customer relationship management

Learn how you can effortlessly create buyer personas for your business with the help of your customers.

A customer persona is a detailed description of your target customer. It is a product of deep research about your existing or target customer and represents a summary of their needs, preferences, and behavior.

Customer personas help you channel your focus into qualified prospects, manage your product and services to suit the needs of target customers, and ensure that all workflows (from marketing to sales) are designed to match the customer personas. 

Doing these help you attract leads and customers that provide high value to your business over time.

How to Create a Customer Persona

So how can you create a customer persona for your business? Check our tips below.

1. Get your customers to participate in your research

Your customers are the most important element of your research. The entire strategy revolves around them and so it’s crucial that you’ll get input from them.

Anyone— from the leads that visit your website to your repeat customers— can participate in this research.

You can also automate this process by configuring your website or landing pages to prompt visitors to fill out a form. You can also send emails to subscribers that let them participate in surveys or even interviews.

2. Collect as much information as possible

Gather as much important and relevant information as needed for your research. You can start with demographic details such as their: Name, Email, Gender, Age, Company Position, and Company Name. Then you can move into more personal information such as their needs, buying habits, preferences, and online behavior, among others.

3. Dig deeper

Sometimes you need to dig deeper into your customers’ profiles by asking more specific questions. Here, your sales and marketing teams must work together to identify the type of questions you need to ask to get the desired response from your target customers.

For example, identifying whether a product or service may suit a customer may require you to ask more than the standard “Would you like to try this product?” question. 

It may be necessary to ask what the customer does on a daily basis, what they like or dislike, or what they prioritize right now to establish the necessary conclusions.

Further assessments and evaluations may be needed to validate the conclusion you’ve arrived at after conducting your research.

4. Identify the appropriate messaging strategy for the personas created

Once you’ve created your personas, create a messaging strategy that suits these personas’ needs and preferences. 

Everyone in your company must be able to speak the language that your personas are speaking, especially when they’re having direct conversations with them. This ensures that your messaging resonates well with your target audience.

Automate Your Data Collection

Effortlessly collect information about your leads and customers with their participation. Automate your workflows and have your sales and marketing teams access a rich database of customer information.

Help them establish a solid customer persona which allows them to tailor the sales and marketing experience accordingly.

Need to know more about automating customer data collection? Talk to our experts at Saphyte and book a demo for FREE.

To centralize or not to centralize – a hard call made harder with power struggles. The timeless tug-of-war between centralizing and not centralizing remains a dilemma for most companies. Business leaders believe that poorly judged centralization can stifle initiative, compel the business’s ability to tailor products and services locally, and burden business departments with high costs and poor service. [1]

However, as the world courses through in rapid motion, every business is now compelled to have a management system to help them streamline their daily processes and procedures. Systems that allow companies to establish management protocols and facilitate clear communication between departments. A business’s communication structure can influence discovery and the potential of its staff members, which in turn causes the company to innovate and implement its ideas. 

Why Choose to Centralize your Business System?

A centralized business system means keeping most of your inventory in one or a few platforms instead of having individual storage systems to maintain your account. Doing so can benefit your business’s overall design, including more efficient data control and quicker responses to prospects and customers. These are just some of the few benefits you can gain with a centralized business system. 

Curious to know more about the power of a centralized business system? Here are more of its benefits that you may enjoy. 

Effective Decisions

At the local level, decentralized business systems allow businesses to respond swiftly to unpredictable market conditions. However, in most cases, centralization provides firms with the most efficient decision-making and communication throughout the company. Some decisions, such as responding to unfavorable news events, are best made by executives, especially when it comes to timely decisions and when responses are essential to execution. 

Accountability 

Centralization also highlights decision-makers, making it easier for individual team members to be accountable for their decisions and actions. When the right choices are consistently made and implemented, recognition goes to the right people. Accountability compels corporate decision-makers to invest the right amount of time, effort, and energy to examine decisions and their impact on all stakeholders. 

Consistency 

Consistency is another necessary strength of business centralization. When the same person or group of executives make decisions on behalf of the company, those decisions are consistent and predictable. That way, it helps managers and employees know what to expect and prevents some frustration resulting from constant changes in decision patterns. In addition, decisions that affect customer relationships can improve brand consistency if made by the same executive. 

Reduced costs

A centralized system adheres to standard procedures and practices that guide and reduce office and administration costs. With the right business system, businesses can now reduce spending on storage, augmenting staffing, and even location. 

Improved quality of work

Standardized procedures and better supervision in a centralized business system improve work quality. With the help of systems and apps, businesses can now reduce the potential waste of manual labor and ensure quality and accurate work. Systems like CRM software can help minimize task duplication and increase labor costs. 

Streamlined Information Flow 

Most industries that rely on a constantly changing and inconsistent market have the advantage of being free to update. With a centralized source of information, it’ll be easier for managers and employees to implement strategies and easier to track individual performance. When data is readily accessible, communication is streamlined, thus adding more value to your bottom line. 

Definitive Chain of Command

A definitive chain of command paired with a centralized business system is also beneficial for staff seeking more supporting guidance regarding their responsibilities and expectations. A centralized system works reasonably well to provide people with clear directions. 

The vague nature of a decentralized system may confuse common workflows, but increased autonomy is desirable to employees who prefer working on a flexible schedule. Companies that handle a lot of employees with a work-from-home set-up can significantly benefit when they have centralized business systems that combine reduced oversight and self-reporting tools to streamline admin and managerial responsibilities. 

Creating Standard Internal Metrics 

It is easier to create a standardized format in the central system when developing internal performance metrics. A top-down management structure allows managers and executives to integrate communication and reporting standards with minimal deviation. If the indicators of success are relatively simple, it may be beneficial to centralize the whole structure of the organization. A well-distributed system allows individual departments or teams to decide how to report and avoid confusion about performance results. Active communication between managers and executives helps answer any questions in the report. 

Relationship with customers

Building a direct customer relationship is easier to use in a decentralized organization because there aren’t many communication and reach restrictions. Optimizing social media channels is a prominent decentralization feature that allows businesses to interact with multiple geographic markets with lesser difficulty. Online customer service via numerous communication lines is easy to do with flexible behavioral guidelines. 

However, the power of centralized business systems often has specific guidelines for how they should conduct themselves with the general public, giving businesses more control over their brand image. Companies in industries such as children’s media and baby products typically communicate with the general public through a strong public relations team. In contrast to automated online systems, an in-house customer service team with in-depth knowledge and experience may also respond to complaints.

Key Takeaway

Decentralization may offer plenty of untapped business potential, and it may give plenty of autonomy on an individual level. However, amidst a decentralized environment, businesses need a bit of control of how things are run inside our business to control efficiency and effectiveness. This is the true power of a centralized business system. 

Are you taking measures to centralize your business flow? If not, Saphyte will be more than happy to take you in on a little open secret. Call us today, and let’s get your business centralized today!

Digital ecosystems are a set of tools that software providers offer to businesses. These sets of tools can communicate with each other and can be accessed from a single interface. This lets users perform tasks fast and without having to switch platforms.

As digitalization continues to grow in the business world, digital ecosystems are quickly reshaping the way businesses work. 

From capturing leads to closing deals, businesses that work with software providers have proven to have an edge over those that rely on traditional work processes. They have been seen as fast, reliable, and can give better services than companies that refuse to adopt technology.

In fact, companies that orchestrated digitally connected ecosystems were reported to have a revenue growth approximately 27% higher than the average for their industries. Their profit margins were also 20% above the average for their industries.

Redefining the US Health Industry

In the US, the adoption of digital health tech by companies like Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson resulted in the rapid discovery of drugs to combat new COVID-19 strains (using artificial intelligence). Moreover, the positive consumer response to digital ecosystems has led companies to adopt them fast. 

In August 2020, telehealth adoption rates by American adults increased to 36% (from the pre-pandemic rate of 11%). This indicates the willingness of the consumer market to engage businesses through their online channels as these benefit them too. 

Online channels such as telehealth are highly accessible and safe— unlike going to clinics or hospitals for a physical examination, especially when their illness doesn’t require serious medical attention.

There are also factors that fuel the adoption of digital ecosystems in the healthcare industry such as lower costs, accessibility for customers, and the renewed focus on positive patient outcomes.

Transforming the Consumer Goods Sector

Some companies make decisions based on estimates. Others on data. And those that lean towards the latter often see themselves in favorable positions.

One of these companies is The Honest Company, a consumer goods company that sells beauty and baby products. It’s a company founded by actress Jessica Alba and was valued at nearly $1 billion as of October 2017. And when it comes to company growth, to Alba, it’s all about data. 

​​“I love facts and data,” Alba told People (magazine). “So whenever there’s a naysayer with a laundry list of why everything shouldn’t happen, I love asking questions. ‘Oh really? Why couldn’t this work?’ And then you collect all the data that you need to come in and hit them over the head with it.”

Data has been essential in pivoting companies for growth, especially when the market is unstable and consumer behavior is unpredictable. 

What digital ecosystems do is allow businesses to streamline the collection of data about their customers. This lets them spot consumer trends and changes in purchasing habits. 

When companies are vigilant enough, they can reshape their business model to take advantage of new opportunities, as well as mitigate the risks emerging from an evolving market.

Empowering startups and small businesses

Successful startups are usually from humble beginnings. With enough determination and luck, many have grown into becoming unicorns that they are today.

But some companies don’t just rely on themselves nor on the vicissitudes of the market. They rely on the old adage “the customer is always right,” that they always make sure to collect customer feedback whenever they can.

Style Theory, ​​a Singapore-based fashion rental subscription platform, has now grown into a multimillion-dollar business because of a not-so-hidden secret— building a minimum viable product (MVP) first, testing, and iterating quickly in response to customer feedback.

The co-founders of Style Theory, Chris Halim and Raena Lim. Photo: CNBC

“The best way to launch anything is always do it simple with minimal scope, get it to market asap, then get customers’ feedback,” said co-founder Raena Lim.

“Based on customers’ feedback, you can then iterate and make it better. I think that’s a much better way to build something that customers will love,” she continued.

The word “customer-centric” is thrown around in a lot of boardrooms. But what does it mean to be customer-centric? And will it pay off?

What Is Customer-Centric?

Customer-centric is a strategy that involves creating the best experience for the customer for a meaningful, long-term business relationship. In this strategy, the customer is at the core of the business’s decisions and operations.

Providing a positive customer experience helps the business achieve customer satisfaction. Once the customer is satisfied, the chance for a repeat purchase is high. This behavior, when repeated, builds customer loyalty and drives sales results.

Overall, being customer-centric is necessary for companies especially when the business environment is competitive. It helps them distinguish themselves from the other brands. It also ensures long-term business success.

What you should know:

Customer-centric is a strategy focused on enhancing customer experience.

It helps businesses set themselves apart from the competition, drive down business costs, build customer loyalty, reduce customer churn, and improve overall sales.

Using technology is necessary to implement a customer-centric approach. It helps businesses run smoother workflows. It facilitates faster information exchange.  And it helps businesses generate insights faster.

Benefits Of Being Customer-Centric

Being customer-centric has multiple benefits to businesses. Here are a few:

Lower business costs

For businesses to drive sales, they must acquire new customers through lead generation tactics. But these tend to be costly. Spending on ads to gain a wider audience reach, giving discounts, or other promotional activities, to name a few examples, are expensive to run. 

Compared to having existing customers make repeat purchases to gain sales, lead acquisition tends to drive costs higher. This need to acquire new leads is eliminated when the business successfully runs on customers making repeat purchases.

Reduces customer churn

When customers are dissatisfied with a business, they tend to leave the business and choose the competition. This is wasted sales potential and is often measured by the rate of customer churn. Reducing customer churn improves sales performance, which, in effect, improves profitability.

When a business focuses on the customer experience, it ensures that the customer is satisfied with the service from the start of their journey towards the end of the sales process. This reduces the chances of customers churning. 

Builds customer loyalty

Aside from reducing customer churn, being customer-centric ensures that customers get to stay, make future purchases, and recommend your products and services to others.

Customer loyalty helps the business gain a wider reach through recommendations and referrals. For example, when a customer is satisfied with your product or service, they tend to introduce your brand to others on occasions when a need arises.

How to Be Customer-Centric

One of the popular ways to be customer-centric is to use a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software. The software is designed to help businesses get to know their customers more, gain data and information, and craft a workflow that enhances their services.

CRMs are known to help businesses gather information about their potential and existing customers. They do this by using landing pages, for example, to prompt website visitors to fill out a form and get their contact information.

Or by providing feedback loop mechanisms that help customers smoothly provide feedback at strategic points of the sales process (e.g. when closing a deal or after the customer makes a purchase).

They can also help businesses tailor their content and send content via email automatically, based on a schedule. This is important especially when the business runs a drip email marketing strategy.

Learn more about drip email marketing here:

Customer-centric Through Tech

Learn more about using tech to implement a customer-centric strategy. Get started here.

A successful online business does not settle with closing a sale. It goes beyond—  it makes customers fall in love with the business.

Customer experience (CX) is the top priority for many business professionals. The reason is simple: a good customer experience can help reduce churn and increase sales revenues. According to a report, 81% of companies that provide better customer experience were found to perform better than their competitors. 

More than that, customers are also willing to pay higher prices for better service. In fact, research noted that 86% of customers indicate their willingness to pay more in exchange for better experiences.

So let’s cut to the chase. How can companies deliver an experience that customers would enjoy? Here are 6 ways for you to take note of.

Six Ways To Provide Better Customer Experience

Let’s take a look at strategies that help create a great customer experience strategy. These are found to help improve customer satisfaction, reduce customer churn, and increase profits.

1. Create a goal

The first step that you should take in providing a better customer experience is to have a goal centered on, well, the customer experience. 

Have a vision and provide a set of statements that allow you to materialize that vision. These will be your guiding principles that will help shape your acts and decisions that would ultimately result in providing a better customer experience.

2. Understand your customers better

It’s hard to provide a better customer experience without understanding your customers first. To do this, gather data from them that reflects their needs, interests, and preferences.

And it’s not just enough to collect feedback. Make sure that their feedback is authentic. And you can do this by strategically placing a feedback loop mechanism at certain points of the buying process.

For example, allowing customers to provide feedback at the end of the purchase allows you to gauge their satisfaction with their purchase. You can also reward this behavior by providing incentives after every feedback given. 

You can also understand your customers— even from the start— by allowing them to fill out forms in exchange for lead magnets.

Learn more about customer profiling here:

3. Do it from the start

As mentioned above, gathering data can be done all throughout the buying process. And it includes the start of the buying process— when customers are still considered as leads.

Map the customer journey and experience— what do leads feel at the starting point of your engagement? What pushes them to take the next step? What generates and sustains interest? And what makes them stay as loyal customers?

Answering these questions through the lens of the customer (or the lead) allows you to correct certain workflows that do not provide an impact during the journey. It should also be highlighted that certain interactions need to be quick before customers lose interest.

Learn more about implementing quick, automated workflows here:

4. Empathize

They say that the best customer experiences are achieved when businesses create an emotional connection with customers. Emotions shape the attitudes that drive decisions— that’s why in mapping customer journeys, what customers feel should be taken into account.

When customers are engaged emotionally, they’re found to be more likely to recommend your business to others, repurchase, and even be less price-sensitive than those that weren’t emotionally engaged.

5. Manage customer expectations

To reduce customer churn, managing customer expectations should be done all throughout the customer journey. Many negative experiences are a result of unmet expectations, so managing expectations help shape the desired customer experience.

Right from that start, it’s suggested to determine what the customer expects from the company. Ask open-ended questions and check what the customer perceives from your business.

Questions like “what kind of results do you expect to achieve at the end of the day?” or “what’s your timeframe?” help businesses address expectations right from the start.

6. Assess and evaluate

At the end of the day, it’s all about data. Did your customer experience strategy produce results that you expect? Were they unsatisfactory? And to answer these questions, you’ll need to have data about your performances.

Using a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software that generates data and insights in real-time helps you gain a better understanding of the customer experience. It also helps you make data-driven decisions so that, at the end of the day, you won’t be second-guessing what to do next to improve your customer experience strategy.

Improve Customer Experience Through Tech

Learn more about how a system can help you gather data and generate insights in real-time. Get started here.

The famous magazine, Entrepreneur Asia Pacific, tagged 2021 as the year of the customer. Over the past year, marketers and leading sales leaders learned a lot, whether they liked it or not. After a tough year, it’s time for businesses to go back to basics and focus on what matters – the customers. 

The consumer landscape experienced a sudden tectonic shift as businesses and consumers moved into a fully digitized realm of sales and marketing over the past year and several months. Therefore, strategies and approaches also changed. The focus became less about traditional marketing and sales methods and is now leaning more toward rethinking the whole digital customer journey and, most importantly, the customer experience.

Why should Businesses be Paying Attention to the Customer? 

Emotions, whether you deny them or not, creates an impact. It’s like a ripple. Customers who feel ignored by businesses feel rejection, and rejection can lead to many downward spirals. Meanwhile, when customers feel that they’re heard and valued by the business, it can positively impact your business. 

Businesses must listen to their customers, as customers directly impact your revenue. To actively be involved in your customer’s overall journey – this is where you must apply customer service and customer experience. 

Delivering excellent customer service and experiences is a practical approach in reducing the expense of operations and investing in improving their customer’s experience, and moving the needle on revenue. To do so, you must know what’s on top of your customer’s minds or the things that matter to them. 

What Matters Most to Your Customers 

Knowing what matters to customers and how they might interact with your brand is essential to your business’s success. So what are the things that matter to customers? Saphyte has listed ten things that matter to customers in 2021. 

Omnichannel Communication

With the fast-paced environment, customers will always want to reach out to you at any time. A study has shown that customers no longer desire to communicate with companies when and where it’s most convenient for them — they expect and demand it from your business. 

Unlike before, this new approach to conversational commerce is much bigger than your ordinary live chat. Though live chat is a part of the whole approach, it’s no longer the focus. Consumers expect and demand the ease of connectivity with your brand on their preferred communication platform.

But what is an omnichannel communication approach? An omnichannel communication approach allows businesses to deliver a seamless and constant experience across various communication channels (email, social media chat, website chatbots, etc.) while factoring in consumers’ different devices, behaviors, and choices.

Personalization taking Center Stage

On top of ease of communication, customers expect and demand personalization, and businesses notice this trend. And in 2021, hyper-personalization will take its place center stage. Data shows that customers value a friendly, efficient, and profound personalized customer service experience.

Never underestimate the influence of friendly, personalized interactions. One study shows that most customer buying decisions no longer rely on things like price or convenience. Instead, 70% of buying experiences depend on how a customer feels a company is treating them.

Communicate the Purchasing Process

Customers hate it when sellers dance around talking points like availability, price, discounts, total cost, add-on options, and so forth. Customers expect you to tell them, in plain and simple language, what items are included in their purchase and how the purchase will take place. No surprises and, most significantly, no last-minute upsells.

Showing Customers you Know Them

Customers no longer want to be a part of your sales number. They expect and demand them to feel seen, appreciated, and understood by the businesses they deal with every time. Of course, this is a natural human response, but it does create a massive impact on your revenue. 

The minor details can make a significant difference for your customers. You could start with tailored recommendations, greeting them on their birthdays, and addressing them by name when they’re talking to you. 

Agent Experience on Greater Focus

Agent Experience (AX) is the holistic outlook of how empowered, efficient, and influential a company’s customer service agents are. As is the case with almost any department in a business, prioritizing your team and staying in touch with your employee morale is the only authentic way to ensure positive customer reactions. 

You can do this by adequately equipping your agents with the right tools, enhanced training, make customer data more accessible, give specific and relevant feedback, and clear process documentation and flexible guidelines that allow agents to prioritize customer outcomes over their KPIs. 

Positive online engagement  

Brands are so obsessed with acquisition, clicks, and conversions that it can be easy for them to neglect the importance of the moments in between. Engaging customers between and beyond purchases will strengthen their emotional connection with your brand. Stronger ties between your customer and your brand will help you retain your hard-won customers.  

By positively communicating with your current customers online will make it much more likely for them to go out of their way to help boost your business socially.

Ability to trust your brand  

Trust is an issue with customers. While it is easy to set up your web page and social pages, it does not guarantee to build and maintaining trust. Customer trust is necessary for an environment where customer expectations increase daily and competition is intense. Customer trust is a brand differentiator that could make or break a business. 

Safety, convenience, and flexibility 

Safety, convenience, and flexibility are known as the new trifecta customer experience. After the pandemic, customers will prioritize their convenience, ease of transaction, and flexibility in options. No matter how great this need can be, the bottom line is that consumers demand it, and if your business isn’t convenient enough for them, they will look for one that is — presumably your competitors.

Understand ALL the Their (customer) Needs

Today, it’s no longer enough to “connect the stars” between your customer needs and your brand’s offering. By knowing and understanding what your customer needs is at the very core of every successful business, whether you’re directly selling to individuals or other companies. Once you have this knowledge, you can persuade potential and existing customers that purchasing from you is in their best interests.

Understanding your customers is the key to giving your customers good service, which further results in stronger customer relations and new sales through positive word-of-mouth recommendations.

Craft Compelling Solutions

Solution selling will be a great selling point for businesses this 2021. Customers demand and expect your business to have the essential selling skill of defining and proposing a valuable and practical solution. 

Always remember, your customer’s problem is always more important than your solution, and giving a solution to their problem should be your greatest priority.

Key Takeaway

Your customers are the bread and butter of your business. Knowing the things that matter most to them can set your business apart from your competitors. 

However, the key takeaway is catching up to these needs. To catch up to your customers’ needs, you need tools to gather, keep, and access data, keep business processes simple and make work easier for your employees. Saphyte can help you build these things. 

Saphyte is a UAE homegrown business operating out of Dubai. It is currently helping hundreds of companies drive digital transformation through local support, zero implementation fees, competitive subscription models, and an advanced CRM ecosystem technology.

Feel like talking about this opportunity more? Book a demo with us today, and our digital ecosystem experts will be right there with you.

The global manufacturing industry is a powerful force on its own. In the US alone, it accounts for 11% of the country’s overall GDP and contributes at least $2.74 for every dollar spent in the industry to the economy.

But the manufacturing industry is bound to undergo change and transformation. Recent advances in technology and the development of software such as CRM have reshaped the way manufacturing companies interact with their clients.

Most companies in the industry are B2B oriented, meaning they transact with large businesses and clients that could contribute hundreds of thousands, if not millions, to the company per transaction. This is why developing good relationships with these clients is imperative and should be a priority for every manufacturing company.

What is CRM?

This is where CRM comes into play. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is an approach to business that aims to develop good business relationships with customers over time. This includes the collection of data from customers to create personalized services and creating a strategy that helps the company achieve efficiency throughout its sales and marketing processes.

Today, CRM is heavily integrated with software development. CRM software (or simply CRM) is a huge market globally. In 2020 alone, the market is estimated to be worth $52.64billion and is used for purposes such as Marketing and Sales Automation, Customer Management, Lead Generation, Customer Retention, and Customer Support.

What is CRM in manufacturing?

Manufacturing CRMs are software designed for manufacturing businesses. It has tools and features that allow these companies to create records about customers and include details such as addresses, phone numbers, and needs and preferences. Sales reps can then use this information to create a customer persona, gain a deeper understanding of their customers, identify sales opportunities, and close deals more quickly.

CRM Manufacturing Stats

Stats for the manufacturing industry:

In the US alone, the manufacturing industry employs around 8.51% of the workforce.

Manufacturing companies account for 13% of CRM users, according to SelectHub.

Users in the manufacturing industry are estimated to contribute at least $3.7 billion to the CRM industry by 2021.

In North America, the CRM industry for manufacturing companies is forecast to reach $2.35 billion by 2027.

Benefits of CRM in Manufacturing

Among the benefits of CRM in the manufacturing industry are:

Generation of Leads

Qualifying Leads

Closing Deals Fast

Driving Sales Growth

Improving Customer Retention

Generation of Leads

One of the ways manufacturing companies can increase their sales is through generating leads online. Websites of manufacturing companies should prompt visitors to fill out a form that would collect their contact details such as names and email addresses so that they can reach out to them anytime whenever new products are launched.

This would keep leads in your sales pipelines and improve your chances of converting them into customers, therefore increasing your sales.

CRMs like Saphyte allow users to create landing pages that would prompt website visitors to fill out a form. The details will then be migrated into the CRM database which users can use to monitor and track their leads.

Qualifying Leads

When manufacturing companies are able to collect information about their prospective customers well, they will be able to determine their needs, preferences, and requirements, which allows them to engage them better.

CRMs allow users to create notes about their prospective customers, assign them to proper salespersons, and create a feedback loop mechanism that allows manufacturing companies to further personalize their services. Better services result in better chances of lead conversion.

Closing Deals Fast

With the use of smart lead tracking systems available in CRMs, sales teams can quickly provide the right service to each lead, allowing these leads to get their needs catered to as soon as possible. This helps sales teams close deals fast. 

They get prompted whenever it’s the right time to send a message, to follow-up, or to schedule a meeting. This knowledge on when to follow up on high-quality, sales-ready leads increases the chance of closing deals fast.

Driving Sales Growth

When the manufacturing company’s lead generation system is effortless and prospective customers are engaged well, chances of lead conversion are high as well as repeat purchases. These ultimately drive sales growth to the manufacturing company.

These can all be done using automation features such as drip marketing and other tools and functions built in the CRM. Overall, these allow manufacturing companies to do more, sales-wise, even with fewer resources. 

Improving Customer Retention

When customers experience better services— those that quickly address their needs and preferences— they are more likely to stay with the company and purchase from them in the future. This is called customer retention and most companies attribute 80% of their sales to this aspect.

Also, take note that it’s cheaper to make customers stay than to actively look for new ones.

Conclusion

There are a lot of benefits of CRM in manufacturing. With the way the economy works now, it is important to stay updated with technological trends and hijack the opportunities they create.

Did you know that you can automate sales and marketing tasks such as onboarding of new clients and sending them emails in just a few seconds with just a few clicks? A lot of things that have been developed recently, such as CRM technology, are making the lives of sales and marketing teams all over the world easier.

Technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing, robotics, the internet of things (IoT), and marketing automation solution, among others, let teams perform sales and marketing tasks in just a few minutes (which may take days when done manually).

The integration and growing utilization of these advanced technologies drastically transformed the landscape for businesses, as well as the way businesses and consumers interact with each other. They make things faster and more efficient for customers, improving the overall customer service experience.

Various studies point to the growing importance of customer experience in a 21st-century business setting. Customers don’t want to wait around. They want quick service and they will always prefer businesses that can give that to them.

According to a report by McKinsey, a new operating model that significantly improves the digital customer experience is necessary to capture new opportunities in the market. The same report also touts customer experience as a growth engine for any other customer-facing business and helps them set themselves apart from the competition.

Marketing Automation Makes Tasks Easier

The use of marketing automation has fast-tracked business processes, reducing manual effort, and eliminating the need to hire more to implement tasks related to acquiring potential customers. Because of all of these, doing business today is way different than how it was done before.

Technology brought people closer than ever and has made the exchange of money as well as commodities fast, safe, and efficient. Small businesses can now reach customers thousands of miles away by setting up an optimized eCommerce store, running marketing operations through automation, and allow themselves to be discovered in the online world through SEO optimization.

Online Onboarding: The Process

With Saphyte’s online client onboarding, customers can fill in the necessary details on the form provided by the CRM. These details will go into Saphyte’s centralized database which users can pull up anytime.

This sales and marketing management CRM can also be configured to automate workflows like scheduling the sending of emails (which is called automated emails), authenticating customers’ identities, and categorizing clients into Leads, Prospects, and Customers, among others.

A PDF file can also be automatically generated and sent as an email attachment using the CRM.

Customizing Forms Using the CRM

Tasks Made Easier Using Automation

UAE-based Saphyte is a CRM system with an online client onboarding feature.

Saphyte by Loyica, the UAE’s first homegrown CRM solution provider and marketing automation software, has designed its cloud-based software to fast-track client onboarding processes using automated features. The feature reduces client onboarding times by more than 75%.

Lead generation – collecting data from leads that filled out forms on your channels including your website, landing pages, mobile apps, social media, or other marketing channels

Client onboarding – registering leads who have finally made a purchase

Marketing campaigns – promoting contents designed to trigger purchase behavior

From the gathering of customer data using our forms to the authentication of clients using our identity verification tools, our users can cut down the duration of the onboarding process by 75 to 85% with the power of automation. Based on our study, onboarding processes that usually take an hour can now be achieved in less than 15 minutes using our software.

This makes sales operations more efficient. With Saphyte, sales teams can now use the time they have saved from onboarding clients into doing tasks that make the company much more productive.

The simplification of processes also cuts down costs. You avoid repeat interactions which are a waste of time and money. Plus with the tools and features provided, you will be able to empower your team to do more with less. The quick onboarding process enhances the customer experience, a crucial element in today’s business environment.

Saphyte can also automate tasks such as lead scoring, digital marketing, email marketing, customer relationship management, management of email campaigns, among others.

Try this leading marketing automation platform now and call our support team for more information.

Customer acquisition and customer retention are two important business activities that companies have been focusing on lately.

Around 44% of companies report that they focus more on customer acquisition, while 18% concentrate on retention. The rest say they focus on both equally. But based on studies, customer retention can bring so many benefits to a business — plus, it costs more to acquire new customers than to retain them. But what’s the difference and why is customer retention better?

First, let’s look at the definitions.

What is Customer Retention?

Customer retention refers to strategies and tactics that businesses implement to lessen customer churn. This method is important. Organizations and businesses implement this strategy because getting new profitable customers is a long and expensive process for businesses, on top of high advertising costs.

There’s also more to customer retention than just answering phone calls and helping them on board with your business. This method is about creating a seamless process from the very start that fosters fluid communication, trust, and mutual growth.

How Customer Retention Affects Your Business

Customer retention increases the “lifetime value” of your customers. And it can also boost your revenue. This method also helps you build meaningful relationships with your customers and creates a lasting impression that your business is more than just another store or website.

With this method, it’s easier for your customers to trust you with their money because of the value you give them in exchange. Trust breeds loyalty and loyalty breeds profit.

Not only is loyalty cheaper, but it also gives better returns. According to studies, engaged consumers purchase 90% more frequently, spend 60% more per transaction, and are five times more likely to do more purchases in the future. On average, loyal customers deliver 23% more revenue and profit than any other customer.

Loyal customers are more beneficial for your business but don’t take their loyalty for granted. For example, while loyal customers are more open to price increases, you should be careful about raising your prices simply to test how long they’ll stick around. This can discourage some loyal customers from buying again. Remember, lifetime revenue should always be the end goal.

How CRM helps in Customer Retention

According to research, customer experiences can improve customer retention rates by just 5% and increase profits by 25% to 95%.

The basic objective of a customer relationship management (CRM) solution is to improve your customer retention. Increasing customer acquisition at a low cost comes in second. Lastly, a CRM software’s objective is to make work seamless without risking any existing customer relations and ensuring a smooth transition of a new customer to becoming a loyal, long-term client.

But, more than that, here’s how CRM helps in customer retention.

Makes a comprehensive view of the “customer journey” map

Gathering customer data is essential, as it helps keep an eye on the impacts of your marketing campaign strategy vis-a-vis customer interaction. When you are able to gather data in real-time, you will be able to track the needs and demands of your target audience.

Collecting raw data is just the first step in initiating better experiences with your customers. Mapping the customer journey is the next step, as it helps record important focal points of your customer’s experience: from the initial contact (awareness), then the process of engagement (convincing the customer to purchase), then to a long-lasting customer relationship (post-purchase involvement).

CRM tools can help provide you an insight into the focal points of each consumer interaction and post-purchase meetings, and in data gathering across the customer journey map. The results will help you evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of your marketing strategy. It can also provide guidelines on how to re-engage the customer if your rate of engagement has been poor.

Personalizing interactions

A CRM software can help you see your customer beyond the routines of acquiring revenue. The effects of personalization can greatly impact the relationship during the purchasing stage and post-purchase stage — where it is equally essential to reach out to customers regularly, to increase the value of your service.

Recent research has found that personalization, user preferences, and other related information in a CRM software can deliver a high impact ROI. CRM can also cover new target bases.

When customer feedback is good, your product and services are more likely to be promoted on various platforms. This increases brand interest in untapped channels. And with more information gathered by your system, you will be able to adjust and fine-tune your follow-up strategies accordingly.

Why Choose a SaaS CRM like Saphyte?

SaaS (Software as a Service) are platforms or a type of software that runs on the cloud. This means that the software is not stored on your company’s servers. Rather, it is hosted and managed externally by the software or solutions provider. 

One advantage of using Saphyte as a SaaS CRM is that you can have 24/7 access, no installation or maintenance costs needed, and you can integrate all your business systems into the system. Thus, allowing you to have more mobility as a team. 

More than that, here are some notable features of Saphyte:

Seamless Data Storage

Everything in your business starts with data. A CRM has contact management features that can provide a central, secure warehouse to store countless customer data.

You can gather data from the landing pages of your website or your social media platforms. With Saphyte’s features like Sync, Saphyte Scan, and Form Builders, you can extract data from different sources and, at the same time, keep your data in one centralized repository for easy data management.

From there, you can have access to relevant information so you can execute your strategies and back them up with data.

Close more deals

By using a CRM system like Saphyte, knowing your leads quickly and accurately is made easy. Classifying your leads is necessary so you can customize your content like your sales pitches. With Saphyte’s Client Management modules, you can store your contact’s details and manage all customer information in one repository.

The Client Management modules have features like Categorization, Status and Updates, where you can conveniently organize and label your clients by grouping them. With these modules, you can automate your processes, organize your data, manage your daily tasks, generate reports, and nurture your client relationships.

Data Analysis

Saphyte can analyze customer information and other sales-relevant data using Sales intelligence tools.

With Saphyte’s customizable dashboard, you can have a summarized view of the metrics that matters to you, so you’re always up-to-date. This feature can arm you with information that lets you successfully implement your retention strategies.

Custom Email Marketing Campaigns

Make your emails look official and professional with Saphyte’s Email Templates. With Saphyte, you can create your own email design and layout and save it as a template. So, whenever you want to send an email, you do not have to create a design from scratch and do it all over again.

Product Catalog Management feature allows you to consolidate all your products into one catalog. Users can easily categorize, organize, and standardize all their product information across all their sales channels with this feature. Hence, you can set your customer’s expectations and make sure that your customers will have detailed and consistent information about your products and services.

Email Workflows

You can now automate the sending of your email marketing materials on a schedule that works around your sales cycle. Saphyte’s workflow is useful when you want to send a newsletter or a promotion to your targeted list consistently with minimal effort.

The intelligent workflows allow you to set up and automate your business processes. With a user-friendly interface, all you have to do is drag and drop the elements, click and connect the nodes and elements in your workflow sheet, and build your email process seamlessly.

Subscription Fees that Fit with your Business

Saphyte is pay-as-you-go cloud-based CRM.  Each subscription plan is inclusive of a free demo and a one-on-one product training. No set-up fees, no extra or hidden charges, no maintenance fees, and a 24/7 expert customer support availability.

Whether you’re a small business or an enterprise, having a CRM like Saphyte can be beneficial in your customer retention strategy execution. Start investing with Saphyte now by booking a free demo or by starting your free trial today.

Your banking business can either be a nimble titan (quick to move and creating a powerful impact) or a hulking elephant (slow to move). With the help of a CRM, you can avoid being the latter.

Most people think that a CRM software is just made for sales, enterprises, and small businesses. However, more than ever, banks and financial institutions need a customer relationship management (CRM) software and integrate it into their sales cycle.

A banking CRM software helps banks and other financial institutions manage their customers, improve their overall sales process, and understand their needs better in order to deliver the exact solutions quickly. There are plenty of definite benefits of CRM in banking. Here are some of them.

Boosting Sales and Increased Lead Conversions

According to reports, business banks loan out 15 times more money than consumer lending institutions. The risk factors are high if you want to get those big business accounts, but the rewards are as high as the risk.

In order to close big accounts, you need a reliable CRM to get you ahead of your competitors. With a CRM, you can identify qualified leads, nurture them, and convert them into deals before your competitors even know what hit them. 

Inter-Department Data Tracking

Today, businesses are a data-driven sector. But likes, clicks, and visits aren’t the only data points that can help improve your marketing. You need to know how many of those behaviors lead to successful sales.

And having separate spreadsheets for that just won’t cut it. This is where a CRM does best. From seamlessly storing customer information, segmenting data, data tracking, and centralized communication.

Every bit of update and changes can be seen all throughout the system. Your sales and marketing teams can avoid any mishaps in communicating within the team and with your potential customers. The more seamless your data tracking activity is, the better way you can serve your customers.

Increasing Productivity

In recent studies, they’ve found out that almost 8 out of 10 or 79 percent of all the leads you’ve gathered are never converted to sales. Adding more people to your sales team is impractical if you can boost your results with a technology like a CRM.

A CRM can help you cut costs by mitigating repetitive administrative tasks, streamlining contracts or proposals, and keeping your sales team in the loop. With the right system, banks are capable of handling more clients in less time.

Improving Customer Experience

Even if your bank has only a few products and services, you can still improve your brand more by delivering an impeccable customer service. You can do this by answering questions and solving problems quickly, without handing the customer off from one department to another.

With a decent banking CRM, you can effortlessly put all your departments on the same page and swiftly provide each customer with solutions. Remember, the easier your customer’s journey, the greater the return it’ll be for your business’s value.

Why Saphyte is the Best Choice as a CRM?

Finding a banking system that can assist you in executing these tips seamlessly might be tough. But you can work through it by checking Saphyte CRM as a start.

Saphyte is a cloud-based CRM and SaaS that can help banks and other financial institutions streamline their sales and marketing activities, and integrate them into a single platform. Saphyte is designed and built with sales and marketing tools that can help you improve your bank’s productivity and efficiency.

Saphyte is a system that aids you in managing vital customer data, conducting marketing tactics and strategies, identifying opportunities for the long haul, achieving growth, and fostering long-term customer relationships. Above all that here are some reasons why Saphyte is the best choice for a banking CRM software.

Saphyte has Lead Generation Boosting Features

Saphyte is not just your ordinary contact management tool. The system is made to help your sales team gather and nurture leads. Gather your leads by integrating your social media platforms into Saphyte’s system. Any data made through your social media channels are automatically sent to the CRM’s database.

Another way for you to gather customer data is through Saphyte’s Form Builders. Create forms that you can utilize for your websites to capture leads. The form captures information you need from your prospects. The moment the form detects an entry, it’ll send data into the CRM’s system.

To further add, Saphyte has a tool called Sync – a browser plugin that you can install to make contact information gathering from your LinkedIn profiles seamless and accurate. With Sync, you can eliminate or lessen manual data entry activities— it also makes your data syncing and data gathering activities more accurate and precise and more productive.

Lastly, Saphyte’s mobile CRM app is built with a business scanner feature to document, transfer, and store data to your database in a breeze. By simply scanning, you can store important contact information into the system without the hassle. Thus, making your data migration quick, easy, and accurate.

With Saphyte’s lead generation tools, you can create an accurate and reliable source of data for future customer interaction.

Saphyte has Productivity Tools fit for any type of team

Sales productivity might be a difficult goal to reach, that is why you need help by automating manual tasks. With that, you can change the way you do banking – and all for the better. The dream to increase sales is never too far to reach with Saphyte.

Automate most of your manual processes and other workflows with Saphyte, from lead generation and to other workflow processes. You can now ditch your manual business process like manually scoring your leads, making a product catalog from scratch, and sending email marketing materials, surveys, and product updates.

Saphyte doesn’t end with that. You can also create personalized emails for your existing customers, and send out scheduled email marketing campaigns and materials – all without having to leave the platform. 

Saphyte can help you mitigate your tellers’ and sales rep’s journey from one platform to another. The tools they need to stay productive can be found within the system. Hence, giving your team more time to do more revenue-driven activities for your bank.

Saphyte has tools to help you derive data-driven decisions

Data-driven decisions are necessary and crucial for banks and financial institutions. These decisions are not made up of a series of guesswork. In order to come up with a decision, you need your source of data to be consistent and centralized.

Sure, having your data on separate Excel or Google files may work for a while, but your business’s growth is on the line. Are you willing to take that risk?

With Saphyte you can gear up your bank for growth through its Sales Forecasting and Sales Intelligence tools. These tools can assist you in making data-driven decisions for you and your bank’s future.

The Sales Intelligence tool gathers and organizes all contact information concerning a client. The feature’s algorithm in return, processes this information, automatically analyzing the collated data, and generates easy-to-understand reporting visuals.

The Sales Forecasting tool creates an accurate approximation of your future sales. This might take more time because you’re building significant and accurate data first. Hence, the reason to invest in a CRM at the earliest convenience.

As you move along, the system can create realistic forecasting insights and assist you in coming up with business decisions that can mitigate future business losses.

Start right with the right CRM tool

The right CRM software for banking can help you foster lasting relationships with your customers and gain new ones. Start it with the right tool, start it with Saphyte.

As a pay-as-you-go subscription plan basis web platform, you won’t need to install the system into your local computer as the system is a cloud-based CRM. All you need is a stable Internet connection and a browser.

Each plan is inclusive of a free demo and one-on-one product training. Waiving off set-up fees, and extra or hidden charges. Saphyte also offers 24/7 expert customer support availability. Set your bank for the future with Saphyte today. Contact us for a free demo or start your free trial today.