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A 5-Minute Guide on Operational CRM You Need to Know in 2024

Operational CRM

Running a business isn’t as straightforward as it looks. You’re constantly juggling multiple tasks, from sales and marketing to research and customer support. These demanding and repetitive tasks can quickly drain your energy and that of your team. But with an operational CRM, you can simplify and streamline your workflow which means it does all the heavy lifting, allowing you and your team to focus on the strategy side of things.

But there’s more to operational CRM than just automation. Keep reading to find out more about this particular type of CRM and understand how exactly it benefits your business. 

What is operational CRM?

An operational CRM (customer relationship management) system streamlines and automates your marketing, sales and customer service workflows; enhances the customer experience; and increases conversions by helping manage and analyse customer interactions.

Popular operational CRM software like TeleCRM can help your business in multiple ways.

  • Features like Autodialer, Leaderboard, WhatsApp bulk broadcasting, etc., help you streamline various business operations and reduce the workload of your team(s) significantly 

  • It stores lead and customer data in a single system, enabling easy access for you and your team

  • You can monitor the performance of every single member of your sales and customer support teams from a single dashboard

Which business functions can be streamlined by operational CRMs?

Operational CRMs typically help streamline three main business functions: sales, marketing and customer service. Let’s see how. 

Sales

Sales is the backbone of any business, be it B2B or B2C. Your sales agents need to be on top of their game so that your sales numbers keep improving every quarter. And this is only possible if agents can augment their productivity with the latest tools and technologies. 

With operational CRM, you can efficiently automate all your sales operations, from sending follow-up messages to setting call reminders and addressing customer queries. This level of automation ensures you never miss out on any potential business opportunities.

Use case #1: Lead management and distribution

Managing leads is still quite a challenge for most businesses. You get leads from various sources — Google Ads, your website, Facebook ads and so on. Ideally, you would want all these leads collected in one place so you can easily share them with your team. But often they end up getting captured in multiple spreadsheets. Then you have to hand them off to your team members manually, making the whole process of assigning leads a nightmare. With an operational CRM, however, you can easily assign your most important leads to your preferred team members.

Automatic lead distribution in TeleCRM app

If one of your sales reps has a proven record of successfully handling real estate leads, you probably want them to be the first point of contact for real estate leads. This can be easily achieved through TeleCRM’s automatic lead distribution feature, which automatically assigns leads to sales reps based on predefined metrics. In other words, leads are quickly assigned to the right agents, improving response times and maximising the chances of conversion.

Use case #2: Telesales management

Your sales team interacts with tens, if not hundreds, of leads every day, follows up with them diligently and even handles customer queries without batting an eye. But this process is quite exhaustive, as agents have to constantly juggle between Excel or Google Sheets to fetch the contact information of leads. But with an operational CRM, your agents don’t have to face these hurdles as the software optimises the process through automation, reducing the manual work done by your team. 

Autodialer feature in TeleCRM helps you make calls directly from the app with less manual work

Did you know? TeleCRM’s Autodialer feature lets your sales team make calls directly from a centralised hub without manually entering or looking up phone numbers. With this capability, your agents can improve engagement, increase productivity and handle customer queries effectively, ultimately, leading to more closed deals. Plus, you can leverage the automatic call recording feature to analyse past conversations and refine your sales strategies.

Marketing

Marketing is the engine that drives visibility and interest in your business, whether you’re reaching out to other businesses (B2B) or directly to consumers (B2C). It’s all about understanding the problems faced by potential customers and convincing them that your product or service is the solution they’ve been seeking.

However managing campaigns, keeping track of customer responses and adjusting strategies across multiple channels can be quite complex and time-consuming. This is where an operational CRM system can come in handy with features that can help automate and refine your marketing campaigns.

Use case #1: Bulk messaging campaigns via WhatsApp

Reaching your audience where they are most active is key to the success of your marketing campaigns. WhatsApp is not just a popular messaging app in India, but also much more effective than email and SMS in terms of marketing. However, sending messages to a large audience on WhatsApp is more complex due to its severe restrictions and privacy policies, not to mention the amount of manual effort required from your marketing team. 

Send bulk messages on WhatsApp using TeleCRM's WhatsApp CRM

An operational CRM system can integrate with WhatsApp Cloud API, allowing you to manage and automate your messaging campaigns on WhatsApp directly from the CRM itself. For instance, TeleCRM’s WhatsApp CRM enables your marketing team to send bulk marketing messages via WhatsApp. Now you can keep your prospects updated on all your upcoming offers, new product launches or the latest product updates with minimal effort and without the risk of getting your number blocked or banned.

Use case #2: Targeted messaging

In marketing, it’s crucial to reach the right people with your messages. Your campaigns need to pinpoint and address your prospect’s specific needs to turn them into valuable leads for your sales team. However, crafting unique and innovative messages for different audiences and sending them out manually can get overwhelming really fast. This is where an operational CRM can make a big difference. It allows you to send personalised messages automatically to various segments of your audience, simplifying distribution.

Did you know? With TeleCRM’s pre-built custom templates, you can deliver consistent and tailored messaging across all communication channels efficiently. For instance, a real estate agency can create distinct templates for different property types and price ranges, ensuring prospects receive only relevant communication based on their preferences.

Customer service

Customer service is the lifeline of your business and is crucial for maintaining customer satisfaction and loyalty. It involves not just addressing complaints and queries but also proactively ensuring that your existing customers are happy with your products and after-sales support. Providing quality customer service can improve your retention rate significantly.

Although managing customer interactions at scale can seem like a daunting task, an operational CRM system can help you effortlessly manage all your customer service operations by centralising customers’ interactions and data.

Use case #1: Follow-up reminders

Your customer service team interacts with numerous customers daily through calls, messages and emails. It’s easy for them to overlook follow-ups due to the sheer volume of work or because they forgot to set a reminder. This oversight can lead to dissatisfied customers, eventually damaging your brand’s image. However, an operational CRM can address this issue with its follow-up reminder feature. This ensures your agents never miss a follow-up, helping them solve more customer queries and improve overall business performance.

TeleCRM's follow up reminders empowers you to never miss a follow up

Pro Tip: TeleCRM’s automated follow-up reminder feature ensures that your agents receive timely notifications about their next action, whether it’s resolving a customer query or simply checking in with a new customer. The system automates these reminders, alerting an agent exactly when it’s time to make a call, thus reducing the chances of forgetting critical follow-ups. For instance, an agent will get a reminder to contact a customer exactly a week after they have made their purchase to check if they’re satisfied with the product, address any product-related issues or connect them with the right agent for further assistance if needed. This feature helps maintain high levels of customer service quality.

Operational CRM vs. Analytical CRM vs. Collaborative CRM

Before choosing a CRM, it’s important to know what problems it can solve for your business and whether it is worth the cost and effort. Understanding the key differences between each type of CRM software will help you arrive at the right decision.

Operational CRM 

Operational CRM primarily deals with managing and smoothing the daily tasks and workflows associated with running a business. 

  • Direct customer interaction: Focuses on handling day-to-day interactions across sales, marketing and customer service to optimise customer engagement and support

  • Automating tasks: Streamlines business workflows by automating routine tasks such as lead management, campaign execution and query resolution to enhance efficiency

  • Immediate ROI: Accelerates the time taken to achieve higher operational efficiency and customer satisfaction, leading to an immediate return on investment through increased sales and retention rate

Analytical CRM 

Analytical CRM’s core strength lies in its strong data analysis capabilities that provide real-time insights into customer behaviours and trends.

  • Data-backed insights: Uses data analysis to help you gather deeper, richer insights into customer behaviour, preferences and patterns

  • Decision making: Helps in strategic planning by analysing trends and forecasting future customer behaviours, aiding in long-term business planning

  • Segmentation and targeting: Enables precise customer segmentation and targeting based on detailed data analysis, improving the effectiveness of your marketing efforts

Collaborative CRM 

Collaborative CRM emphasises communication and collaboration both internally among different departments and externally with partners and stakeholders. 

  • Enhanced communication: Focuses on improving communication and sharing of customer information across all departments within the organisation and with external stakeholders

  • Unified customer view: Ensures all internal teams have a unified view of customer interactions, which helps in delivering a consistent customer experience across all journey touchpoints

  • Collaboration: Facilitates better collaboration with internal stakeholders and external agencies by letting you share customer insights and status updates easily, enhancing the overall customer service ecosystem

Benefits of operational CRM 

Here are four ways an operational CRM system can benefit your business.

Improved business efficiency

Have improved business efficiency with an operational CRM

Operational CRM systems are designed to streamline everyday tasks and automate business processes. For example, tasks like entering data, scheduling meetings or assigning leads can be automated, drastically reducing manual work and the chance of human error. This efficiency boost not only saves time but also increases overall productivity as your team members can focus their efforts on closing more deals and improving customer relationships rather than getting bogged down by routine tasks.

Faster and better customer service

With operational CRM you faster and better customer service

One of the standout features of operational CRM is its ability to centralise all customer data and interactions in a single location. This consolidation makes it easy for your service team to access complete customer histories, including past purchases, preferences and any previous interactions across all your business communication channels. With this information, support agents can enhance customer experience with more personalised services, making customers feel valued and understood, which is crucial for building and sustaining long-term relationships. You can also create a customer experience program where you can have deep insights on your customer interactions which can help to elevate your customer loyalty, and advocacy

Increase in deal closures

Increase in deal closures by using a operational CRM

Operational CRM comes equipped with tools specifically designed to optimise the sales process. Features like lead management and sales automation will help you streamline your customer journey. The CRM system can automatically score and prioritise leads based on their likelihood to convert and you can schedule follow-up tasks within the CRM to ensure no potential sale slips through the cracks.

Additionally, sales campaigns can be tracked in real-time, allowing teams to adjust strategies as needed to achieve optimum results. 

Better decision-making

With an operational CRM, you make better and data backed decisions

Operational CRM systems will provide you with invaluable insights into customer buying patterns and the sales performance of your individual agents. You can use this information to make smart business decisions concerning the allocation of resources, product and/or service prioritisation and areas of improvement. For example, if the data shows that a particular product is frequently being returned, you can investigate and figure out a solution to fix the issue. Additionally, you can use the data to understand customers’ buying patterns and tailor your marketing efforts to match their preferences, thus optimising your marketing strategies and expenditures based on concrete evidence.

Choosing the right operational CRM for your business

To ensure you make the right choice, you must first look for a CRM that helps you streamline your business processes and sustain it for a long time. Once you’ve more or less found a match, use the below criteria to zero in on the ideal ally for your business.

  • Initial assessment: Begin by understanding your business’s unique requirements. Identify the essential features that will support and solve the problems or issues you are facing in your day-to-day operations.

  • Scalability: Choose a CRM that can adapt and grow with your business. It should be able to handle all the complexities that come with an expanding business.

  • Customisation capabilities: Look for a CRM that offers extensive customisation. This allows you to tailor the system to fit your specific workflows and business processes, maximising operational efficiency.

  • Ensure it has integration capacity: The CRM should integrate effortlessly with other tools in your tech stack to ensure smooth operations.

  • User-friendliness: Opt for a CRM that is easy to use. A user-friendly interface ensures quick adoption by your team, without the need for extensive training.

  • Cost-effective: Carefully consider the pricing structure. Ensure that the cost aligns with the features and benefits provided to guarantee the best value for your investment.

Why should you opt for TeleCRM?

TeleCRM stands out as an optimal solution for businesses seeking a powerful yet affordable operational CRM. Here are a few reasons why TeleCRM should be your first choice.

  • Comprehensive lead management features: TeleCRM equips you with everything from sales automation capabilities to customer service enhancements like WhatsApp CRM and a centralised hub. These features help streamline crucial business operations without any manual effort.

  • Customisable according to your needs: With its vast customisation options, you can configure TeleCRM to align perfectly with your specific needs. Customise everything from individual fields in lead generation forms to email templates to fit your business needs.

  • Easy integration with existing tools: TeleCRM integrates with more than 25 applications used across industries, enhancing your existing workflows and simplifying data management.

  • Designed for all users: The TeleCRM UI is easy to navigate and can be easily used by team members with varying levels of technical savvy, facilitating faster and more effective adoption across your team(s).

  • Affordable and value-driven: TeleCRM offers competitive pricing while providing a full suite of powerful features, ensuring that businesses of all sizes can access top-tier CRM functionalities without paying a premium.

TeleCRM is designed to enhance customer relationships and boost employee productivity at every stage of the client journey, ensuring you achieve and exceed your business goals. Book a demo today and see firsthand why it’s probably the best operational CRM for your business.

Fahad Abdullah

Fahad Abdullah is a marketing executive and content writer at Telecrm and has been involved in writing blogs, marketing content, SEO, and social media marketing. As a mass media graduate, Fahad has over 3 years of experience working as a content writer and social media marketer for varied B2B and B2C companies in India.

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