Custom CRM: Top 4 Challenges of Managing Customer Relationships and How to Solve Them

In an era of virtualized operations and intense competition, businesses look to custom CRM software and other cloud solutions to manage customer relationships.

But as they’re finding out, digitizing their tailored customer-centric workflows isn’t a walk in the park. It’s not as simple as purchasing generic software and hoping for the best.

Here are some of the most pressing challenges businesses face when managing customer relationships and how to solve them.

Watch our video tutorial now to learn how to build a custom CRM by clicking, not coding.

Challenge 1: Managing Multiple Digital Channels

Which digital channel should you open to customers? Customers tend to use social networks like Facebook and Twitter to send messages. And then there’s email, online surveys and your website contact form. The list goes on.

Managing multiple digital channels can become a task of its own, overwhelming Sales, Support or Marketing managers, who still need to oversee their day-to-day departmental operations.

How can you be more available to customers without overwhelming your team?

Digital channels are data sources, like Excel spreadsheets or MS Access databases. Connect all your data sources to a custom CRM or an online database to streamline the flow of information from several sources.

Home telematics company Roost once struggled with scattered, unorganized data from multiple sources. Kim Graf, Roost director of customer experience, spent much of her time jumping from one file to another to manage all relevant customer information. Graf then used Caspio to build a system that works as a single source of truth for their entire organization.

“The Caspio online database allowed us to get many different data sources into one location, improving our processes in what I call our business to business to consumer (B2B2C) supply chain,” she said.

Challenge 2: Launching Self-Service Tools for Customers

Online self-service tools enable customers to address their needs without contacting Support or Sales teams all the time. But while businesses understand the value of these systems, they are also hesitant to build them because of the perceived challenges of custom CRM development.  

After all, building custom software using traditional approaches is costly and time-consuming. But that doesn’t have to be the case.

Use Caspio’s no-code platform to create self-service cloud apps. No-code platforms enable businesses to build custom applications up to 20x faster than traditional development, all through clicking, not coding. With no-code, you can lighten the load of your Customer Support, Sales or Marketing teams and enable customers to solve their challenges fast and on their own.  

Acoustic doppler manufacturer SonTek, whose products help predict flooding, used to get swarmed with calls from customers asking about the status of their repair requests. Director of Customer Service Jeff Winters built a repair request tracker that allowed customers to log into their website and get that information in real-time.

“Since we started using Caspio, calls for repair status have gone down by over 50%,” Winters said.

Here are other self-service tools you can build for your customers and internal teams:

FAQ Manager

Accommodate as many customers as possible by anticipating and answering their questions in an easy-to-read format. Create and edit frequently asked questions directly from your Caspio-powered FAQ manager, which automatically publishes the entries to your website. 

Product Catalog

Post thousands of products and their details on your website, enabling customers to check availability and compare items without calling your Support or Sales team.

Quote Calculator

Build an intuitive deal calculator for both your Sales representatives and customers. Caspio allows you to easily apply custom formulas on your app, saving your team the trouble of manually providing quotes with each customer request.

Nonprofit Seeds of Hope built their version of a custom calculator to assess a recipient’s scholarship needs, allowing them to send more kids to school.

Challenge 3: Aligning Internal and Customer-Facing Teams

The fastest way to damage your relationship with customers is to allow your teams to send conflicting responses. Poor communication derails leads from moving down the Sales pipeline, impacting conversion and revenue. That’s why businesses must ensure all their teams are aligned when communicating with customers. However, that isn’t always easy when departments maintain their own databases and trackers, most of which are invisible to the rest of the company.

Agriculture equipment manufacturer KSi grappled with that chaos.

“We weren’t necessarily providing the greatest experience to our customers,” admitted Jason Kaeb, director of business development at KSi. To fix their internal communication and data silo problems, KSi built online database applications that gave them visibility into what teams were working on, improving their project management and customer service.

To align your entire organization and improve customer communication, build a customizable CRM. Centralize the management of customer information, from contact details to communication logs and even Sales revenue projection. Use Caspio’s user permissions and authentication to allow staff from multiple departments to collaborate and access only the information they’re allowed to see.

Challenge 4: Deciding to Buy or Build Software

Businesses understand the importance of custom CRM software, but many get stuck in the “buy or build” question. The pandemic forced them to decide ASAP, and many thought purchasing off-the-shelf tools was the path of least resistance. That is until they discover the limitations of generic software.

Enterprise software suites are typically built for a mass market to capture more customers and gain more revenue. The problem is even the most “complete” software suite may not address your exact requirements.

Your business is unique, and so are your workflows. Many companies end up force-fitting their existing processes to the rigid software suite they purchase, altering the unique “secret sauce” workflows that made them successful in the first place.

The best and most logical choice is to build the exact CRM you need, one that supports and enhances the exact way you work and do business. Over 93% of VPs and C-level executives agree, saying custom applications bring strategic advantages to their business.

And if you want to build your custom CRM software but you’re worried about the complexity and cost of traditional software development — as you should be — consider taking a different approach: no-code development.

Solve Customer Relationship Management With No-Code

Our research shows that optimizing customer experiences and improving internal workflows — areas that directly impact revenue — are the primary drivers of custom software development.

While businesses understand the value of custom CRM development relative to their bottom line, they are hampered by the lack of resources and IT talent. That’s why it’s critical for IT leaders and management teams to look into no-code development, which enables businesses to fast-track app production.

Caspio’s no-code platform allows businesses to centralize information sources in one secure online database and build applications on top of that data. Imagine gathering all customer information in one custom CRM application and giving different departments visibility into communication logs, existing projects or requests and projected revenue per customer. You can even build self-service tools to assist customers and ease some pressure off your Support teams.

With a guided development approach using point-and-click and drag-and-drop tools, you can build all the customer-facing applications you need without having to hire additional IT staff or learning any programming language. The only question now is, “what app will you build next?”

Try Caspio free today and start building custom apps that help you manage customer relationships during the pandemic and beyond.