Improving User Engagement With Your CRM

Improving user engagement by using your customer relationship management (CRM) platform should become an ongoing process as new features become available and your business becomes more agile in your sales and marketing practices. Here are some ways to improve user engagement with your CRM solution. 

Involve Stakeholders at All Levels in the Design of the CRM Solution 

First, never design a CRM solution in a silo. Instead, bring in your stakeholders and user community as part of a cross-functional team to help drive the design and ongoing evolution of your CRM system’s features and user experience. Assemble a cross-functional team for the design of your CRM solution with representation from your: 

• IT department

• Security team

• Sales team

• Sales operations group

• Sales management team

• Marketing team

• Customer success team

Don’t let this team go their separate ways after you launch your CRM system, either: Their insights can be invaluable as a steering or governance committee when you need to consider future integrations to and features for the platform. 

Roll Out Features Incrementally 

Going with a cloud CRM solution gives you the opportunity to roll out features incrementally to your user community. If you keep your design team together, you can assemble them to create a CRM feature road map that charts when your organization releases new CRM features to users. 

Develop a CRM Journey for Users 

Improving CRM user engagement also means creating a CRM journey for your users because the work will never truly be complete. You actually start laying the groundwork for a CRM journey when you assemble a cross-functional team and begin rolling out features incrementally. Elements of the traditional CRM journey include: 

• Establishing a baseline of CRM requirements for your organization

• Launching your CRM system group by group across your customer-facing teams

• Iterating on your CRM system with lessons learned and feedback from the launch

• Advancing your CRM system through integrations with other back-office systems

• Adapting your CRM solution to market changes

Provide CRM Training Support 

Unfortunately, training budgets are often cut or seen as a luxury, even when rolling a business-critical platform like CRM. Training is a powerful tool for driving CRM user engagement because knowledgeable users are the most productive employees. 

Promote Information Sharing Within the CRM User Base 

All your prospective and current customer data may reside in your CRM, but that doesn’t mean that your users are sharing the information with each other. Promoting information sharing can take many forms, including: 

• Sales and marketing processes, including collaboration checkpoints among marketing, sales, and development

• CRM integration with your internal collaboration and chat platforms

• Management communicating information sharing expectations among the teams participating in the sales cycle

• Opening roles and privileges for CRM users that open data by default (by far the most daring option for many organizations)

Reward your CRM Advocates and Power Users 

Improving user engagement with your CRM system takes more than your IT and service desk teams. You need to foster an internal community of advocates and power users across the business units accessing your CRM platform. 

You’ll probably find some home-grown advocates across your organization, but you still need to reward them for being on-the-ground CRM champions for your company. Ways to reward advocates include: 

• Working with management to factor in their CRM advocacy as justification for financial bonuses

• Factoring championing CRM into the job descriptions of those people, with an eye toward getting them a raise

• Offering CRM champions and advocates a seat at the table for any CRM initiatives in your organization

User Engagement Equals CRM Success 

Full user engagement with your CRM system means that the right information about prospective and current customers becomes a true business asset that gives you an edge over competitors that might not stress CRM use among their sales and marketing teams.