A CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system is supposed to enhance your team productivity and efficiency by streamlining your customers’ queries and managing them effortlessly. But if you are facing problems while using a CRM system resulting in your team’s productive output, then it’s a bad sign for your business. To be honest facing problems with CRM systems are very common nowadays. There could be quite a few reasons for facing issues when you are using a CRM system.

But to overcome those issues, you need to follow some tips from experts. Having said that today we are going to share some proven tips to address the common problems with CRM systems and how you could resolve them proactively.

So, if you are frustrated with your CRM system’s problems and want to solve them for your business’s betterment, keep reading this article. Hopefully, it will help you to come up with ideas to take your business to a whole new level by ensuring a proper CRM system.

Importance of CRM System in a Company

A new trend in customer service is the implementation of CRM systems. It offers a way for companies to get data on their customers, manage their relationships with these customers, and get an understanding of what makes them successful.

Moreover, companies are always on the lookout for ways to improve their internal workflow. One way that this can be done is by adopting a reliable customer relationship management system. A comprehensive CRM system will help keep track of all of your clients and what they need on an individual level. This means that you’ll have the opportunity to provide the best service for all of your customers.

More essentially, a CRM system is used to monitor customers and their interactions with your organization. By providing all of the information on one organized platform, CRM allows for easy decision-making about customer data, and based on that they can come to an informed decision for their future promotional & marketing campaigns.

Top 10 Common Problems of CRM Systems

1. Security Threat

Security is a big shot. Everyone is concerned about data nowadays. From the business owner to a random guy who has an online profile, everyone wants to keep his data protected and safe. And the value of data is enormous.

According to Entrepreneur, the Big Data industry is going to be worth $77 billion by 2023.

In terms of your business, your company data is arguably the most valuable asset you have. So, if there is any chance that your chosen CRM system can leak your data, it can be a devastating situation for you and your company as well.

And to be very honest, there are many CRM systems that have a bad reputation to lose security. As onboarding to a new CRM platform involves gathering and transferring vast reserves of data, you need to be sure you have a system you can trust.

2. Lackings of the Functions That Your Business Requires

Choosing the right partner is important to your success, so is selecting the right software. It can be tempting to choose the cheapest CRM software licenses. However, customizing it to fit your company’s needs is often far more expensive than just buying the right software in the first place.

Other companies can make the opposite mistake. Like, spending a small fortune on an expensive system with a ton of features that they will never use. Cost is important, but it should be a secondary consideration to finding the right CRM software for your company’s needs.

So, when you are up for buying a CRM system for your business, make sure it comes with all the necessary functions that your business actually needs. If you buy a CRM system without proper analysis, your employees won’t find the necessity to use it.

3. Takes a Lot of Time to Update the System

Although the process of using a CRM system is relatively simple, it still takes some time and a lot of bandwidth to move data, especially if you have a huge bank of information to move.

Also, people need time to get used to the new CRM solution. It may be weeks or even months before some members of your workforce are comfortable tackling the challenges of using a CRM system by themselves.

You expect your marketing people to close as many deals as they can. But if you give them such a tool that sucks up huge amounts of time just to keep it updated and doesn’t add any value to their job, this would really be the biggest joke in sales.

So, make sure you have chosen a simplified and easy-to-maintain CRM system.

4. High Pricing of a CRM System

One of the biggest challenges facing companies trying to implement CRM is the cost associated with purchasing, installing, and training employees to use new software.

Like every other startup owner, you have also heard that CRM software is profitable.

So profitable, the stats suggest, that it can increase revenue by over 40% per sales representative.

That doesn’t mean you should buy a reputed CRM system that comes with an unlimited number of features and some of the features you won’t even need to use. Regardless to say this type of CRM system will break your bank for buying.

Or, if you have already bought such a kind of CRM, you can start downgrading it. CRM is almost always priced in tiers. A basic version will be cheap, while a more feature-rich version requires considerably more investment. So, by downgrading, you can free up cash flow.

5. Too Complicated That Employees Don’t Use It

CRM is highly developed software, so the users and the operators may have lackings of understanding of CRM.

Most employees do not come to work to fight the system. If users are rejecting the CRM system then the business needs to understand what the problems are. In most cases, this can be traced to a lack of management buy-in for the CRM system.

If users feel they are wasting time updating a system then they will stop using it.

And at the same time if you need to allocate sessions just to educate your employees on how to use your chosen CRM system, maybe you also won’t find any reason to continue with your CRM system.

6. Lack of Support

Suppose, you have bought a CRM system and found out some functions aren’t working properly, then what would you do! Obviously, you will go for the support team to get the solutions.

After creating a ticket for your problems if you need to wait for an eternity to get the reply from the support team, this can be really frustrating. The lackings of support is a very common problem of CRM systems. This can discourage you to use a CRM system.

In the meantime, you could also lose your customers for not being able to manage them properly.

Your team will always have questions about the system, and your software will inevitably need revisions and tweaks as your business grows and changes. Your CRM partners need to be available to help you at every step.

To avoid such situations, before choosing a CRM system check the ratings of that CRM tool. Also, you can use the free version (if available) of that CRM software to check how responsive their support team is.

7. Managing Integrations

Although several prospective CRM users understand what benefits a CRM system has in store, others are apprehensive about the potential gaps in the system.

Some users are concerned that CRM implementation will not offer the integrated functionality they need.

As a result, they think it will create gaps in collaboration with marketing, lead generation, communication management, ticketing, internal communication, and other crucial business functions.

However, if you check the integration list that offers your chosen CRM tool, you will be able to clear this doubt. Make sure your CRM tool offers integrations like Zendesk, Help Scout, WooCommerce, Mailchimp, Hubspot, and many more.

8. Record Loss

Some CRMs use remote servers or third-party servers to collect and store records of customers. CRM applications that are operated through third-party servers have some disadvantages.

The disadvantage is that the business does not have control over the data, and in case of a shutdown of the remote CRM, then the business or company will not be able to recover the records.

An unstable CRM can, therefore, lead to a loss of revenue in thousands of dollars for the company. To avoid such losses, the business should use local backups if using a CRM application hosted by a different company.

9. Dependency on IT Team

It is not always important that the IT team is involved in every phase of your company. Though they are integral in understanding the technicalities and the functional aspects, it is not sensible to be completely dependent on them for everything.

The sales and marketing team needs to have a better understanding of how the system should behave in order to accomplish future goals since these departments are the key users of the CRM system.

Today, there are many cloud-based CRM software that assists managers to access their client data remotely.

This helps in closing deals faster. Now, for these functionalities, the IT team may or may not be available always to show the way around. Hence, all teams should be equally participating during the implementation and data migration period.

10. Choosing The Wrong Solution

Last but not least- choosing the wrong CRM solution can take your team productivity downward. Different businesses have different goals and different needs.

One of the most important considerations in choosing a CRM is subscribing to one that matches your team’s technical experience and background. Unfortunately, some businesses overlook this aspect as a result of wanting to subscribe to an advanced system with a long list of features.

Don’t forget about your goals and whom you’re working with and for whenever you’re looking around for CRM software.

Tips to Overcome All These Problems With CRM Systems

Now you might be wondering why you need to use a CRM system when it creates all these problems for your business. But don’t forget that if you make an in-depth analysis before buying or implementing a CRM tool as per your requirements, you will not face a single problem that we have mentioned above.

So, when you are up for a CRM system for your business, make sure you have a strategy for using a CRM solution and the solution comes with all the necessary features that you actually need to manage your customers.

If you search for the best CRM solutions on Google, you’ll find some biggies like HubSpot, SalesForce, Zoho CRM, Pipedrive, and so on. All these CRM tools are really great, however, do you really need all these features that these tools offer. If not, don’t invest your money just because SERP shows them in the first position.

If you have a small to medium business and want to experience a hassle-free CRM tool, we would like to suggest you the WP ERP CRM system to manage your customers. Why? Let us show the reasons.

And here is why you need WP ERP CRM for your business

WP ERP CRM is the best WordPress client management plugin with 10,000+ active installations and 4.5 out of 5 ratings(110+ ratings as of now). It provides you with an easy-to-use UI to manage your customers’ data without having the experience of using a CRM tool before.

It comes with 3 different yet distinct modules- HRM, CRM, and Accounting. If you don’t want to use HRM and Accounting, you can simply disable these modules. And anytime you can enable these modules in case you need them.

Top Features of WP ERP CRM Solution

• Manage users with life stats that lets you respond to contacts according to importance and urgency for greater efficiency.
• Enables you to add reminders, information, comments, messages and a lot more in user’s profile.
• Comes with built-in email communication.
• Lets you record calls, meetings, emails and SMS to keep track.
• Opportunity to schedule meetings or calls.
• Comes with 10+ integrations including WooCommerce, Salesforce, Hubspot, and Mailchimp integration.
• Lets you assign tasks to any of your CRM agents from within a user’s profile.
• Provides advanced contact filtering.
• Comes with asy reporting system.

These are the necessary features that you need to avoid the problems that we have discussed earlier. Also, this tool comes with pro and free versions. So, if you are not sure whether you should use this tool or not, you can try its free version.

Over to You

Using a CRM system for your business is a smart move to manage your clients properly. You will rarely find any business that doesn’t use a CRM tool. However, the main concern is finding the right tool for your business. So that you won’t need to give up your CRM tool halfway.

For finding the best CRM tool, you can rely on our suggestions. Or, you can search and find by yourself by comparing other CRM tools as per your requirements.

Have you ever faced any problems with your CRM tool? If so, let us know how you have overcome the situation through the comment box below. It will help our readers to get more idea about the common problems with CRM systems and hacks to overcome them.