Author: GoCRM Team

Get Started with SMS Marketing for Home Builders

Posted on March 22, 2021 by - Home Builders

SMS marketing automation cover - concept people

People almost always have their phones on them, but calling them isn’t necessarily the most effective marketing approach.

Cold calls tend to be ignored (or blocked), and trying to talk to someone during a busy day can be a good way to earn their annoyance rather than their business.

There is a better way for home builders to market their services, nurture their leads, and build connections over the phone: SMS marketing.

The Power of SMS Marketing

Average Open Rates comparison of Email vs SMS

Text messages are powerful tools for engagement: over 90 percent of all text messages are opened and read within 20 minutes.

Open rate isn’t the only indicator of SMS marketing’s effectiveness. Consider these other SMS marketing facts:

  • 99% of 18-49 year olds are capable of receiving text messages
  • 18-34 year olds prefer texts from businesses
  • Text messages are read 138% more often than emails
  • SMS marketing yields 8X the number of responses as does email
  • 47 percent of consumers who engaged with a business through text made a purchase

Fast, simple, and effective, SMS marketing can boost your home builder marketing ROI and save you time over crafting more complex email and paid marketing campaigns, all while helping you connect with target audiences in a way that appeals to them.

Uses of SMS Marketing for Home Builders

SMS marketing can benefit many industries, but home builders in particular can effectively integrate CRM with SMS marketing into many of their communications. Consider using text messages to accomplish any of these marketing, sales, and customer service tasks:

  • Engage leads with links to videos, blog posts, articles, layout options, and other resources
  • Set up client meetings or design consultations
  • Send Open House invites
  • Send reminders about appointments, task deadlines, or Open House events
  • Check in with clients throughout the design and building process
  • Follow up with clients after home completion
  • Request feedback (e.g. Add to references list or request review)
  • Earn leads (e.g. Announcing new subdivision or special offers)
  • Follow up after online form submissions
  • Communicate with realtors and brokers regarding newly built homes for sale

Business texting allows you to create a quick and easy line of communication that leads, clients, and your sales and marketing teams will all enjoy and use throughout the entire process of capturing, engaging, nurturing and converting leads.

Getting Started with SMS Automation for Home Builders

How to get started with SMS Marketing automation

Texting is faster and easier than sending emails or making phone calls, but sending timely text messages to dozens or hundreds of leads and clients may still be beyond the resources of your sales and marketing teams.

That is why SMS marketing automation works best when integrated with a robust CRM for home builders. The right platform, such as GoCRM, can automate many of the SMS marketing tasks you have, streamlining the process while maintaining the personal connection your leads, clients, and team members need.

Here is a look at how you can use SMS marketing with GoCRM to capture, nurture, engage, and convert your leads.

Make SMS part of your automated workflows.

GoCRM allows you to automate many sales and marketing tasks, from engaging cold leads to nurturing or qualifying leads to onboarding new customers and following up with them when their homes are completed.

To set up these home builder workflows, you create a series of emails, phone calls, and text messages, arranged according to your company’s best practices and your target audience. You create the emails and text messages once, and activate the workflow, and GoCRM implements the workflow based upon your parameters.

SMS marketing can be an important part of these workflows. If you create a workflow to engage leads who submitted an online form, for example, you could use text messages to achieve the following:

  • Confirm their form submission
  • Provide a link to homes similar to the one they are interested in building
  • Alert the lead to your newest offer or subdivision

Within GoCRM, SMS messages come from the assigned team member’s personal phone number. As a result, recipients can connect directly to a real person and seamlessly transition to a personal conversation. Simple, personal connections created through automated processes make SMS marketing a win-win strategy for home builders.

Use texting alongside emails and phone calls.

SMS marketing works best when it is paired with other marketing strategies. In particular, text messages combined with emails and phone calls create a powerful way for home builders to connect with leads and clients.

For example, say a lead submits an online form requesting a design consultation with your home building business. A text message can confirm that their form submission was received, but a personal phone call the next day from a team member can create a personal relationship with your business.

Together with emails and phone calls, SMS marketing makes it easier to build meaningful connections with leads and clients.

Use SMS messages to connect after leads take action.

Say a visitor to your website likes what they see and want to learn more about the homes you are building in a nearby subdivision. They submit a contact form. Unfortunately, it is late in the evening, and your business is closed.

If you use SMS marketing through GoCRM, you can still connect with your lead (and hopefully beat out your competitors).

GoCRM can automatically send SMS messages triggered by specific action from website visitors and leads. Use texting to respond to activity such as the following:

  • Confirm form submissions
  • Confirm appointments
  • Send event and appointment reminders

Use SMS marketing to cut down on response times.

If someone requests information about your home building business, chances are that they are requesting the same information from other businesses. Prompt responses can be the key to capturing that lead’s business.

Text messages can help you cut down on your response times even when your sales and marketing teams are busy.

For example, GoCRM can automatically thank a contact for scheduling an appointment or send a text with your business hours and expected time of reply if they reach out after business hours.

Prompt communication through text can help leads to feel seen and begin the process of nurturing them even when no one is immediately available to respond to them personally.

💡Takeaways

GoCRM can help you to create a robust SMS with CRM marketing integration for home builders. Take advantage today by scheduling a free demo. We would love to help you capture, engage, nurture, and convert more leads with less work this year!

7 Ways to Automate Marketing for Solar

Posted on March 15, 2021 by - Solar

Solar marketing automation

Solar energy is part of the exploding renewable energy field, which means that businesses dealing in solar power have a large, and eager, audience to tap into.

At the same time, renewable energy in general, and solar power in particular, are not always well-understood by consumers. Those looking to get into solar energy often need extensive education, along with the confidence that they are dealing with a business they can trust with their energy needs.

While you could look at some of the main players to find solar leads, such as EnergySage, and CleanEnergy Experts, you could also learn how to run your own full cycle solar marketing campaigns, from generation to tracking to automation, and start growing your solar energy business.

The time-intensive process of educating and building trust may be difficult to keep up with when you have many eager leads demanding your attention. That is where automation through a CRM such as GoCRM comes in.

By automating many of the tasks required to earn, engage, nurture, and convert leads, your CRM can support your sales and marketing processes and improve your productivity, without overwhelming your staff.

Here is a look at 7 ways how solar energy companies can automate marketing through GoCRM to build the success of your business.

Call Tracking

It can take several months between when a consumer signs a contract and when you get their solar power up and running. That does not include the time they spend reading about solar energy, vetting businesses, negotiating rates, and asking questions.

During that sometimes lengthy period of time, you should expect multiple phone calls as consumers ask questions, gather information, and decide if they can trust you with their solar project.

The information you collect in those phone calls doesn’t have to be lost just because it doesn’t exist digitally. GoCRM can use call tracking to help you stay on top of the information you gather via phone.

Through call tracking, GoCRM uses a cloud-based VOIP system to assign every phone call to the appropriate staff member on their personal device. Then, GoCRM can record the call and import vital information into its central database.

The result? You have real-time information at your fingertips so you can easily accomplish tasks such as the following:

  • Nurture leads with relevant follow ups
  • Set up consultations
  • Send relevant educational materials
  • View client questions and concerns
  • Answer questions with relevant and useful information

Solar Energy Lead Engagement Workflows

Use all the tools at your disposal, including email, text messaging, and phone calls, to capture, engage, and nurture leads with GoCRM’s solar automated workflows.

These workflows consist of series of tasks, from emails to phone calls, that you can customize to your own target audiences and business best practices. Create the emails and text message templates once, set the parameters, and activate the workflow.

GoCRM will take care of the rest, sending the emails and text messages, and scheduling the phone calls based on the parameters and the schedule that you set. It will even personalize messages to the recipient by including their name.

The result is an efficient way to manage repetitive tasks without adding time to your schedule. Use automated workflows to complete the following:

  • Create an autoresponder for new leads
  • Automate lead qualification
  • Re-engage leads who stopped responding
  • Respond to website visitors who requested a consultation or asked a question
  • Provide industry information (e.g. Facts about solar affordability or information on the history of solar energy)
  • Follow up after a solar consultation
  • Check in with former clients to request reviews, obtain referrals, and determine satisfaction with your work

Lead Assignment

When you work without a CRM, you risk forgetting about leads or failing to follow up promptly. Avoid these problems with automated lead assignment from a marketing CRM for solar energy providers.

Assign leads based on what works for you: Proximity of a team member to a lead, value of the lead, team member seniority, and more. You can even choose to assign leads in a round robin style.

Once GoCRM assigns the lead, the automated system will schedule tasks, send notifications, and deliver messages from the personal accounts and phone numbers of the assigned team member.

Combine lead assignment with automated workflows to create a complete system that engages and nurtures leads while providing a direct line to a real person as soon as the lead is ready to respond. The result? More leads nurtured without more time spent on the part of your already hard working sales and marketing teams.

Email Marketing Campaigns

Email marketing is powerful, converting 3 times the number of leads as does social media and earning 17% more upon conversion than do other digital marketing strategies.

Capture the power of email marketing with automated solar email marketing from GoCRM. Our system will create email drip campaigns that are as simple or as complex as you wish. You can also create emails that trigger based upon consumer action.

For example, set up emails to send when somebody schedules a consultation, signs a solar contract, or submits a contact form on your website.

Creating these automated emails is simple. Create the template; schedule it in GoCRM; set any necessary parameters, and activate. GoCRM will send the emails on time, every time, and even include the recipient’s name for a personal touch.

Use automated emails to accomplish tasks such as the following:

  • Communicate with your target audience regarding relevant news (e.g. Falling solar energy prices)
  • Encourage potential customers to schedule an appointment with your solar consultants
  • Alert leads to resources and information (e.g. New information on the positive environmental impact of solar power)
  • Re-engage cold leads with relevant information
  • Deliver resources, such as an ebook on the affordability of solar power over time, to nurture leads
  • Respond to website form submissions and other communications
  • Onboard new customers
  • Follow up with clients after solar panel installation

Personalized Marketing Communications

Connect with your leads and clients on a personal level through CRM-driven automation. GoCRM can add the recipient’s name to sms messages and emails, while also sending communications from your assigned staff member’s personal accounts and phone numbers.

When the recipient responds to the communications, they immediately reach the appropriate team member. That allows for a seamless transition to a personal conversation that makes it easy for your team members to nurture and convert leads who are ready to talk in person.

GoCRM also makes personalization easy by centralizing all information on your leads in a single database. This information allows anyone on your team to connect with your leads based on the most up-to-date information.

With simple, effective, and personalized communication, it is easier to convert leads into customers.

Data Entry

With many CRMs, accurate data is difficult to obtain because the CRM requires staff to enter the data manually. With GoCRM, data is entered automatically, thanks to the platform’s ability to integrate with hundreds of platforms and import data from them into the database.

No more repetitive communications, missed tasks, or ineffective marketing strategies. Your team has all the information they need to expertly communicate with and nurture leads along every step of the sales funnel.

Marketing Tracking

Marketing analytics give you the information you need to compare marketing and sales strategies and identify the ones that work best with each of your target audiences.

GoCRM provides automated analytics tracking to make real-time analytics easy to access anytime you need them. For example, with dynamic number insertion, GoCRM assigns a different phone number to each marketing initiative (e.g. Facebook Ads and flyers).

When someone calls a number, they are routed to your business, and GoCRM can track which marketing campaign sent them to you.

In addition, GoCRM allows you to track the origins and journeys of leads who accomplish tasks such as submitting forms, scheduling consultations, requesting information, visiting your website, signing up for resources, and more.

When you know which marketing efforts work best, and are delivering the highest conversion rates, you can maximize your ROI by implementing the most effective strategies for each of your target audiences.

💡Takeaways

Solar energy CRM marketing automation can help you save time, accomplish more, and realize a higher ROI than if you tried to accomplish the same task manually. Use GoCRM in order to work smarter, not harder, for your solar energy business. Sign up for a 30-day risk-free trial.

What is Field Force Automation and How To Get Started?

Posted on March 8, 2021 by - CRM 101

Field force automation

Think about all that you can do if you could get in touch with your onsite technicians in real-time without necessarily being intrusive? You can easily schedule routine services, perform onsite issue fixes and installations, track work progress, and record every equipment movement from inventory to onsite with no added burden on your work force working hours.

Field force automation is the kind of technology that lets you achieve efficiency with all of your customer site-related operations. This technology enables universal access from different devices like PDAs, mobile phones, laptops, and more, letting your field technicians share real-time information with your core team. It combines the power of technology and manpower to provide an easily trackable and efficient onsite work process.

What Is Field Force Automation?

In a strict sense, field force automation helps create workflows and track them through the various stages of a work process lifecycle. The latest features field force automation includes onsite employee tracking in real-time through GPS, as well as advanced collaboration tools.

For instance, say you have deployed a sales representative to demonstrate a product to a prospective client. Using field force automation, you can let your sales team instruct the field reps efficiently and give them remote assistance to do their jobs correctly. Additionally, you can also track the movement of your product equipment for safe transit and on-time delivery.

Unlike regular enterprise applications tied to an organization’s intranet, field force automation software can be accessed from any remote location with the proper credentials.

Field Force Automation Benefits

Better Efficiency

Field operations are often meddled with too much paperwork that can eat up productive hours. It can also have many repetitive work and chances for manual errors leading to inaccurate work tracking.

An automated system inherently solves this issue by digitizing all your work artifacts. Field agents can clock in and out quickly, thus enabling you to track their work hours accurately. Inventory management can be efficiently carried out with minimal errors. All necessary documents and customer interactions can be duly recorded and stored in your secure cloud storage.

Information can also be shared with the back office teams instantly, reducing a huge amount of delay that is encountered otherwise. You also get intuitive dashboards that present information at a single glance, helping make quick and accurate decisions.

Automatic Task Assignment

Getting the right field agent for the job can be an absolute head buster moment. Each minute to onsite issue resolution counts in terms of revenue. Finding the right resources and assigning them to a task at hand can be automated with field force management tools. Some advanced tools also use workflow automation to optimize resource scheduling, which adds more value to your business.

Boost Employee Morale

Field force management software eliminates the need for micromanagement. With features like geocaching, real-time alerts, and updates, you don’t have to expend so much personal interaction to follow up on your onsite operations. Information is made available instantly, reducing friction and communication gaps between your field agents and back-office managers.

Both on-field agents and back-office teams are provided with access to common data allowing for better coordination and collaboration.

Better Customer Experience

This goes without saying as when your efficiency increases, the customer ends up feeling happy and satisfied. Field service automation allows you to incorporate business intelligence modules to improve your customer site operations.

Mobile sales force automation allows for accurate data reporting and faster time to issue resolutions, which helps with accurate billing and better service delivery.

Getting Started With Field Force Management

The first step is to educate yourself about the various field force management benefits and the possible capabilities it can bring to your business. Identify your business process needs and the spaces where field force automation can be applied for greater efficiency.

Evaluate your chosen tools against your needs and determine the business process changes required to implement the field force solution.

Determine the changes you need to introduce and establish the required policy changes across your organization. Identify the tasks that need to be automated like instant task allocation, lead management, route planning, geo-fencing, geo-tracking, and field attendance and payout management, the various reports required, and so on.

Try to adopt a phased approach to adopting your field force solution. Take time to train your employees and foster the necessary company culture that promotes collaboration and technology use.

💡 Takeaways

Field force management presents a huge potential to drive up your sales and foster better customer rapport, which every growing business can use.

So, are you all set to get started with field force automation, but the whole task sounds a bit overwhelming? Do not worry. GoCRM is here to help. Contact us and request your free demo today!

How to Get Started with Senior Insurance Marketing & SMS

Posted on March 1, 2021 by - Insurance

How to get started with senior insurance marketing

Fast, simple and personal access to senior leads and customers is vital in the senior insurance business. Whether you are offering educational resources to an undecided retire or getting in touch with a baby boomer after a natural disaster, prompt communication is key to earning their trust, and their business.

Enter SMS messaging. As part of your senior insurance marketing strategy, text messages can reach more people, generate more leads, and earn more trust than would be possible through more traditional means.

Take a closer look at the power of text messaging in insurance marketing, and how integrating SMS with your CRM can make you more effective, without adding more work.

The Power of Text Messaging

Why use SMS as part of your senior insurance marketing strategy? Because people pay attention to text messages. Consider these facts:

  • 91 percent of adults in the United States own a cell phone.
  • However, most people ignore calls they believe to be from telemarketers.
  • BUT 90 percent of text messages are read within 20 minutes.
  • Consumers expect to communicate with you 24//7/365.
  • People over the age of 50 make up more than 37% of the population in the US.
  • By 2050 the senior population will reach 90 million.

Text messaging gives you a fast, simple, and effective way to connect with leads and customers, at any time of the day or night. Plus, it gives them an easy way to reach out to you without going through frustrating automated phone systems or needing to take the time to write an email that may (or may not) ever read.

Uses for SMS in Senior Insurance Marketing

Insurance agencies are increasingly seeing the value of SMS in their senior insurance marketing. Text messages can assist with a slew of health or life insurance marketing tasks, including the following:

  • Setting up appointments for Senior Coverage insurance plans
  • Sending reminders and notifications (e.g. Upcoming appointment reminders or Medicare policy renewal notifications)
  • Checking in with customers (e.g. After an event or Medicare Supplement claim)
  • Requesting feedback from customers (e.g. After a Senior Insurance claim)
  • Sending one-time passwords for account access
  • Engaging leads (e.g. Sending educational resources or special offer alerts for Part A or Part B)
  • Earning leads through giveaways or special offers (e.g. Weekly webinar on Part D plans)
  • Following up after online form submissions
  • Upselling insurance products to customers
  • Reducing customer service calls (e.g. Confirmation of form submission or appointments will reduce calls to confirm this information)

With the ability to include links to your website, resources, or letters in your text messages, you can use SMS to quickly grab the attention of your target audience, current leads, and customers in order to communicate important information efficiently.

With the ability to effortlessly communicate with you, leads and customers will also experience greater satisfaction, and purchase more insurance products, than if you had attempted to reach them in other ways.

Getting Started with SMS Senior Insurance Marketing

Sending text messages to hundreds or thousands of people in the hopes of generating leads, promptly replying to online form submissions, or sending notifications and reminders in a timely manner is outside the abilities of most sales and marketing teams.

You want your teams to focus on work that generates money for your business. That is why you need to get started with SMS senior insurance marketing by integrating your text messages with your CRM.

Through a customer relationship platform like GoCRM, you have the ability to use SMS as part of a full set of tools that work together to create seamless and productive interactions with your leads and clients.

Here is how you can use your CRM to integrate SMS into your senior marketing and sales efforts.

Make SMS part of your automated workflows

Within GoCRM, you have the ability to create automated workflows to accomplish tasks such as nurturing leads, onboarding new customers, or engaging cold leads. These workflows consist of emails, phone calls, and SMS messages written by you and arranged according to your company’s best practices.

Once activated, GoCRM automatically implements the workflow, so all you have to do is create the messages once, set the parameters (e.g. All leads who have not responded in the last 15 days) and turn your attention to other tasks while GoCRM takes care of the rest.

Text messages can become an important part of these automated workflows. For example, you may send a text message to check in about a lead’s level of interest, send a quick link to resources that a cold lead may find engaging, congratulate a new customer on their Medicare policy enrollment as part of an onboarding process, and more.

Within GoCRM, these SMS messages come from the assigned team member’s personal number, so recipients can text back and immediately reach a real person, or call the number to speak to someone personally.

As part of automated workflows, then, text messages become a quick, easy, and effective way to build a line of communication that captures leads and encourages them through the sales funnel with less work on your end.

Use SMS messages alongside emails and phone calls

When you integrate SMS senior insurance marketing with your CRM, you gain the ability to use text messages alongside other tools, such as emails and phone calls.

Automated workflows, such as those discussed above, for example, create a seamless way to capture, engage, and nurture leads using all the tools at your disposal. You set the series of emails, phone calls and text messages to create the most effective campaigns possible for your target audiences.

In concert with emails and phone calls, text messages can give leads and customers the nudge they need to engage further with your senior insurance business.

Use text messages to respond to customer actions

You don’t have to use SMS messages just as part of automated workflows. You can also set text messages to trigger through GoCRM when leads or customers take specific actions.

For example, say someone schedules an appointment with you online. GoCRM can respond immediately with a quick text message confirming the appointment and providing a link to more information.

Similarly, say a lead has an upcoming appointment. Your CRM can trigger an SMS message as early as you want before the meeting: 1 hour, 24 hours, 1 week, etc. These reminders reduce the number of missed meetings, and wasted time, your sales team experiences.

Use text messages to cut down on response times

Seniors looking into insurance want to know that they have your attention. If they submit a contact form, they want to hear from you right away. If they schedule an appointment, they want to know that you received their appointment time.

SMS messages can help you to respond quickly even when leads and customers take actions outside of business hours.

For example, GoCRM can send a thank you SMS to a customer as soon as they schedule an appointment, no matter what time of day or night it is, while someone who submits a contact form can receive an SMS with your company’s hours of operation so they know when to expect a reply.

Automated, and prompt, text messages such as these create instant communication that earns you more leads and more sales by ensuring that your business remains engaged with everyone who wants to connect with you.

💡 Takeaways

GoCRM has the ability to put SMS messages to good use for your insurance business. Contact us for a free demo or to learn more about how you can get started with SMS marketing through our CRM.

7 Ways to Automate Marketing for HVAC

Posted on February 22, 2021 by - HVAC

HVAC marketing automation

Almost everyone needs HVAC assistance at some point. Whether repairing an existing system or installing a new one, the necessity of having a working HVAC system creates a huge pool of potential leads for your business.

Taking advantage of those leads, however, can be challenging when you are trying to run your business at the same time. Creating marketing that reaches your target audiences, and implementing infrastructure that can handle leads as they come in, may require automation. Enter marketing automation with HVAC CRM.

Automation through your CRM can help you to respond promptly to HVAC emergencies, cultivate new leads, and close more sales, all without taking more time out of your schedule. Here are 7 ways marketing automation can benefit HVAC businesses.

Call & Lead Tracking

HVAC call trackingConsumers often need to reach an HVAC company urgently. It is July and their air conditioning stopped working, or it is January and they cannot get the heat to turn on. They use phone calls to reach a company quickly.

Unfortunately, many HVAC companies fail to treat phone calls with the urgency they require. Up to 43 percent of businesses never even return a phone call. And, when it comes to tracking important consumer information, data gathered over the phone often fails to make it into the customer database.

Automated call tracking can help. GoCRM uses a cloud-based VOIP system to automatically route phone calls to the assigned team member’s personal device. That means that your team can answer (and make) phone calls anytime, anywhere.

This system does more than make it easier to connect personally with your leads. It also makes it simple to centrally store information collected over the phone by automatically recording phone calls and importing data into the CRM’s central database.

With the ability to handle phone calls personally from anywhere and store information automatically, you can quickly handle phone calls, capture more leads, and complete tasks such as the following:

  • Dispatch team members to HVAC emergencies
  • Schedule appointments
  • View client history and requests
  • Answer questions
  • Provide quotes

HVAC Lead Engagement

Attracting, cultivating, and converting leads doesn’t have to require a lot of time and effort on your part. Automated lead engagement workflows can help you to maximize the ROI you earn from leads without adding work to your already busy team.

GoCRM allows you to set up tasks, emails, SMS messages, and phone calls on a schedule and in an order that is customized to your business practices and target audiences. All you have to do is set up the workflow and create the email and SMS templates once.

GoCRM will then implement your workflow based on the parameters you set. For example, if you create a workflow for leads who have not responded to your business in 30 days, GoCRM will implement the cold lead workflow for every lead that meets that criteria.

Your team can focus on the urgent tasks in front of them, while GoCRM nurtures, qualifies, and follows up with leads automatically, sending messages, scheduling phone calls, and sending notifications when your team needs to be involved.

Here are a few of the tasks you can automate with GoCRM:

  • Create an autoresponder for incoming leads
  • Automate lead qualification
  • Re-engage leads who have stopped responding
  • Respond to website visitors who have requested an appointment or asked a question
  • Provide industry information (e.g. HVAC maintenance tips) to engage potential clients
  • Deliver quotes
  • Send service reminders
  • Follow up after an HVAC repair
  • Check in with former clients to request reviews, obtain referrals, and determine satisfaction with your work

HVAC Lead Management

Effectively managing every lead is essential to maximizing your ROI. Make it simple to keep up with every lead with automated lead assignment through GoCRM.

Assign leads based on urgency, value of the potential sale, type of HVAC need, seniority, location of your team members, and more. You can also simply have the system assign leads in a round-robin style.

After assigning the lead, GoCRM ensures that your team keeps track of the lead by scheduling appointments and phone calls and sending reminders about important tasks. By sending texts and emails from the assigned team member’s personal accounts, GoCRM makes it simple for leads to connect personally when they are ready to respond.

Combine automated lead assignment to seamlessly and effortlessly develop a system of engaging, nurturing, and converting leads that is more effective and less time-consuming than your current strategy.

HVAC Email Marketing

HVAC email marketingWith an ROI of $38 for every $1 spent, email is one of the oldest and most effective methods of digital marketing. Automate your email marketing campaigns to make the most of this powerful HVAC marketing tool.

You can automate email by creating drip campaigns to target specific audiences (e.g. Cold leads), integrate email into your automated workflows, or trigger emails based on specific consumer actions (e.g. Appointment confirmation emails).

All you have to do is create the email (or email series) and activate. GoCRM will take care of the rest, including personalizing the email with the recipient’s name.

Consider using automated emails to complete some of the following tasks:

  • Communicate with your target audience regarding relevant news (e.g. Changes in HVAC regulations or new HVAC models).
  • Encourage potential customers to schedule an appointment for HVAC maintenance
  • Alert leads to resources and information (e.g. New deals or comparisons of HVAC products).
  • Re-engage cold leads with information on new deals, reasons for HVAC maintenance, or free quote offers.
  • Deliver resources, such as a blog on when to replace your HVAC system.
  • Respond to website form submissions, quote requests, appointment scheduling, and other communications.
  • Onboard new customers.
  • Follow up with clients after project completion.

Personalized HVAC Marketing

In a business as essential as HVAC, personally connecting with consumers builds trust. Use GoCRM’s automation to personalize your communications with leads and clients.

In addition to adding recipients’ names to emails and text messages, GoCRM can also send messages from assigned team members’ personal email accounts and phone numbers.

When a consumer receives an SMS from a team member’s personal number, they can reach that team member simply by responding to the text or calling the number. Responses to emails will similarly reach a real person within your organization.

Enabling consumers and your team to seamlessly transition to personal communications makes it easier to personalize communications and gain consumers’ trust.

In addition, GoCRM makes it easy to access all of the information available on a lead or client in one central location. As a result, your team members can personalize their communications to the consumer’s specific situation with a single look at the database.

Easy, simple, personalized communication will go far in converting leads and boosting your HVAC company’s ROI.

Automated HVAC Data Entry

In order to access complete information on every lead, you need to make sure that data is promptly recorded after every interaction.

Ensure timely and accurate data recording by automating the process through GoCRM. Our system integrates with hundreds of platforms and imports the relevant data into one location.

In addition, recording and importing phone calls ensures that spoken communication is also safely stored for easy access.

Avoid repetitive tasks and needing to ask consumers for the same information over and over. Instead, tailor your communications and serve leads more promptly with accurate, real-time information on their situation.

HVAC Marketing Analytics

HVAC marketing analyticsIf you want to know exactly how your marketing and sales efforts are performing, you need access to accurate and real-time analytics.

Get that information with GoCRM’s marketing attribution feature. Our system can assign a unique phone number to each marketing effort (e.g. Google Ads and Facebook Ads). By tracking which leads call which number, our system can identify the origin of phone leads and identify which marketing efforts are most effective.

In addition, GoCRM can track the origin of leads to complete tasks on your website, visit your website, sign up for emails, request quotes, and more. By tracking not just the origin of leads but also what they do once they engage with your business, GoCRM can help you identify the most effective strategies for your HVAC business.

💡Takeaways

HVAC marketing automation can transform your business by improving your efficiency and productivity without increasing the amount of time you devote to sales and marketing. Use GoCRM as your HVAC CRM for sales and marketing improvements that will boost your ROI and build trust with your consumers this year. Request a free demo today!

How to Use CRM More Effectively?

Posted on February 15, 2021 by - CRM 101

How to use CRM more effectively

Customer Relationship Management – the three words that can make or break a business. A CRM enables an organization to manage all the customer records, contacts, and other relevant information. When you learn to use the CRM software to its full potential, you will see that it can be a lot more than just a database of customer contacts.

There are many advantages to having an optimized CRM implementation. It provides enhanced customer experience, increases productivity, and equips you with better insights into making your business deals and sales more profitable.

Let us guide you into making an efficient CRM implementation and use it to reap all the benefits.

Understand the CRM terms

Before getting to learn the nuances of using a CRM, it makes sense to understand the terms used. For additional understanding of CRM basics, continue to our CRM 101 series “What is CRM software designed to do“.

Contact

Refers to an individual account that contains the necessary contact information such as email address, name, and, at times, additional information like company name, residential address, age, and more.

Lead

A lead could be a contact or a potential customer who is interested in your product. It could be a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) or a Sales-Qualified Lead.

Deal

Deal refers to a possible seal or an action that profits your company.

Source 

This refers to the origin of your deal and could be anything from a referral, a marketing campaign, demos, webinars, website, ads, and more

Activity

Any operation or action taken by your sales team or the customer can be referred to as an activity

Deal Stage

Every deal passes through different phases and states until it is deemed to be done.

Pipeline

Deal stages are structured into pipelines that help your sales team to track opportunities and activities currently in progress.

How To Use A CRM

CRM Strategic planning - stakeholders view

CRM Strategic Planning -stakeholders wants and needs.

Here are some steps to get started with using your CRM.

Define Your CRM Strategy

Define the work processes that will be altered with the introduction of the CRM and set up a clear roadmap on how you intend to implement the CRM. Communicate the CRM plan with your team and make sure everyone is informed of the changes to be made.

Add Your Sales Team To The CRM

Your sales team will be the prominent end-users of a CRM system. So start adding them as users once the implementation is complete to speed up your sales processes. Prep your team with the necessary training and mind-set induction to get them to accept and use the CRM system once implemented readily. You also need to assign a dedicated superuser and the admin staff who will take care of the CRM maintenance, updates, and bug fixing operations.

Customize Your Settings

Configure your CRM to reflect your sales process effectively. Integrate your existing data and map out the various stages each lead is taken through.

Take time to observe your existing sales process and know the marketing and sales funnel processes. For instance, some sales teams will group contacts into leads, opportunities, and finally, customers depending on their progress in the sales funnel. Try to customize your CRM software to include the custom entities that correspond to your sales process. Start tracking the unique properties that you consider are important for understanding user behavior.

Import Your Existing Customer Data

Import the existing data stored in your legacy systems into your CRM system. Look into the methods that allow you to seamlessly import data stored in different formats like spreadsheets, CSV files, and old database records.

Integrate With Your Existing Tools

Integrate your existing marketing tools and campaign builders like landing pages and form builders to optimize your sales process and customer experience further. Doing so will help you get a 360-degree view of your customer data and get access to better insights. You can seamlessly exchange information from one tool to another and make the best out of every data collected.

Set Up Dashboards

A CRM dashboard provides a comprehensive look at your data and team productivity with a single glance. You can customize your CRM dashboard to focus on your priority components and use visual representations to get a clear understanding of various customer insights.

Learn to make full use of your dashboard as a control panel and customize it to fit your needs. Specify the stats you want to be shown on the primary dashboard page and shortcuts to important operations to enable easy access.

Make Use Of Reports

Reports are a useful way to get a comprehensive understanding of your progress and monitor your operational efficiency. While data is essential, not everyone can make sense of huge loads of data. Reports present information in a meaningful way.

Reports save your sales team from hours of analysis work, which can instead be spent focusing on actual sales activities. Configure your CRM to automate the report generation daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly as per your needs so you can easily track your progress and get hold of emerging trends. You can also set up events to trigger reports and alerts.

💡 Takeaways

Make use of the insights gained to enhance your customer experience and incorporate CRM into your marketing activities. Contact us today for a free demo.

How to Make Your Sales & Marketing Teams 💖 Your CRM

Posted on February 8, 2021 by - Marketing, Sales

How to make your sales and marketing love your CRM

With Valentine’s Day quickly approaching, it’s time to think about your relationship… with your CRM. For most businesses, things can be a little rocky. Complex processes, inconsistent data, and busy sales and marketing teams can quickly relegate a CRM to the back burner.

All is not lost, however. You can rekindle the love between your sales and marketing teams and your CRM. Here’s how.

💘 Make it easier to access accurate data

Love for team workTrust is the foundation of any healthy relationship. Your sales and marketing teams want to believe that their CRM is giving them the right information on leads and customers, but if your platform has provided inaccurate, duplicated, and confusing data in the past, that trust will need to be rebuilt.

You can take time cleaning up the data in your CRM by deleting duplicates and ensuring that team members enter data in a consistent manner.

However, the best way to restore confidence in your CRM is to use a platform that automatically imports real-time data on every contact.

Here at GoCRM, our system integrates with hundreds of platforms and imports all relevant data into a central database. That means that with less effort your teams enjoy access to accurate, updated information they can rely on.

No more manual updates. No more juggling data spread across multiple apps. Your team won’t even have to write down the information gathered in their phone conversations. GoCRM’s cloud-based VOIP system will record and import phone calls, too.

Give your team the gift of an accurate CRM (that doesn’t require constant manual updates, no less!) and watch their love for their CRM blossom anew.

💘 Make it easier to use that data

In order to help your sales and marketing teams fall in love with your CRM, you’re going to need to speak their love languages: Analytics and Results.

Your marketing team uses information about how people respond to each campaign to determine which campaigns are most profitable and effective for each target audience. Your sales team uses data to tailor messages and strategies to each lead so they move smoothly through the sales funnel to a conversion.

If their CRM can make it easy to access and use that data, then they’re going to feel the love. How can you ensure that your CRM provides relevant marketing and sales analytics?

Find a CRM that automatically tracks data for every lead. The GoCRM platform is capable of analyzing everything from the origin of a lead to the actions they take with your business to the relative effect each interaction had on their decision to convert.

Using dynamic number insertion that assigns a different phone number to each marketing campaign, GoCRM can even track the origins of leads who call your business instead of contacting you online.

With real-time analytics at their fingertips, your sales and marketing teams can easily track all the important metrics that tell them

  • How each marketing campaign worked
  • How effective each sales interaction was
  • How each target audience responds best
  • How to get the most out of every marketing dollar
  • How to approach communications with each lead
  • How to close more sales
  • Which efforts had the biggest ROI
  • And more

💘 Demonstrate the CRM’s usefulness

Love for dataYour sales and marketing teams may not love the idea of a customer relationship management software, but they will love seeing what it can do for them.

Convince your teams to fall in love with your CRM by showing them how the CRM can transform their work.

With the right CRM, you can help your teams accomplish some of the following tasks:

  • Increase leads
  • Increase sales
  • Boost ROI
  • Shorten time to lead
  • Reduce time to conversion
  • Improve marketing efficiency
  • Save money and time
  • Streamline business processes
  • And More

Let your team start imagining what’s possible with an accurate, comprehensive, and intelligent CRM, and watch them fall in love.

💘 Reduce manual tasks with automation

Work smarter, not harder, with a CRM that uses automation to save your sales and marketing teams time and effort.

With GoCRM, you access automated workflows, email drip campaigns, data imports from hundreds of apps, phone call recordings, and more.

Use these automated features to connect with and nurture more leads with less effort. For example, create an automated on-boarding process for new clients or a workflow that targets cold leads.

Nurture leads by automatically providing resources, or trigger an automated email every time a lead submits an online form.

When your sales and marketing teams see your CRM putting as much effort into the relationship as they are, they’ll begin to appreciate everything the platform can do for them.

💘 Provide ample training

Training loveA team that doesn’t know how to use the CRM will never truly love their CRM. With busy schedules, your sales and marketing staff won’t want to take the time to figure out a confusing platform.

Make it easier for them to use your CRM with ample training (and an intuitive platform). That means you’ll want to choose a CRM that offers the following features for getting to know the platform:

  • Multiple training sessions
  • Integration with your current processes and best practices
  • Gradual introduction of relevant features
  • Ongoing support for questions and problems

Don’t forget to choose a CRM that offers a free demo and/or a free trial. Having the chance to take the CRM out on a few dates before committing can ensure that the platform you choose is the one for you.

💘 Provide incentives for using the CRM

If your sales and marketing teams aren’t ready to commit to your CRM quite yet, you may need to woo them with more than just the platform’s coolest features.

Offering incentives for using the CRM can be an easy way to encourage engagement with your platform until your teams can start seeing exactly how much of a difference the right CRM can make in their day-to-day work.

Choose an incentive that will truly motivate your teams. Try offering vacation days, bonuses, or a team meal for consistent use of the CRM.

Don’t forget: When your team experiences success and milestones thanks to the CRM, make sure to celebrate those achievements. Recognizing the impact your CRM is having can make your team excited about continuing the relationship.

💘 Choose the right CRM

Falling in love with a CRM means finding the platform that is right for you. Take a few CRMs out on a first date and only go deeper with the platforms that click during the demo or the first conversation.

Most importantly, look for a CRM that meets your business needs and can be customized to your business practices.

GoCRM might just be the match made in heaven you are looking for. By offering you and your sales and marketing teams the support they need to work smarter, not harder, GoCRM makes it easy to enhance lead management, from lead generation, lead nurturing, and lead conversions.

💡 Takeaways

If you are looking to reignite love for your CRM, then consider choosing GoCRM. Contact us today to get a free demo and start the process of helping your sales and marketing teams love your CRM again.

How a Mortgage CRM Saves You Money

Posted on February 1, 2021 by - Mortgage

Mortgage CRM saves time and money

When dealing with the complex, data-driven world of mortgage lending, you need more than just an average CRM. You need a tool that will allow you to automate, customize, centralize, and efficiently use all of your interactions with your leads and clients.

Don’t hesitate to adopt a robust mortgage CRM because of concerns about the cost. Using any CRM delivers an average of $8.71 for every $1 spent. Just imagine the ROI you could enjoy from a CRM customized just for you.

The right customer relationship management platform will prove itself to be an investment that pays for itself over time by both saving you money and earning you more clients over the long-term.

Mortgage CRM saves you time

Mortgage CRM saves timeYour mortgage CRM can save you and your team time, and time is money. What areas do you and your team spend the most time on throughout the day? Is it any of these?

  1. Data collection and management
  2. Cold calls and lead follow-ups
  3. Lead qualification
  4. Lead nurturing

A robust mortgage CRM will use automation to reduce the amount of time you spend on each of these tasks.

Data Collection and Management

No more manually entering customer information into a database or hunting for client data before making a phone call or writing an email. GoCRM seamlessly integrates with hundreds of platforms and imports all the relevant data from each one into a centralized database.

When you are ready to talk with a potential customer, you can view their entire journey at a single glance. You can even access information provided via phone, thanks to GoCRM’s ability record and import information via our cloud-based VOIP system.

Lead Follow-Ups

Nobody enjoys cold calling prospective customers or chasing down cold leads. Now, you can spend your time elsewhere while your mortgage CRM does the work for you.

Through automated lead engagement workflows, you can create email drip campaigns and set up series of emails, phone calls, and SMS messages directed toward specific target audiences, including cold call targets and cold leads.

Lead Qualification

Don’t spend time identifying your most promising leads. Let GoCRM do the work for you by setting up parameters for each type of lead. The system will automatically send promising leads to your sales team while following up with cold leads through automated workflows.

Lead Nurturing

Encourage leads down the sales funnel with automated workflows and communications. From simple out-of-office responses to more detailed drip campaigns, you can use GoCRM’s automation to nurture potential clients toward a mortgage deal.

  • Engage prospective clients
  • Respond to specific actions, such as form submissions and appointment requests
  • Provide resources to leads

Mortgage CRM captures all leads

Mortgage CRM captures all leadsAlmost half (46 percent) of borrowers never look at more than one lender before closing on their mortgage. Losing a lead means losing the sale, probably for good. Capture every possible lead with a mortgage CRM that tracks your leads for you.

For example, GoCRM ensures that no lead falls through the cracks through a series of steps designed to keep that lead engaged and connected with your sales team. Here is a look at how our mortgage CRM is customized to deliver a comprehensive lead management system for you:

  • Automated lead assignment connects every lead with a specific member of your sales team.
  • Automated task assignment places critical jobs on the correct team member’s calendar.
  • Automated notifications keep each task on the team member’s radar.
  • Automated workflows follow up with and engage leads until they are ready to speak personally with your sales team.
  • A centralized database provides comprehensive information for accurate and timely follow up with every lead.
  • SMS messages and emails sent from team members’ personal accounts ensure that a personal connection is possible as soon as a lead responds.

With every lead tracked and managed by your CRM, you avoid losing the money spent on capturing those leads. Instead, your investment delivers leads who are carefully shepherded along the sales funnel until they are ready to commit to a mortgage with you.

Mortgage CRM focuses your marketing

There is a reason that a CRM delivers increased leads and conversions about 80 percent of the time and why 60% of CRM users report improved numbers of qualified leads from their marketing: The right CRM helps you focus your marketing efforts on what really works.

Rather than spending money on marketing efforts that may or may not deliver leads and conversions, you can use the analytics provided by your mortgage CRM to identify the most effective marketing tactics for every target audience.

For example, dynamic number insertion by GoCRM assigns a unique phone number to each marketing effort. When leads call that number, GoCRM immediately connects them with the relevant marketing message so you can see which campaigns are delivering the most results.

Thanks to real-time access to data on the origin and journey of every lead, you can see which marketing efforts are driving leads, which are driving the most conversions, and focus your marketing dollars on those efforts.

Mortgage CRM earns more leads and conversions

Mortgage CRM earns leads and conversionsA CRM customized for the mortgage industry does more than prevent wasted marketing dollars. It also maximizes the impact of those dollars by delivering more leads and conversions for your mortgage business.

Consider the ways in which your mortgage CRM can improve your leads and conversions, thereby earning your business more money:

  • Delivering prompt replies that capture more leads.
  • Reducing lead to conversion times
  • Improving sales productivity (by as much as 14.5%)
  • Improving email open and click-through rates
  • Reducing lost leads
  • Providing insights that maximize marketing effectiveness
  • Personalizing communications

With every lead properly captured, engaged and nurtured through GoCRM’s robust mortgage capabilities, you can ensure that your business receives as many leads and closes on as many loans as possible.

Mortgage CRM improves productivity

Increasing the amount of work you can accomplish at one time saves you money and manpower. A customized mortgage CRM helps you work smarter, not harder, so you can save your marketing dollars while also getting more done.

By using automated processes, capturing every lead, focusing your marketing, delivering granular analytics, and earning more leads and conversions, GoCRM can help you do more without spending more.

💡 Takeaways

If you want to not only save money but also make more money by closing more loans, then you need GoCRM. Let us give you a free demo and show you what is possible through a customized mortgage CRM.

 

7 Ways to Automate Marketing for Pest Control

Posted on January 25, 2021 by - Pest Control

Pest control marketing automation

The pest control industry is thriving, as new home construction and warmer weather lead to increased demand for their services. By 2026, the industry could be worth over $28 billion.

Pest control, however, is also a crowded industry. In order to capture the attention of your target audiences and effectively move leads through the sales funnel, you have to stand out with prompt, customized communication and a firm sense of how you differ from the competition.

Marketing automation is the key to accomplishing these tasks. Through GoCRM, you can use automation to boost your marketing reach and success, without added responsibilities. Here is how to automate marketing for pest control.

Call Tracking

Homeowners facing a pest problem do not want to wait to talk to an exterminator. They will often choose phone calls over online communications to get their problem solved quickly, and, if they cannot reach you, will usually move on to your competitor.

That means you need a way to receive their phone calls promptly and keep track of the information you discuss over the phone. GoCRM’s call tracking capabilities can help.

We use a cloud-based VOIP system that automatically routes phone calls to your or your sales team’s personal devices. You can make or receive calls anytime, anywhere, even while on the road.

In addition, GoCRM automatically records each phone call and imports the relevant information into a centralized database.

By the time you get back to the office, all of your lead’s information will be accessible at a glance so you can accomplish the following:

  • Provide relevant follow-ups
  • Schedule pest control appointments
  • Recommend the correct services
  • Answer questions based on client inquiries and needs
  • Stay within client budget and preferences
  • Organize your daily pest control schedule based on client needs and location

In addition, routing phone calls to your team’s personal devices ensures that customers and leads immediately connect with a live person. No voicemails or answering services mean leads are more likely to trust you with their pest control needs.

Lead Engagement Workflows

Automated workflows pest controlOngoing nurturing of leads is a critical part of earning pest control business. Provide leads with the follow up they require with automated lead engagement workflows.

Simply build the workflow using the emails, SMS messages, phone calls, and timeframes that work for you. Create each workflow to activate based upon specific parameters.

For example, you might create one workflow to activate for leads who do not respond within 30 days, or to activate as soon as someone submits your online contact form.

Then, create the email templates and SMS messages once within the GoCRM system. After you activate the workflow, GoCRM will implement the process, send the messages, and schedule the phone calls according to the parameters you set.

These workflows make it easy to accomplish tasks such as the following while you are tending to other important matters:

  • Re-engage cold leads
  • Auto respond to incoming leads (e.g. Submit a contact form or appointment request)
  • Confirm online appointments
  • Provide industry information (e.g. Types of pests or pest control options) to engage leads
  • Follow up after an appointment to ensure problem resolution
  • Follow up with clients for references or additional services
  • Onboard new clients (e.g. “What to expect during our visit” or similar)

Automated Lead Assignment

Meet your leads’ need for immediate and personal communication, and ensure that no lead is ever overlooked, with automated lead assignment through GoCRM.

GoCRM will automatically assign leads based on the parameters you set. For example, you can assign leads based on criteria such as the geographic location of the customer or the specific pest problem they have, or you can simply assign leads in a round-robin style.

After assigning the lead, GoCRM will perform the following tasks to ensure that the lead receives appropriate, and personal, follow-up from this assigned team member:

  • Notify the team member of their new lead
  • Integrate the team member into the appropriate workflows so that workflow communications come from them.
  • Schedule phone calls and meetings on the assigned individual’s calendar
  • Send emails from their personal email account
  • Send SMS messages from their personal phone number
  • Send task reminders to the assigned staff member

With automated lead assignment combined with automated workflows, you can easily track leads and follow up with them, leading to personalized and prompt attention that will reassure anxious, pest-stricken homeowners.

Email Marketing

Email marketing for pest controlWith almost 4 billion people using email, it is no surprise that email marketing has one of the highest ROIs of any digital marketing endeavor.

Sending emails can be time-consuming, however. That is why you need to create and implement email marketing campaigns within GoCRM’s automated system.

Use GoCRM’s automated workflows to create pest control email drip campaigns. Each email campaign only requires you to create the email templates and the parameters for the campaign once.

Then, GoCRM automatically implements the drip campaign for your pest control business, earning you leads and customers with less time and effort.

You can also set emails to trigger based on specific actions (e.g. Send a confirmation email when a client schedules an appointment online, or schedule reminder emails before a pest control visit).

With automated emails that include the recipient’s name, you can automatically send personalized emails to achieve tasks such as the following:

  • Communicate with your target audience regarding relevant news (e.g. Pest outbreaks in their area, new organic pest control options)
  • Encourage potential customers to schedule a pest control appointment
  • Alert leads to resources and information (e.g. 10 tips for spotting termites)
  • Re-engage cold leads with information on seasonal deals, quarterly pest control plans, etc.
  • Respond to website form submissions and other communications
  • Onboard new customers
  • Follow up with clients after pest control application

Personalized Marketing Communications

Encountering a pest problem can feel like a very personal issue, and consumers want to hire someone to help with whom they feel they have a warm and personal relationship.

Communicate those qualities by automatically personalizing your communications through GoCRM.

GoCRM will use the lead’s name as listed in the database to personalize every email and SMS message.

In addition, each email and SMS message will come from your assigned team member’s personal account or phone number.

As a result, the lead or client can respond and reach a real person immediately, and your team member can seamlessly take over personal communications once a lead engages with your business.

Add in the detailed information available at a glance in GoCRM’s centralized database, and your sales teams can seamlessly create personal and caring interactions that build trust and earn business for your pest control company.

Automated Data Entry

A CRM is only as effective as the information it contains. If your team has to manually enter information, access to data may be delayed, or important details be lost, as busy sales staff often lack the time to make these manual updates.

Instead, use automated data entry through GoCRM to enjoy real-time access to the most up-to-date information on every lead and client.

As a result, you and your team can see a lead’s entire journey in one easily-accessed location.

Access to that kind of comprehensive information can make it simple to customize interactions to every lead, creating tailored marketing and sales approaches that earn you business.

Analytics Tracking

Marketing analytics for pest controlIn order to choose the most effective marketing and sales strategies, you need access to real-time analytics.

GoCRM provides granular insights into every marketing campaign you undertake. For example, by using dynamic number insertion, GoCRM can create a unique phone number for every marketing effort (e.g. Google or Facebook Ads, neighborhood flyers or a billboard would each have a different number).

When a potential client calls to inquire about a pest control solution you offer, GoCRM can identify which number they called and, therefore, which marketing effort drove them to engage with your business.

In addition, GoCRM can track a lead’s activity across your website and with your company, including actions such as scheduling appointments, submitting contact forms, signing up for emails, and more.

Use this information to identify the marketing efforts that are most effective, tailor your interactions to specific leads, and create powerful sales and marketing strategies that boost your ROI.

💡 Takeaways

Automating marketing for pest control is easy with GoCRM. From call tracking to automated workflows, email campaigns to analytics, GoCRM can help you work smarter, not harder.

Schedule a free demo to learn more about how our CRM can help you to earn more leads and boost your ROI for your pest control business with less time and effort on your part.

 

How Automation Improves Customer Service Response Time

Posted on January 18, 2021 by - Automation, CRM 101

How Automation Improves Customer Service Response Time

Customer satisfaction relies on prompt communication from businesses. Surprisingly, however, expectation often fails to meet reality when it comes to business’ ability to reply to customers within their expected timeframe.

According to one study of 3,200 consumers, 88 percent expected a response from brands within one hour. The average response time from businesses? More than 12 hours. Up to 62 percent of businesses never reply to customers at all.

Failure to promptly provide customer service has serious repercussions for businesses. You might think your company is managing customer communications just fine, but consider these facts:

  • Customers do more business with brands that respond quickly to them.
  • Customers are likely to abandon businesses that do not get back to them.
  • Leads often go cold within one hour.
  • Fast response time is the most important attribute contributing to customer satisfaction.
  • Rapid replies make customers feel important.

If getting back to your customers in a timely manner is important, then implementing tools that make that process easier is equally important.

Do not rely on time-intensive manual processes that make it easy to overlook customer communications or that slow down the response process.

Instead, implement automations that improve customer response time, improve brand perception, and maximize your revenue. Here is a look at some of the most important ways automation can improve the customer experience.

Improve first response time (FRT)

First response time, or FRT, refers to the amount of time it takes your company to send an initial reply to a consumer. Your company’s average FRT is the amount of time it took you to reply to customer queries within a certain time frame (e.g. A week) divided by the number of queries you received.

The lower your FRT, the better your customer experience is and the more likely you are to earn a lead’s business. Often, you have one hour or less (About a third of consumers expect a reply within 15 minutes), before your lead goes cold.

Your customer service team may not be able to reply that quickly to every inquiry, but GoCRM can. Set up automated email templates or SMS messages to be sent when consumers complete a certain action (e.g. Fill out an online contact form).

Anytime a consumer takes that action, your CRM will immediately send the pre-written message. Automation reduces response time from hours to seconds or minutes.

You can even tell GoCRM when to send the message: Right away or after a few minutes to make the communication feel more natural.

Your first response to a customer is important because it sets expectations for all future interactions with them. Consider including some of these messages in your responses:

  • Timeframe for a follow-up response
  • Your business hours
  • Access to relevant resources
  • A thank you for contacting you
  • Self-service options, such as directing the customer to an FAQ page or manual

Improve first call resolution rate (FCRR)

Your first call resolution rate (FCRR) is the percentage of customer inquiries you resolve the first time the customer contacts you.

With 34 percent of consumers considering a rapid resolution as the most important element of customer satisfaction (CSAT), maximizing your FCRR is critically important.

Use automation to reduce the time it takes to resolve customer problems. In particular, use the automation available in GoCRM to promptly gather and communicate all relevant data on a consumer before you interact with them.

For example, GoCRM integrates with hundreds of platforms, importing relevant data and storing it in a central database. With a single glance, your sales, marketing, and customer satisfaction teams can see a lead’s or customer’s entire journey with your business.

With relevant information at their fingertips, your automation can qualify the agent experience, allowing them to dispense with time-consuming data collection and focus instead on resolving the customer’s problem, leading to faster FCRR and happier consumers.

Create time-based, auto-generated responses

Automation through GoCRM can do more than generate automated first responses to customer inquiries. You can use pre-set workflows to deliver auto-generated responses for any number of customer actions.

All you have to do is build the workflow to your specifications and business practices, including emails, text messages, phone calls, and time intervals between communications. GoCRM will then automatically implement that workflow based on the parameters you set.

For example, set workflows to trigger based upon actions such as the following:

Prompt follow-up through automated workflows delivers important information to customers quickly. Because GoCRM delivers these messages from the assigned team member’s personal phone number or email account, a customer’s response reaches them immediately and allows them to seamlessly take over communication.

Time-based, auto-generated responses make it easy to quickly and accurately respond to consumers, improving your customer response time and success.

Track customer service responses

When you have to handle hundreds or thousands of customer inquiries every day or every week, it can be easy to lose track of some of those inquiries.

Lost inquiries naturally receive much slower responses, and those customers may never hear from your customer satisfaction team at all.

You can eliminate this problem by using GoCRM’s automation to help assign, manage, and track your team’s customer service responses.

For example, GoCRM can automatically assign a lead to a sales team member or a customer service representative. Anytime the lead or customer requires attention, the system can automatically send messages in that team member’s name, schedule phone calls and meetings, and follow up with notifications and reminders to the team member.

With the assistance of GoCRM’s automation, your customer service team will have an easier time keeping track of the customers they are in charge of and staying on top of the responses that are required.

Stop choosing speed over accuracy

You can improve customer response time without adopting automation, but chances are you will end up prioritizing speed over accuracy.

For example, a team member trying to write an email manually may forget important elements of the message (e.g. Sending someone to an FAQ page) in their hurry to get the message out. They may use a message template that does not apply to the customer’s unique situation, or they may send a message before they gather all the relevant data.

In these cases, the response may be worse than silence, if the message is inaccurate or incomplete.

With automation, you enjoy both accuracy and speed. GoCRM provides all the relevant data in one location, delivers personalized messages crafted for the customer’s specific inquiry, and connects customers to a real person on your team who is only a single message away.

As a result, you can deliver prompt and valuable communications to customers that improves their experience with your business, all while using less of your team’s valuable time.

Track essential KPIs

Finally, automation can improve the customer service experience by helping your business track KPIs that show how well your customer service team is performing.

For example, use GoCRM’s in-depth analytics to not only identify where customers come from and what their journey is, but how that journey is influenced by their interactions with your business.

When you can track FRT, FCRR, customer journeys, points of origin, and more, you gain a complete picture of your customer’s desires, interests, pain points, and interactions. You can then use that information to identify areas of friction, resolve issues in your team, and improve your customers’ overall experience with your brand.

💡 Takeaways

Automation can be invaluable to your customer response times. Reduce those times with a CRM that is designed to deliver information, automation, and personalization that keeps your customers and your team members happy. Contact us today for a free demo to learn more about how we can assist with your marketing, sales, and customer service needs.