What is a CRM?
A CRM is a client or customer relationship management tool, which can be used for automated marketing, or to maintain your sales pipelines and forecasting. Typically when people talk about CRM they’re referring to a CRM system aimed at helping companies focused on sales, services, and/or marketing streamline their customer communications. These tools allow businesses to store current and prospective customer information in one well-organized location for easy access.
What can a CRM system do for your business?
A CRM system has the power to give you and your team a better way to manage external and internal business information, no matter what line of business you’re in. Plus, when your team isn’t on the same page, prospects and customers will feel the strain. Why? Because your customers have a relationship with your company, not a group of individual departments or employees. Everyone on your team needs context about every customer’s needs, wants, and current state, so they can pick up the conversation where it left off and provide a seamless customer experience.
With the help of a professional website CRM system, you’re able to stay better connected to your customers, streamline your company’s processes, and improve your overall profitability. As an added benefit, this tool also has the power to free up more of your (and your team’s) time, so it becomes easier to bring in new customers, and provide support and additional services to them.
With a powerful CRM tool, or tools, at your disposal, you’re able to make information about every customer interaction available to anyone at your company who might need it. Thanks to easier access to that important data, it’s easier to collaborate across departments and increase productivity within your team. Plus, whether your team is made up of 10 people, or 1,000 people, CRM software will help you drive your business forward. In fact, it can be especially beneficial to smaller businesses, where teams often need to find ways to do more with fewer resources.
Experiencing growth within your business? Since CRMs can effectively organize contacts, company information, and every interaction that takes place through the multitude of communication channels you work with, including your website, email, phone, social media channels, and more, they are the perfect solution to help growing organizations achieve their goals.
Our experience with CRM integrations
Here at Lform, our team has experience with a wide variety of different CRM integrations, ranging from simple to incredibly complex. On the more straightforward end of the spectrum, we frequently create native forms that simply push subscribers to MailChimp. An example of a more complex integration is keeping multiple CRMs (for example, SugarCRM and HubSpot) in sync programmatically.
How is this more complex integration accomplished? A website form submission creates a new contact in HubSpot, and that event then triggers a custom push to SugarCRM with updates, or creates the corresponding record in the other CRM via a custom webhook. Then, a contact is changed from a “Prospect” to a “Customer” on SugarCRM, and the corresponding contact is then updated in HubSpot via the HubSpot API, which triggers automations to move the new information to the appropriate customer mailing list. Finally, to make sure everything is running properly, a script runs nightly to check for any misaligned data and corrects any discrepancies.
This sounds complex, and it is, but our team of experts has no shortage of experience managing this kind of intricate integration. Plus, having all of those extra steps taken off of your plate will free up the time and brain power needed to get you back to focusing on growing and maintaining other areas of your business. In addition to complex integrations like this one, our team can also help set up automations and workflows within individual CRMs. That way, you won’t have to manage customer data across multiple systems, or have to manually add current customers and prospects from your website to the CRM, as this can lead to data misalignment due to human error.
From Salesforce to Pipedrive: examples of CRM software frequently used by our team, and custom CRM solutions
From Salesforce, HubSpot, and Pipedrive, to MailChimp, SharpSpring, and SugarCRM, our team of experts here at Lform has worked extensively with many of the most popular and powerful CRM tools currently available. One innovative, custom solution we created to address a client’s unique needs is a system that allows all data to be inputted into the client’s Salesforce CRM, and then pulled into their WordPress website via the Salesforce Lightning Platform REST API. The resulting website provides a harmonious combination of both Salesforce data and WordPress content, allowing for a streamlined, seamless experience for the site’s users, and a headache-free content management setup for our client. A true win-win situation for both our client, and their customers! Additionally, we’ve even used Salesforce data as a stand-in for CMS information in past projects.
In addition to Salesforce, we’ve worked extensively with the MailChimp API to push contacts and display various contact lists. Plus, our team has in-depth knowledge and a wealth of experience with SharpSpring’s API, including pushing to their forms and data tracking. HubSpot API is also a primary area of focus for our team, and we have extensive experience working with this platform, as well as creating sites in HubL and directly on the HubSpot platform. Finally, we’ve worked with the SugarCRM SOAP API, and have created custom webhooks to manage customer data. As new CRM tools become available, we’re constantly researching and broadening our expertise to search out the best solutions for our clients.
Custom CRM solutions tailored to your exact needs
Now that you’ve heard a bit more about what a CRM solution can bring to your business, you may be wondering when the right time is to start working with one. Without a CRM system in place, as your business grows your staff will need to spend more and more time searching through messages and trying to connect with other team members to get accurate customer and prospect information. Here’s a tip to avoid that challenge: adopting a CRM system sooner rather than later is often more beneficial to your business than waiting until you’ve outgrown an internal solution that may have worked for a short time.
No matter what your unique CRM needs may be, we’re able to help you streamline your data in any way you require, and can normalize and migrate data between systems. If you have a challenge, send it our way! We’re ready and excited to tackle any website CRM integration you have in mind, and the good news is that the barriers to adopting CRM are lower than they ever have been before.
Ready to get started, or interested in learning more about how website CRM integration can make managing your customer information easier and in turn make your business more productive? We’d love to hear from you! Fill out our needs assessment form to give us an idea of what you’re looking for, and we’ll be in touch.