A booming business or a progressing career is usually represented by the number of customers and/or clients that one can accommodate. It is the busyness of having many people have to communicate and respond that you can use as an indication that whatever you are doing is working. However, this success is meant to last. And for it to last for more than a few moments, you have to find a way to sustain it. It can’t be sustained if you’re too stressed out about handling it. Thus, as a business owner or a professional, you should establish a client management system that can help you handle the work.
What is Client Management System?
A client management system is a system that allows you to manage how you will support and care for your clients and customers. More than ensuring the completion of your projects and tasks, client management is more focused on ensuring that you are satisfying your clients. It is about creating a smooth workflow that would help you establish and maintain their trust and loyalty. It helps you build stronger and more long-lasting relationships with your clients.
Benefits of a Client Management System
Some of the many benefits of having a client management system or using client management tools are listed below:
- Smoother Flow of Projects. A client management system would allow you to more easily handle the different projects and endeavors that you have. When you can track the status and progress of each project/order you have for different clients using different client management tools, you can better schedule your time and plan the tasks accordingly.
- More Customers and Clients. With a client management system at hand, you can reach more customers and clients. Different client management tools give you the ability to tailor your customer service efforts according to what would work best for your specific target markets. This would ensure that you work towards more targeted and more specific customer acquisition and client conversion efforts.
- Informed and Involved Clients. Using different client management tools allows you to more easily communicate with your clients and customers. Thus, a client management system helps you to inform your clients and let them be more involved in the process. This would make them more comfortable with you and it would help them be more cooperative. It can also help you provide your clients with whatever other support they might need.
- Higher Client Retention. Because of your effective client management system, your relationship with your clients and customers can significantly grow. There are a lot of client management tools that can help you achieve customer satisfaction and loyalty. And in the long run, it will lead to higher client retention.
- Better Team Communications. Another important benefit of having a client management system is the enhancement of your communication network with your own team. See, certain client management tools also incorporate within them a way for your team to easily communicate and collaborate. You can also track the progress of their own respective tasks and easily assist them when needed.
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Client Management Tools
1. Zoho
Zoho is one of the leading client management systems that exists today. It is a software that has powerful analytics and a way to easily monitor them, and an AI assistant that can detect anomalies in your data and other automated tasks. It also has marketing attribution tools, customizable dashboards and reports, forecasting, territory management, and performance management features. It also allows you to easily reach out to your clients across the world and across different channels. It has a user-friendly interactive interface and so it is really one of the client management tools that are recommended by teams anywhere.
2. ProofHub
ProofHub is one of the many client management tools that are designed to simplify the communication and collaboration of teams. It has an easy-to-use interface that allows you to create roles for your team. This helps you to properly lay out plans, organize, and collaborate with your team. You can also customize workflows, Gantt charts, and custom reports. It allows you to share files and timesheets with your whole team. It is a client management system that has a built-in online proofing tool that helps you to ask feedback from your clients regarding the progress of projects that they have with you.
3. SalesForce
SalesForce is another popular client management system. Its popularity can be attributed to its Customer 360 platform which allows you to connect the sales, marketing, commerce, and IT aspects of your business together and ultimately help you provide the most exceptional customer service and experience. It has easy contact and lead management, sales data and intelligence, and file sharing features. It also allows you to forecast sales and handle workflows. It is one of the client management tools that helps you creatively come up with specific solutions for your business and its needs. You can scale the software according to the growing volume of your clients and your team.
4. PipeDrive
PipeDrive is a cost-effective client management tool, especially if you are a startup or small business. This client management system has a highly visual and easy-to-use interface. It offers powerful analytics and helps you to manage your contacts and easily see your contact history with them. You can track communications with any of your clients and it also has a live chat feature so that your clients and customers will have no trouble reaching you. It also helps you manage your leads, fix calendars and schedule activities, and ensure a smooth workflow. It provides you with customizable reports that will help you manage your business or your professional projects more effectively.
Create a Client Management System
Here are five steps to help you effectively accomplish client management in the daily operations of your business and/pr career.
1. Create a Detailed Process Outline
The very first step to a successful client management system is to define and understand the work that needs to be accomplished. Make a list of what needs to be done in accordance with what would satisfy the client. The projects that you accept may vary in concept and complexity, but it would help for you to have a uniform system for client management and project management. Doing so would give you a list or a framework of the repeatable steps that your clients must follow to put in an order with you and for you to complete their requirements.
2. Streamline Each Step of the Process
After you have listed down the specific steps of your process, you must now examine them so as to identify what needs to be done in each step and to know what each step is really about. You can ask what your client needs for this step, what is necessary for them to move on to the next step, and what should be the ultimate goal and result of each particular step. This would allow you to streamline the process and establish a more effective client management system. This can also help you to identify early on in the creation process what obstacles and opportunities may come in the way of each step.
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3. Outline Your Final Management Plan
After listing down and going into details about the steps of your process, you can now collate and combine all the information that you have gathered. You can now lay out the final plan and outline for your client management system. Remember that in client management, you have to prioritize the tasks that would best accommodate the needs of your client. Thus, after you have gained insights about what your client might need for each step of your process from the previous step, you can now further examine what more you can do to help improve your clients’ experiences. This should allow you to have all the right information and the right tools to move forward with your endeavors and projects.
4. Implement Your Client Management System
Your client management system can now be brought to full completion. You can now finalize the items that you most need, make a schedule according to the urgency and ease of every step and/or task, and communicate results with your clients. Once you have finally worked out the kinks of each and every step you need to accomplish, you can now go through your daily operations with your client management tools at your fingertips. In this step, you also have to think about the possibility of delegating or automating some or most of the steps that need to be done in your client management system. Consider how you can be more efficient in client management. Will it be better to manually handle it or is it better to get some help from client management tools? Are you the only one capable of handling and doing specific tasks or is there a trusted teammate that can help you? No matter how organized you are with the creation of your client management system won’t matter if you did not consider how it would work in real-time.
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Strikingly and its Built-in Awesome Features
While Strikingly is not really a client management system, it does offer you some tools and features that can help you with your client management. For example, just as most client management tools offer you a chance to collaborate with your teammates, Strikingly also allows you to collaborate with your teammate in real-time. You can add them as collaborators on your site editor so that you can all work together in creating the best website.
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Strikingly also gives you the opportunity to track how your website is doing. It has built-in analytics that allows you to track the visitors you had for the past week, month, or year. It provides you details about your engagements and also gives you information about the location of your visitors and customers. You can also get a sense of the sales you have completed because Strikingly also gives you a sales analytics dashboard.
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Finally, you can also send your contacts and audience the current newsletters and updates of your business endeavor easily. Once you have collected emails and other contact information through contact forms you have put on your website, you can track your audience and your latest contact history with them.
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Sign up with Strikingly now and reap the benefits of having a website that allows you to also effectively manage, communicate, and satisfy your clients and customers.
