CRM will remain a crucial business tool after the COVID-19 pandemic. In recent months, many companies have turned to their CRM in order to maintain service levels, whilst trying to navigate through the fog that has descended throughout lockdown.
One of the ways businesses can improve their CRM practice is through an address lookup integration. It’s an address and postcode search tool that seamlessly integrates with your existing platform, making life much easier for you and your team. Below we discuss why an address lookup integration is the key to CRM success:
1. Strengthens customer relationships
The whole point of having a CRM is to maintain and improve the relationship you have with your customers. However, a poor or non-existent data capture facility can become a barrier to this. One in ten organisations have no customer address validation process in place when it comes to capturing contact data on their website, and when it enters their CRM system1.
When capturing any new business information, you need the correct contact details: name, address, email, and telephone number. Without such information, it hinders your ability to successfully execute the sales and delivery process. Therefore, integrating your platform with an address lookup tool will help you provide your services effectively, thus strengthening customer relationships and achieving CRM success.
2. Improves the quality of campaign data
On average, 47% of newly-created data records have at least one critical error2. Therefore, when it comes to extracting data for campaigns there’s a real risk that a significant amount is inaccurate. This can have a negative impact on campaigns and result in poor customer targeting. Without high quality data, marketers are forced to try and apply a broad audience, which is not efficient3.
Data quality should always be a priority, but it’s even more essential during COVID-19. During times where purchasing power is so precarious, customer loyalty will depend on whether they feel valued and the level of service they receive. Organisations can gain a clearer picture of their target audience with a more accurate, complete, and holistic view of their customers4. To achieve this, validating addresses at the point of entry within your CRM will ensure customer records are accurate and complete, thus improving the quality of campaign data. This in effect will help your customer value proposition.
3. Saves time and money
Going forwards, businesses will have to come to terms with the idea of doing more with less. You’ll need to re-evaluate existing processes and systems to determine whether you can be more efficient5. A study shows 70% of respondents agree it’s cheaper to retain customers than acquire new ones. In fact, increasing customer retention rates by 5% increases profits by 25% to 95%6.
An optimum way to focus on customer retention is through address validation. Having the correct address data contributes towards customer satisfaction, and subsequently customer retention. It also saves you a lot of time and money that would otherwise be spent correcting any shipping errors or other customer service issues. Therefore, investing in a CRM integration will ultimately allow you to do more with less.
4. Reduces the risk of fraud
The coronavirus crisis has seen a rise in many different types of fraud7, therefore, it’s imperative you implement measures that will effectively safeguard your business. If your operatives are entering non-verified addresses into your CRM, this could open up the business to fraudulent practices. For example, without a complete address attached to a customer, how will you know for certain whether it is correct or even exists?
This can very much become a reality when businesses use Google and other search engines to verify addresses. Not only does the data come from many different sources, making it potentially unreliable, it is not updated according to any published or recognised standards. To actively mitigate the risk of fraud, integrate your CRM with an address lookup solution that is powered by an accurate data source, such as the Royal Mail Postcode Address File (PAF). This will help you achieve complete and correct customer information.
Hopewiser can help you achieve CRM success
With a variety of address lookup integrations tailored for a number of leading platforms, we can easily help you become a CRM pro. The software is simple to download and set up, and receives daily Royal Mail PAF updates. This means you can take comfort in the knowledge that the addresses you’re capturing are completely accurate.
What are you waiting for? For more information on how we can assist your business, please get in touch below.
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Sources
1 Better data, better marketing (DataIQ 16th June 2020)
2 Only 3% of Companies’ Data Meets Basic Quality Standards (Harvard Business Review 11th September 2017)
3 Why Is Data Quality Important? (Lotame 30th April 2019)
4 Four reasons why data quality is essential throughout COVID-19 (Finextra 21st May 2020)
5 The importance of CRM and workflow management software after COVID-19 (Lancashire Business Review 23rd June 2020)
6 Customer Acquisition Vs.Retention Costs – Statistics And Trends (Invesp 24th July 2020)
7 Covid-19 leading to a rise in fraud and economic crime risks (Osborne Clarke 20th May 2020)
, updated 15th February 2023.
