The Ultimate Guide to Understanding and Building Your Own Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system using Glide

Introduction

You know you need one. Your business is growing, and you're starting to recognize that if you're going to keep up with tasks, follow-ups, and clients, you need a Customer Relationship Management system, or CRM for short.

If you've ever wondered what a CRM is and how to build your own CRM (without coding), this guide is for you! We'll cover the basics of what a CRM is, why it's so important for businesses like yours, and then walk through how to build your own CRM using NoCode solutions.

By the end of this guide, you will have the confidence and knowledge to create your own custom CRM that fits your business needs. So grab a cup of coffee (or tea!) and let's get started!

What Is a CRM and Why Do I Need One?

While you may not have used a CRM before, it is likely that you have been managing your customer interactions in some way, even if it is just through a basic list of contact information.

If you want to take your business to the next level, you’ll likely need to develop a customer relationship management system. A CRM, is essentially a system that tracks customer communication and data, so that you can better understand the customer’s journey.

Using a CRM, you can easily and efficiently collect customer data such as their contact information, purchase history and preferences. This will help your team with organizing leads, managing accounts and growing sales. Having access to this data allows your business to build better relationships with customers through understanding their needs and meeting them in real-time.

A CRM can also help automate routine tasks like following up on leads and scheduling emails. This means less time spent manually performing mundane tasks like sifting through spreadsheets or manually logging customer inquiries in specialized software. It also saves time for analyzing customer data since everything is collected in one place!

Benefits of a CRM

A CRM system provides numerous benefits to businesses, such as:

Centralized Database

A CRM consolidates customer data from multiple sources into a single system, making it easier to track interactions across multiple channels.

Ensuring Consistent Behavior

Having a CRM ensures that all customers receive the same level of service, regardless of who they interact with in your business. This is achieved by having standardized processes and procedures that are followed by all employees.

Formalizing Processes

A CRM system provides a platform for businesses to formalize their customer management processes. This helps to ensure that all employees follow standardized procedures, reducing the risk of errors and omissions.

Scalability

Efficiency is highly important for any business looking to scale its operations. A CRM system helps businesses to scale their operations by automating processes, reducing manual work, and increasing efficiency. This allows businesses to focus on growth and expansion without worrying about customer management.

Data-Driven Decisions

A CRM system provides businesses with data and analytics that help to understand what's working and what's not. This helps businesses to make data-driven decisions and optimize their customer management processes.

What are the CRM platforms available?

There are numerous CRM solutions available in the market. You can find solutions tailored to your specific industry, such as Clio for law firms and Hubspot for marketing. Alternatively, you can choose a solution like Zoho or Salesforce and configure it further to suit your processes.

There are several ways to build a CRM system for your business, ranging from using pre-built software to building your own from scratch. If you are wondering what would be the best way forward for you, check out this article for some tips to help you decide.

How to Build your own CRM

If you have decided to build your own CRM, that is great! In this document, I will guide you through the process of ensuring that you create a comprehensive solution for your business.

Mind mapping is an excellent way to define your requirements for a Customer Relationship Management system

Identify Your Customer Information Needs

Before diving into building your CRM, decide what kind of customer information you want to track. It’s important to get clear on this up front so that you don’t waste time entering and organizing data that isn’t vital to your business operations.

Here are some key points you should consider when making a list of information needs:

What information do you need to capture about clients (i.e., name, email address, phone, physical address)?

Do you need to track detailed purchasing or contact histories?

Will you require any specialized fields (for example, if your company works with partners on projects)?

Do you need any demographic information about clients?

How organized do you need the contact data to be (e.g., by date, region or industry)?

What extra pieces of info would help tailor product offers or services more specifically?

Gathering these answers will provide a strong foundation for creating an effective CRM software solution tailored specifically for your business.

Identify Your Workflow or Processes

The next step is to define your processes. In order to do so, it is important to thoroughly examine the different processes within your system and identify how data flows between them. This step is critical because it enables you to establish a clear workflow that can be easily replicated and iterated upon. In other words, a well-designed workflow is one that not only makes your work easier, but also ensures that your customer experience is streamlined and consistent across the board. By taking the time to identify and define these processes, you can help ensure that all customers receive the same high level of service, which in turn can help build trust and loyalty.

Here are some key processes that are a part of all CRMs;

Data Collection: Creating, updating and organizing customer data is one of the most important processes in CRM. Defining this process ensures your data stays clean and consistent.

Customer Journey: Keeping track of customer interactions / stages a customer passes through is crucial for effective CRM.

Task Management: CRM systems often include task management features that allow businesses to track and manage their team's to-do lists, ensuring that nothing falls through the cracks.

Define Customer Data Integrations

To build a CRM, you need a single view of your customers. This involves bringing in data from other systems, which can be done through automated integrations or manual syncs. Customer data can come from various sources like your website, email marketing tool, survey tool, payment gateway, and more.

Once you have all of your customer data in one place, it's important to keep it up to date. This can be done through regular data audits or by setting up automated processes to ensure that your data is always accurate. Identify all the different sources from which you need to pull the data, and determine the frequency at which you want to pull the data from each source.

Determine Data Analysis Requirements

Finally, you can define comprehensive reports to analyze your customer data in detail and identify trends. This includes creating detailed charts and graphs to visualize your data, which can help you gain a deeper understanding of your customer base.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, understanding and building your own CRM is all about more efficient processes and automation. It brings together technology, data, and people for a better customer experience. Not only does this provide you with more and better insights, but also can create a unique competitive advantage for your business.

Once you have implemented your CRM, you will have more insights on your customer data and be able to improve your customer relationships. This in turn will allow for higher customer loyalty, faster customer onboarding, and improved marketing and sales efficiency.

While there are many ways to build a custom CRM system, following the steps outlined in the next blog post can help you build a quick CRM system that meets your specific requirements using Glideapps.com. So stay tuned in!

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This post was written as part of the Glide Community Writers Cohort.

The Ultimate Guide to Understanding and Building Your Own Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system using Glide | Ruchika Abbi