Customer Contacts in Spreadsheets is so 2015

Why do so many companies handle customer contacts through spreadsheets?

Surveys strongly indicate that that is exactly what many companies do. They write things down on paper. They copy and paste contact information into a spreadsheet.

Everything is manual and tracking information about a customer, from lead to sales, consumes time.

So, why don’t companies make customer contacts easier and more productive with a customer relationship management (CRM) solution?

Time, Focus and Customer Contacts

For the uninitiated, CRM encompasses organizing, analyzing and automating customer contacts. It’s the way a company nurtures its ongoing relationship with customers.

According to a 2016 survey by Software Advice, 72% of SMB owners that contact them about CRM solutions had been using spreadsheets up to that point, if they used anything at all.

We suspect a lot of newer, smaller companies use spreadsheets for customer contacts for the same reason they put off buying an inventory management solution. It goes back to what one Cin7 partner described as entrepreneurial attention deficit.

“It’s just a matter of focus and time,” Scott Scharf of Colorado-based Catching Clouds says “Most of them have what I call ‘Entrepreneurial ADD’ where you’ll have 30 seconds to deal with returns, 30 seconds to deal with chargebacks, and then 30 seconds talk to a vendor in China and buy new products.”

These entrepreneurs want to spend time on what they are excited about: their product. Software isn’t the first thing on their minds. Growth eventually makes them realize they need a more efficient way to manage customer contacts.

CRM Benefits

A CRM solution is a single interface to record and organize all customer information. It goes beyond contact details to the ongoing interactions the customer makes with a company’s sales team.

These solutions will automate tasks, such as sales campaign emails, and track contact and follow-ups to reduce sales and marketing overkill. Basically, a CRM tool lets you know everything you can about your customers, and about the history and nature of your relationship with them.

CRM solutions offer an efficient, collaborative, and easier-to-use customer contact method than trying to juggle spreadsheets, email, and thing jotted down on paper.

These efficiencies proliferate when a company integrates a CRM solution with an inventory management solution. Doing so makes it much easier to track inventory when you place a sale through your CRM, or to provide realtime quotes based on available inventory.