Crimson Blog

Helping housebuilders adopt a successful approach to CRM

Written by Mark Britton | Jun 20, 2018 11:00:00 PM

Success, as wonderful as it is and as much as all businesses strive to achieve it, is often short-lived, especially in relation to embracing all things digital.

Like most sectors, the housebuilding industry is being impacted by digital transformation and the Internet of Things on an unprecedented scale. Admittedly, it’s widely acknowledged that the sector is a few steps behind others in adopting and unlocking the full potential of the technological and data-driven world we now live in, but it’s still being impacted nonetheless.

There’s a lot to be gained – through the implementation of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems and MS Dynamics alone, organisations can achieve economies of scale and start doing truly brilliant things that instantly catapult them head and shoulders above the rest.

This involves providing today’s new breed of digital-savvy customers with a smarter, slicker and more joined up customer experience, made possible through the use of interconnected tactics, such as self-service customer portals and multi-channel communications. And some housebuilders have even gone that one step further, by appointing their very own Customer Experience Directors to oversee and take care of every element of their customer journey.

But while this 21st century world may be redefining and driving customer experience, and presenting housebuilders with a wealth of opportunities in the process, there’s also a lot at stake. Why? Because while many organisations may be investing in technology, such as CRM systems and MS Dynamics, that’s about all they’re doing.

In our experience, they’re not doing the basics that will provide them with the right foundations to be able to go ahead and start doing all of the wonderful things technology’s capable of enabling them to do.

Until now.

Our Adoption Reviews enable housebuilders to see where their CRM systems are performing, where they’re failing and how they can get the best possible return on their investment.

Developed specifically with housebuilding professionals in mind, these reviews look at where the adoption of a project needs to be streamlined and made more effective. And this can relate to pre-adoption, during adoption or immediately post-adoption, depending on where you are with implementing or upgrading your systems.

Let’s take a quick look at what this looks like in reality with the help of the following case example…

Function: Marketing/sales team

Technology: CRM system

Review focus: Key points/questions include:

  • Tracking of marketing campaigns
  • Is the business process supporting lead generation and qualification and vice-versa?
  • Reviewing data quality - poor data quality results in duplication, which will impact the overall effectiveness of a campaign
  • Are all of the functions in the application being used effectively? Have all users been trained to use the application effectively and accurately?
  • Using data cleansing services effectively, so that poor quality data does not hold up campaigns and impact campaign effectiveness
  • Web enquiries need to be managed effectively and efficiently. In larger organisations, they can become fragmented throughout the process and difficult to track with regard to follow up calls and results
  • Ensuring that workflow automation and businesses processes are being used correctly

Hopefully by now, you’re starting to see the impact Adoption Reviews can have on ensuring the effectiveness of your CRM system. As well, as exploring the areas above, we also focus on another key part of the equation - the processes involved with empowering sales, customer service and field-based teams and whether or not this is being done effectively.

Successful systems deployment is what we enable companies to achieve day in, day out. In fact, such is our level of expertise, that we have a 99% systems deployment success rate. In just two to three hours, we can review your application and adoption process and identify where improvements can be made.

It may be that you just need to make some tweaks here and there or you may need further support to make sure your application is completely aligned with your business strategy and processes. Either way, we can help you make this happen and make sure you’ve got more than just the basics right and that your success is anything but short-lived.

For more information or to arrange a workshop focused on digital customer excellence contact us today on 01675 466 477. In the meantime, to discover how housebuilders can turn their failed CRM projects around, read the next blog in this series, ‘How housebuilders can rescue their failed CRM projects.’