In business, truly knowing your customers is the key to your success. Fortunately, with customer relationship management (CRM), you can gain insights into your target market’s needs, preferences, and behavior. Whether running a start-up or planning to expand your operations, effective CRM data entry can support you in various areas, including marketing automation, communication, and centralized task management.
With clean and accurate data, you can have reliable means to make sales-driven decisions. However, you’ll need someone to handle customer information at every stage of your business’ growth. For instance, when you work with Wing’s CRM virtual assistant, you will have a partner who will streamline your pipeline and help you understand the people you serve. This way, you’ll have everything you need to make informed decisions for growing your business.
What Is Customer Relationship Management and Why Does It Matter?
Customer relationship management covers the guidelines, practices, and principles an organization or business follows when interacting with potential and existing customers. The entire process can include customer trends and behaviors, service and sales-related procedures, and any other initiative to improve a customer’s overall experience.
CRM is also widely used to refer to technologies, tools, and strategies marketing and sales professionals use to get accurate customer insights. So, it can involve software programs that monitor the behavior of potential or existing customers. These tools track users’ actions on a business’ email marketing campaigns, websites, and social media. Moreover, they triggered specific email messages to guide the customer through the buying or sales funnel.
Understanding CRM Data Entry
Data entry involves entering and storing anything from words and numbers to sounds and images. Meanwhile, CRM data entry uses a customer relationship management tool (CRM) to store data. A study published in the International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal concluded that efficient customer information management is critical to achieving business success.
So, CRM data entry involves more than typing numbers and words into a program. Instead, it comprises a strategic, consistent, and centralized way to collect and manage historical interactions with clients.
What are the types of information involved in CRM data entry?
A business routinely updates and organizes various types of customer data to drive continuous revenue flow. In general, these are the four kinds of data that you’ll store in a CRM system:
Identity Data
Any information that lets you keep in touch with your existing customers and leads is part of the identity data. It can include the following:
- Full name
- Business name (for B2B)
- Physical address
- Phone numbers
- Email address
- Social media usernames/handles
In CRM data entry, these details will enable your team to quickly access necessary information for reaching your leads and current customers. You can collect this data via emails, phone calls, website forms, surveys, third-party providers, or trade shows.
Descriptive Data
Descriptive data involves relevant lifestyle information about your contacts. Here are some examples:
- Education and career background – Education level, profession, and company name
- Family information – Parental or marital status, as well as number of children
- Lifestyle details – car and home ownership status, as well as general interests
Quantitative Data
Quantitative data involves numerical information that helps you understand how your contacts interact with your business. Here are some examples:
- The number of purchases and the average cost of their orders
- The number and sources of visits to your website
- Filed service tickets
- Engagement data on your social media profiles
Qualitative Data
Qualitative data includes unquantifiable contact information, including their opinions, satisfaction levels, attitudes, and motivations related to shopping patterns. You can obtain this data by implementing feedback surveys before, during, and beyond a sale. When collecting qualitative data, you ask questions similar to the following:
- Why did you decide to purchase this?
- Are you satisfied with the produce you purchased?
- What are the factors that made you select this product?
- How would you rate your overall experience with our company?
Importance of Accurate CRM Data Entry
According to an IBM report, U.S. businesses lose about $3.1 trillion annually because of insufficient data. Moreover, companies waste funds fixing errors, digitizing outdated sources, and double-checking information credibility. However, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Here are some of the consequences you may experience when you don’t make CRM data management part of your regular operations:
Data decay
One of the benefits of organized and systematic CRM data entry is preventing data decay. Proper management keeps relevant information safe and protects it from hardware failure or aging. For example, when you don’t regularly update your CRM data, you may have email addresses that customers no longer use. Consequently, you’ll lose resources and time because your sales team uses outdated information.
Hindered business growth
With accurate data, you can effectively identify leads, make results-driven decisions, and develop customer relationships. Conversely, poor data can cause discrepancies in sales forecasts and misdirection in marketing campaigns. All of these scenarios ultimately hinder your business’ growth.
Poor customer experience
Inaccurate customer records prevent your sales team from creating pitches designed for specific personas. Besides, employees usually take longer to find customer profiles when dealing with missing or incorrect information. Most of the time, you’ll see the effects of inaccurate data in poor satisfaction rates.
The figures we mentioned earlier were the estimated losses in 2016. Considering inflation and the constant economic shifts post-pandemic, you can imagine how bad the current cost estimate is.
Despite that, there is still hope.
According to a 2020 McKinsey study, businesses working with optimized data surpassed their competitors by over 25% in gross margin and 85% in sales increase. Indeed, organized, clean, and accurate data influences the success of sales outreach, campaign personalization, and email marketing automation. You can expect rewards when you invest in reliable and updated CRM data entry.
Streamlining Workflows Through Efficient CRM Data Entry
Nowadays, one of the biggest trends in marketing is automating data entry processes. However, we cannot disparage that manual data entry is still a reality for many businesses. According to a Plutoshift study, 48% of manufacturing companies still rely on manual processes like standalone solutions and spreadsheets. Moreover, because of mistrust in the collected data, most businesses fail to act on their data insights promptly.
Save time and resources with automation tools
According to statistics from the Digital Marketing Community, sales reps spend about 64% of their time on activities apart from selling. Moreover, 25% of these duties involve administrative tasks like writing emails.
The good news is that you can free up your sales team’s time while automating processes. After all, CRM software can automate manual processes like report generation and email distribution. This way, your team can focus on more critical tasks like developing marketing campaigns and building solid customer relationships.
Pro Tip: Cut costs and free up time when you learn the best strategies for offloading customer relationship management.
However, it would be best to integrate effective CRM data entry into your processes before you can streamline your workflows. Here are some tips we recommend to help you maximize the benefits:
- For consistent and accurate data, have a standardized method for data entry.
- Learn to identify the most relevant information that will help you drive results.
- Use automated features to reduce errors, speed up CRM data entry, and save time.
Have a reliable CRM virtual assistant who regularly updates and checks customer information.
Enhancing Customer Interactions
Did you know that over two-thirds of companies compete partially or entirely based on customer experience? Today, businesses understand the importance of interacting positively with leads and existing clients. However, several factors come into play when creating a lasting impression and a loyal customer base. You must know people’s needs, preferences, behaviors, and pain points.
Even so, you don’t need to remember all these details. Effective CRM data entry allows you to create a personalized interaction for every customer. Moreover, you will have a system for keeping track of information that will add value to your leads. Knowing even the smallest detail—like how someone wants to be addressed—can help you create productive conversations.
Knowing customer preferences to improve retention
Organized CRM data also helps you understand your customers and leads deeply. For instance, when you collect the correct information, you get to identify buying patterns. This way, you can offer customers additional features or products that match their needs. Knowing their pain points and preferences lets you turn initial buyers into returning customers.
Streamlining customer segmentation
Dealing with hundreds or even thousands of leads can be complex and overwhelming. However, with proper CRM data entry, you can segment your contact lists automatically based on specific criteria. Consequently, your sales and marketing teams can easily find the information they need at any given time. After all, they can sort the lists according to specific parameters, including buyer stage, age, gender, location, and more.
Data Security and Compliance
High-quality CRM data entry also ensures that the sensitive information stored in the system is protected against cyber threats. Moreover, if you want customers to trust your business, you must secure their data privacy. This subject is of utmost importance, especially since the EU privacy regulation fully implements the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Ensuring that your CRM system is GDPR-compliant
Under GDPR, EU citizens have the assurance that their data is protected no matter where they bring their business. So, if you’re using a CRM system, you must review your policies and processes. This way, you will know if you have every feature necessary to become GDPR compliant.
Here are some key areas to review when you’re setting up your processes under GDPR:
- Personal data – Most customer information you input into your CRM can be considered “personal data.” Aside from keeping the data secure, you must ensure that the software will only store it for as long as needed.
- Consent – You can also manage opt-ins when setting up your CRM system. Some fields will help you choose specific opt-in features based on the communication channel or communication type.
- Right to be forgotten – Make sure that your CRM system also allows the deletion of data. Once the information is no longer necessary, all the entries associated with that record will be removed.
Measuring Success: KPIs and Metrics
One of the ways you can know if your business is growing is by identifying key performance indicators (KPIs). Before you can scale your operations, you need to determine if there are improvements in customer retention, conversion rates, and revenue. Here are some of the KPIs that CRM data entry can help you identify:
- Customer interaction
- Leads and opportunities through the sales pipeline
- Customer engagement
- Sales performance
- Customer segmentation
- Revenue growth
- Conversion rates
- Trends in customer satisfaction
With CRM data entry, your business will have the foundation for scaling your operations. When you identify relevant KPIs and measure improvements in various areas, you can optimize processes, make informed decisions, and have loyal customers.
Hire Dedicated CRM Data Entry Assistants Through Wing
Ensuring consistent, clean, and accurate CRM data entry drives your business’ growth. When you hire a CRM virtual assistant from Wing, you’ll have a reliable partner to ensure your data is clean and regularly updated. Moreover, your data entry specialist will handle lead enrichment if you’re ready to bring your operations to the next level. They will look up information on a company’s essential decision-makers or staff and assess whether they can become leads.
These are just some ways Wing’s CRM virtual assistant can support you in growing your business. If you want to learn more, book a call today!
Eunice Samson’s interest in keeping up with the “bleeding edge” of technology has led her to a career in digital marketing. She’s currently writing SEO content for eCommerce, SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS companies. Aside from searching for opportunities to increase her online marketing knowledge, Eunice also scours the Internet for useful bonuses and coupon codes that she can use to fuel her love for photography. During her free time, she watches professional photo retouching tutorials between streaming her favorite TV shows. Fun fact: Eunice has never met a cupcake she didn’t like.
