operational CRM system.

Onboarding Campaigns

After you've made the made sale, now what?

There’s a good chance the excitement is going to wear off in a few days. Maybe they
lost interest. Maybe they don’t know how to use their new product.

Hint: Your customers don't know how to benefit from your product as much as you do.

In any case, building a loyal brand following takes communication. You want your
customers to experience your product and service and love it. Then you want them to
buy more.

This is where onboarding campaigns come in. Automate contact with your new
customers through your operational CRM. Reach out, ask them how they’re doing.
Invite them to call you if they need help. Ask for their feedback. When the customer
knows you’re still around after the sale, they’ll be a lot more likely to use your thingy and
talk about it.

Repeat Purchase Campaign

What’s next after the onboarding campaign? A repeat purchase campaign, of course.
Source: 97th Floor

Now that your customers are delighted with their purchase, it's time to give them even
more. You want to check on their past purchases to see if there is relevance for
additional products or services.

It’s a lot more expensive to get new customers than it is to get repeat business from
existing customers.

Re-engagement Campaign

So your customer didn’t come back and buy the new-and-improved service.

Every single customer is a potential repeat customer, no matter how long ago they
purchased from you. Use your operational CRM to track a customer’s last purchase and
their last interaction with your company to target them in a re-engagement campaign.

Support Automation
Every customer interaction is a chance to grow your company. Not just by making more
sales, but by providing excellent customer support.

Automating customer interaction and support is where an operational CRM can really
shine. From scheduling customer follow-ups, tracking problems, and supporting client
self-service, your CRM can do a lot of the dirty work for you.

Support Automation Examples

Self-service

By now, most companies offer a certain degree of automation and self-service with it
comes to customer support. We’re so used to self-service, in fact, that we’re frustrated
when it’s not available to us.

The easiest and most "close to cash" method of customer self-service is managing their
billing and payment information. Offer a customer portal to sign in and update their
method of payment, storing it safely in your operational CRM, not a sticky note.

Satisfaction Surveys
 After every interaction, or on a semi-annual basis, you should survey your customers.
By doing this, you will unearth powerful insights. Instead of paying for an additional
survey software, using one that's deeply integrated with your operational CRM is ideal.

Instead of cleaning up the data, cursing at your screen while creating a VLOOKUP
function in Excel, you could just know what your customers feel by accessing their
records or pulling a quick report.

This is the beauty of an operational CRM - you don't need to mess with the data to know
your customers and prospects.

Case Routing & Escalation

Emails get lost. Voicemails get ignored. With built-in case routing and escalations,
especially for certain keywords, you can efficiently direct matters to the right people.
Forget about using half-baked integrations.

When a case is escalated, your operational CRM will notify your team that they need to
respond and even halt all future marketing campaigns until it's resolved.

What makes operational CRM different?

We mentioned a few different types of CRMs. Here is a quick summary of their
functions.

Operational CRM

 Primary Functions: Sales, Service, and Support.

 Perfect for customer-facing functions
 Connects marketing, sales, and customer service teams
 Automates many functions including scheduling, follow-ups, and contacts
 Facilitates customer self-service functions

Analytical CRM

 Primary Function: Data Analysis

 Collects and analyzes customers data
 Tracks and analyzes key performance indicators
 Helps management make business decisions and set long-term goals
 Collaborative CRM

 Primary Functions: Document Sharing and Employee Engagement

 Acts as a database for internal company information
 Supports cross-functional processes
 Addresses internal communication breakdowns

Operational CRM Benefits

While each type of CRM has its place, and one may fit a company more than another,
operational CRMs are a great benefit to companies who want to drive customer
satisfaction and loyalty.

Here are several powerful benefits an operational CRM has over other types of CRMs.

Enhance marketing processes - Drill down into your customer data with laser focus.
Learn which are the likely buyers and then launch campaigns to target similar buyers.
With the help of the customer data in your CRM, you can analyze buying patterns and
customer demographics to tailor the best possible marketing campaigns.

Increase internal communication - It’s no secret, departments that don’t communicate

are usually not working toward the same goal. When an organization has access to the
same information it puts them all on the same field, playing the same game. The
operational CRM's ability to capture, store, and disseminate data makes it a great tool
for inter-departmental communication and information sharing.

Maximize upselling and cross-selling - Operational CRMs start capturing your

customers’ data from the first touchpoint and it maintains those records through the
lifecycle of the customer, logging each sale, contact, and issue. This sets up your sales
team for the perfect upsell and cross-sell opportunities. With purchase history available
to them, sales reps can use sales tactics tailored for each client.

Increase Revenue - Operational CRMs are known to produce more than $8 of value for
every $1 invested in them. At an 8:1 ROI, you can't go wrong with a CRM for your
business. Scaling your sales team and giving them tools to sell and close better will
undoubtedly increase your company's revenue.
 Increased Customer Satisfaction - If you can’t support your customers, if you can’t
provide them great service, they’re not going to stick around. That’s why it’s important
your CRM system in place. Customers hate repeating themselves, so arming your staff
with a centralized CRM system will improve the customer experience near instantly.

Equipping your customer service team with a CRM allows them to provide accurate,
timely, and well-informed information. They can see when the customer has called in
the past and what was discussed on those phone calls. They can see when the
customer had a problem and contacted technical support.

An operational CRM provides all this data and more, so your customer service team can
have a holistic view of the customer’s relationship with your company. This is how great
customer service experiences are born.

CRM Best Practices

It's one thing to select a CRM to grow your business, and another to actually put it into
practice. We've all experienced failure setting up CRM before. Avoid the common
pitfalls of customer relationship management software by employing these best
practices.

1. Scope out your needs and requirements. Analyze your internal needs and compare
that to your existing customer interactions. Plan to immerse all of your business and
customer data into one operational CRM platform.
2. Survey your internal sales team and support staff. Observe how they interact with
leads and customers. Document the entire sales process so you can activate your CRM
with ready-made campaigns.
3. Replicate your successful marketing campaigns and front-load the data into your
CRM. This includes tracking data, custom fields, and helpful information for your sales
team to understand. The history of customer interactions helps everyone serve
customers better.