Where would your business be without your customers? If you want a sustainable business, then you must do what it takes to build solid relationships with your customers.

A software like customer relationship management (CRM) could make things smooth-sailing for your business. Its main function is to help you keep track and manage your interactions with new, existing and potential customers.

Managing Contacts 

In order to stay up to date with customer interactions, you first need to get your contact management right. There are plenty of ways to get in touch with your customers. Besides the mainstream ways like emails and calls, CRM will integrate with social media so you can use those popular platforms to engage with your customers.

Reviewing Interaction History

Staying in touch with your customers is one thing, but keeping track with the interaction history is important too. No one likes to be bombarded all the time. Hence, CRM enables you to keep track of the times and methods used to communicate with your customers.

Researching Clients & Competitors

Various CRM software come with an integration feature that enables you to connect them with social media platforms. From here, you can gather as much data to customize your offerings to your customers' needs.

Managing Account

There are times when you need to personalize your marketing strategy for an individual customer or a group of customers. A CRM provides a complete overview of all your customers' activities on one platform. So, you will have access to all kinds of data for you to plan your marketing methods seamlessly.

You just got back from meeting up with some of your business friends and all they spoke about was owning a CRM. This may be the first time you hear such terms and you're probably wondering what's it all about. Well then, let's not leave you all clueless.

First off, CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management and is a type of software that manages your business's relationships and interactions with customers. The main purpose of owning this software is to enhance your business relationships. Yep, that's it.

Now, don't be so quick to underestimate the power of maintaining good relationships with your customers. From the outside it may look kacang goreng, but once you get right into it, oh boy susahnya! Thus, this software does wonders to assist you in staying connected to your customers, streamline workflows and improve profitability.

A CRM is what you should look for to store customer contact details, identify sales opportunities, record service issues and manage marketing campaigns - all in one location. With easy access to data, almost every employee can collaborate easily.

How does it gather all the data you wonder? CRM begins by collecting a customer's contact details like email, mobile number as well as social media data across numerous sources and channels. Besides that, it also pulls in additional information from his preferences and communications.

At the same time, you may get your CRM to connect to some of your favourite business tools and apps to make the whole process so much better! Don't even bother printing out certain documents for signing, you can always do that with the many e-signature tools you find out there.

The real deal behind a CRM

The key to winning your customers' hearts is to find out as much information as you can about them. With CRM, you are provided with a detailed overview of your customers. From previous orders to their social media activities - everything is recorded in the system.

 

Although it may look like the Sales team would benefit most from this software, marketers and customer service officers can also use it to their advantage too! Marketers can use CRM to understand the pipeline of incoming prospects thoroughly. This provides better opportunities for them to catch leads.

 

As for the customer service side, you won't need to worry about getting lost in all the ongoing conversations you have with your customers. CRM enables you to manage inquiries across different channels without losing track! Most importantly, you also have all the information you need for each and every customer.

 

Why does CRM matter?

Put it this way, more administration = less time for other things. Undeniably, you could still get your Sales team to do the data collecting but where will these information end up lastly? Handwritten notes, files or laptops even? Details can get lost which will only lead you back to square one.

When the administration becomes overwhelming, not only does it affect the productivity of your employees but it also results in poor decision-making. You will not be able to enjoy CRM's intelligence in extracting valuable insights which could really help with your business.

Image Credits: salesforce.com

If you noticed, more and more software is made available to us every single day. As business owners, we should grab the opportunity to incorporate them into our business. CRM software, for one, is proven to produce real results. What more is there to ask?

Have you noticed tiny robots popping up on your screen asking "How can I help you?" whenever you click on a website? Nope, they do not mean any harm, they're genuinely there to help you! Chatbots are what they're called.

What even is a chatbot? Well, it is a type of... robot, but not just any ordinary one. It is built with artificial intelligence (Ai) software which allows it to simulate conversations with users. Nahh, it won't go all beep-boop-beep (robot language) with your customers as it is equipped with natural language!

Yes, that's right, chatbots are capable of holding proper conversations through all kinds of platforms such as mobile applications, websites or even through the telephone. But, how does it work though?

The process isn't as complicated as you imagine it to be. When inquiries come in, chatbots first analyze them to identify and extract relevant information. This step is very much crucial as if they are not able to understand the requests, wrong information may be provided instead.

Moving on, once the information is identified, chatbots will then provide the most suitable response to the inquiry. Now, these responses can come in many forms;

• generic and predefined answer

• information retrieved from a knowledge base

• system data

• contextualized information based on data given by the customer

• a follow-up question that helps chatbot further understand the enquiry

Is it truly a must to have one on our website? Well, that depends entirely on how your business operates. If you are looking towards getting more leads, then you should have one! Why?

Chatbot streamlines interactions between services and customers which indirectly enhances customer experience. At the same time, it optimizes the customer engagement process as well as operational efficiency. 

Hence, if you intend on putting up an A+ kind of chatbot on your website, the human support from your end has also got to be A+. Train and optimize your chatbot from time to time so it remains excellent.

For the very first time in Malaysia, one of the world's top accounting software, Zoho Books is now integrated with a local payment gateway! If you have been considering on investing in an accounting software, then my compadre, this is one of the best combos you can find out there!

How do you use Payex with Zoho Books, you ask? No worries, we'll guide you through it step by step! Leggo! 

Part 1 - Issuing invoice

You would want to first start by issuing invoices to your customers.

1. Head over to Zoho Books, look for 'Invoices' on the left side of the screen and click on 'New' to create a new invoice.

2.  Select your customer. 

3.  Scroll down to 'Item Details' and fill in the necessary details.

4. Once that is done, scroll down and you will come across the online payment option. Make sure you click on Payex here. 

5. Lastly, click on 'Save and Send'

Part 2 - Making Payment

Once you have issued the invoice, your customer will receive it through email. From there, how can your customer make the payment right away?

1. Click on the 'Pay Now' button on the invoice you had just received. You will then be directed to the payment page. 

2. Select the payment options you prefer. To use Payex, click on 'Other Modes'. 

3. You can now proceed to make your payment.

Part 3: View Payment in System

Is the payment recorded in your system? YES! Here's how you can view it!

1. Open Zoho Books and go to 'Invoices'. You will find the invoice available at the 'All Invoices' section.

2. Click on any of the invoices to view it. You will find a 'Paid' label at the top of the invoice if your customer has successfully made the payment. 

3. Click on 'Payments Received' to view the payment number.

4. Click on the payment number to find the reference number from Payex as well as the selected payment mode. 

Part 4: Payments are recorded

Want to double-confirm the payments you received from all your customers? Easy peasy!

1. On Zoho Books, click on 'Banking' at the left side of the screen. You will then be directed to your company's bank account.

 

2. Scroll down to 'Account Details' and look for 'Payex Settlement'.

3. You will see that all types of payments and fees are automatically captured.

And there you have it! Kacang goreng right? Feel free to reach out to us at sales@aplikasi.us should you encounter any complications. We are here to assist you!