You have a relationship with everyone you know. Even if it’s a far-off acquaintance, you’ve formed some type of connection.
And if you have a lot of connections, it means you have a lot of relationships to manage, both personally and professionally.
As coaches, our personal relationships aren’t the only ones that require management — our client relationships require the same time and attention. An example of relationship management in our professional lives is staying in touch with clients we only see occasionally.
But how do you go about creating and maintaining strong customer relationship management for your coaching business? We’ll explain how to smooth out coach-client interactions and share examples of effective customer relationship management to apply to your work.
What is customer relationship management?
Customer relationship management is the art of building and maintaining excellent relationships with clients. At its foundation, it requires us to understand and exceed client expectations. It covers our businesses' customer interactions, from appointment booking to billing and everything in between. When we have great relationships with clients, we see higher customer retention, satisfaction, and loyalty.
Specialized platforms called customer relationship management (CRM) software handle most of these relationships. These platforms are like gigantic databases that log customer information and interactions so we can control the entire client experience from one place.
Different CRM platforms focus on different functions. With plenty of options on the market, you need to research which one fits your business needs and budget. Practice offers a simple CRM platform used by a growing community of coaches looking to improve their businesses.
6 CRM strategy examples
Gone are the days of keeping customer data in multiple spreadsheets and databases. Now, CRM systems provide coaches with everything from real-time transaction updates to bill automation and the ability to chat with clients on just one platform.
Here are six excellent ways to leverage CRM software to engage with customers:
1. Automate welcome messages
The client acquisition process starts early. As soon as we get a new lead, CRM solutions allow us to automatically send them a welcome message to introduce our business. Being proactive is an essential part of building a client base, but we don’t want to spend time writing out and sending messages to every potential customer. Automating this lets you secure leads with less energy.
2. Engage with your audience
To build excellent client relationships, we should provide valuable interactions outside of coaching sessions. Using CRM tools, we can send leads and clients useful, relevant, enjoyable, and engaging content, like a newsletter with general advice and information about upcoming discounts. This helps keep our business at the forefront of our customer's minds, convert new leads, and make more sales.
3. Personalize your messages
One way to increase client satisfaction is to make them feel valued, and the best way to achieve this is with personalized communications and marketing campaigns. It’s always nice to see that specialized thought and effort have been invested, and CRMs make this easy. Even something as simple as a thank you note sent out after a purchase goes a long way.
4. Segment your audience
By collecting customer data and using it to tailor our marketing efforts to specific groups of customers, we’ll expose our clients to more content they’ll enjoy. This boosts customer engagement and streamlines the marketing automation process. If you coach both executives and entrepreneurs, you could segment your clients based on that criteria to send them targeted messaging about relevant tools and products.
5. Have your clients follow you
Consistent and easily accessible communication is foundational to successful client relationships, and social media is a powerful tool to accomplish this. Small businesses, in particular, can leverage email campaigns to share their social media platforms.
Connecting your clients to your socials provides a variety of touchpoints throughout the customer journey where we can share content that enriches the customer experience. It’s also a great way for us to advertise our value and convert new customers.
6. Seek out feedback
A surefire way to improve customer satisfaction is asking them what they want. While gathering feedback manually is difficult and timely, a CRM strategy streamlines the process and keeps everything all the information we collect in one spot.
Whether we’re sending out customer feedback questionnaires on our websites, mobile apps, emails, or social media, customer relationship management tools gather and organize data in an effective and accessible way.
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Examples of CRM activities
Now that we’ve seen what CRMs can do, let’s explore how their capabilities translate into benefits for our businesses. Here are four ways a CRM solution can boost business success:
- Optimizing customer engagement by connecting us directly to inboxes. This makes anything from email marketing to customer support a shorter and more straightforward process. No more digging through files for client emails.
- Converting leads is easier with automated messages. Don’t have a sales team? No problem. CRMs allow us to customize the sales process according to our needs and resources. Automated messages relevant to segments of target demographics and potential customers helps convert new customers with less time and effort.
- Making announcements is no longer a hassle. Excellent client relationships require strong communication skills and transparency. CRMs allow us to stay in touch with our community with ease and ensure no one slips through the cracks when it comes to important messages like discount codes or days we’re out of the office.
- Leveraging customer analytics and data. CRMs collect a lot of crucial information, allowing us to understand our clients’ habits and preferences. We can then better tailor the marketing and sales pipeline to meet client's expectations. Something as simple as a client satisfaction survey can take our coaching to the next level.
Customer relationship management benefits
CRM software can include the functionality of databases, communications platforms, sales and marketing tools, and more. Here are three crucial features to look for when shopping for a CRM:
- Analytics: Storing data is the most basic way to use CRM solutions, but we can leverage this tool to do even more. With information about customer purchases, interactions, and preferences, our sales team can better recommend relevant products and services to existing clients and generate more effective leads for new customers. Using analytics in this way can significantly boost customer loyalty and reduce churn.
- Scheduling: As solopreneurs or small business owners, we understand that every moment of the working day counts. Administrative tasks are among the most time-consuming but necessary parts of the job. CRMs help schedule meetings, messages, campaigns, and other content ahead of time.
- Audience management: Personalizing the customer experience is a high priority but requires significant time and resources. By sorting our clients into segments within our CRM software, we can personalize our services, content, and marketing with ease.
Contact management isn’t easy, but with the right tools it doesn’t have to be a chore. From hosting video calls and scheduling meeting reminders to file sharing, CRMs such as the Practice mobile app can keep all of our information — and our entire team — on the same page.
At Practice, we understand the importance of creating and maintaining excellent client relationships. Try our all-in-one CRM solution today to streamline your customer engagement.
