Most companies have invested in customer relationship management (CRM) software. However, they are not maximizing the value of these systems. That's where CRM portals come in.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a group of software tools that manage customer information, from simple details like name, email, and physical address, to sophisticated tracking of every interaction your company has had with a customer.
Companies that use these tools well leverage them to store information and analyze their data to drive better business performance . For example, a CRM tool can help you determine whether a specific sales tactic is more effective than another or whether specific customers are having difficulty with a new product.
However, these systems can become isolated “data islands” that are not shared, updated, and used across your enterprise. These systems often fall victim to one of the biggest pitfalls for technology leaders: implementing a system on time and on budget, but not spending a small incremental effort to make the system broadly useful across the enterprise.
What is a CRM Portal?
A CRM portal is a gateway to your customer data that provides access to a limited set of CRM information and transactions. This portal can be accessed by a combination of internal employees, external suppliers and partners, and customers.
Consider a simple example. Suppose you already have an extensive database of customer contact information, but when a customer needs to change their details, they must call or email your customer support center. A CRM portal, ideally easy to discover on your main website, can allow them to view and update their data, which in turn updates your CRM.
More sophisticated examples include deeper integrations into your CRM, such as:
- Allow customers to schedule a sales or support call and have that interaction recorded in your CRM
- Creating an internal portal that allows employees to view interactions with a customer from across the company, so that a salesperson in one department doesn't contact a customer who was recently contacted by another department
- Integrating CRM data into your order management and customer support tools, creating an integrated portal for your customers
The goals of an effective CRM portal should always be two-fold and based on the understanding that customer data is some of your organization's most critical assets . First, you must create tools that make your CRM the “single source of truth” for customer data. It would be best if you didn't have different databases that store different versions of your customer data, so you don't end up with conflicting information about your customers.
Second, strive to make CRM data “self-service” whenever possible, allowing employees, partners and customers to view and update their data. If you are concerned about allowing updates, create approval workflows or similar processes that would allow external updates to be queued and approved by an authorized individual before updating the record.
Note that most sophisticated CRM portals are hidden in plain sight . For example, adding a new shipping address to your favorite online store will likely update the company's CRM system in the background, just as engaging in a chat with a support technician also updates the CRM. The most effective CRM portals are not necessarily stand-alone update tools, but are integrated with other systems and business processes.
Steps to create a CRM portal for your business
CRM Portals are a technology that can significantly benefit from Human-Centered Design. Instead of considering technology as the start of building a CRM portal, consider the people you are trying to serve and their needs.
For example, your customers are unlikely to look to a section of your website to update their shipping details, but they would happily do so when ordering a product. Likewise, your field sales team may not want to view a beautiful, detailed CRM portal unless it is accessible on their phones during customer calls.
With your users understood and your design goals captured, determine the technical aspects of your CRM portal requirements. If your CRM is equipped with APIs that can be quickly integrated with existing web tools, your job can be quite simple. If you are using an older CRM, you may need to build an integration layer or other method to allow your CRM portal to interact with the backend CRM system.
Consider whether you will need any approval or routing workflows integrated into your CRM portal, and whether any of these can be automated. You've probably encountered an automatic check when updating your shipping address on your favorite commerce site. Your address is verified and standardized, and the site suggests an updated version based on your input.
Keep your design principles in mind to avoid frustrating users. Not allowing them to skip an address verification or requesting excessive information and asking them to verify they are “not robots” five times can be great for the quality of your data, but it can also cause them to abandon a purchase from your company.
Finally, always keep safety at the forefront. This is a complex topic in itself, and you should be careful about exposing CRM data to open networks and avoiding direct access to the system. Even with a well-designed portal, be sure to test basic security precautions and the potential for denial of service or other attacks that could damage or disable critical business information systems like your main CRM.
Even simple CRM portals can significantly make your customers' lives easier and allow your company to maintain more accurate and current data. If you haven't explored CRM portals yet, start simple with a few focused, high-value tools for your customers, employees, and business partners.
You'll likely find that maintaining accurate, accessible customer data used throughout your business is a great way to get new value from your existing CRM investment.
