What you’ll read: Why having a CRM isn’t enough to gain the most out of this digital tool.
CRM platforms help marketers manage their customer relationships more effectively, but who manages the CRM platform itself? Like any digital tool, CRM sometimes needs dedicated attention to keep it running efficiently. This is why CRM administrators — or sometimes entire CRM teams — exclusively manage databases once they’ve reached a specific size. Let’s take a closer look at what this work entails and how it drives continuous value for marketing departments.
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The CRM administrator
When you first implement a CRM platform, it usually doesn’t need too much overhead. As your database grows, however, discrepancies will start to appear — customers might move, create duplicate profiles, or new team members will process data slightly differently.
A CRM administrator can be an invaluable resource to address these issues. The position requires a combination of marketing, sales, business management, and IT skills, but at its core, the CRM administrator role ensures data is readable and accessible for all relevant parties.
Depending on your specific marketing needs, CRM administrators will handle some combination of the following roles:
- Training and onboarding: As new marketers join the team, they will need training in the CRM platform and its various features. Administrators either handle this training personally or ensure training modules are completed successfully.
- Data management: CRM administrators often organize data structures within the CRM platform, creating relevant fields for customer profiles.
- Data maintenance: Over the course of your relationship with a customer, they might change their address, name, or even gender identity. These discrepancies can lead to duplicate profiles or long out-of-date fields. If a profile is flagged for review, CRM administrators can merge profiles or reconcile conflicting information in an account.
- Accessibility: The best CRM platform in the world is useless if marketers can’t access it. Administrators may need to troubleshoot technical issues or handle any permissions issues to ensure data is accessible across an organization.
The CRM team
While an administrator can maintain a CRM platform, that’s just scratching the surface of its capabilities. On the other hand, a dedicated CRM team can find deeper insights and enhance the platform’s value. That’s why some CRM providers include full-service support alongside the product — much like how Optimove features a Strategic Service team and a Customer Success Manager.
Whether included with the platform or handled internally, a CRM team dedicates itself to optimizing data, analyzing relationship models, and creating custom marketing and monetization projects. These efforts provide a deeper level of understanding about accounts and uplift the quality of your marketing communications. In the long term, they can also drive more revenue — in Optimove’s case, 55% more marketing-contributed revenue.
At the end of the day, CRM technology is not an acquire-and-forget kind of purchase. With dedicated assistance, marketers can maximize the value of CRM and improve customer relationships across the organization. CRM products have a lot to offer if you have a team putting the right effort into it.