Customers are essential for a business to grow. And the more customers you have, storing and sharing data becomes complicated. Many organizations use multiple tools and applications to run their business. This creates fragmented data which becomes a challenge when teams want to find relevant information and engage with customers efficiently. Other roadblocks include communication gaps between teams, poor customer service, ineffective reporting, etc. All these create a negative impact on organizational growth and meeting revenue targets.
You will need a good contact management system to store and manage customer data like products purchased, discounts, queries raised, details of quotes and invoices, etc. A contact management system helps you organize, manage, and store information about leads, prospects, and customers in a single place. It becomes a single source of information that customer-facing teams can use to build great relationships with them.
According to a statistical report, more than 91% of companies with 10 or more employees use a CRM to manage conversations with customers. Are you one of those? Do you use a CRM with a robust contact management system that empowers you with unified customer data?
Vtiger’s customer management feature, the Contacts module, is a great solution for managing customer data. Let us take a look at Vtiger’s Contact module, which addresses the pain points mentioned earlier.
The Contacts module in Vtiger CRM
You can use the Contacts module in Vtiger CRM to store, track and manage contact details. Contacts can be a lead (prospect who is willing to buy your product) or a customer (who has purchased the product from you).
From the Contacts module screens you can:
- Use different views to display contact information
- Add a contact
- Edit contact information
- Communicate with your contacts
- Collaborate with your team members
- Save meeting notes
- Send documents
- Generate report
Let us discuss these in detail:
Using different views to display contact information
How easy would it be if you could display data in different ways in a CRM?
- You would be able to list all available contact records for a quick look.
- Then you would be able to go one step further and get a summary of the individual records.
- Next, you would be able to get detailed information about a contact.
Vtiger offers three different views – List View, Summary View, and Detailed View feature to do exactly that.
List View
With the List View, you can display all your saved records in the form of a list.
You have icons that help you to search for records, add a contact, or edit an existing record. The History icon provides a glimpse of your previous activities, you can add any contact instantly using Quick Create.
The Inbox feature allows you to collate your emails in one place, and stay up to date on your meetings or deadlines with the Actions feature. The Calendar feature allows you to schedule any events and prioritize meetings.
Using the Sync feature, you can link your contacts with third-party apps like Gmail, Office 365, Quick books, events, etc. Not just that you can make calls, send emails, and SMS directly from the contact record using the icons available on the screen.
Summary View
The Summary View in Vtiger gives you an overview of your contact. The One View widget is one of the important features that provide a 360-degree view of your customer. You can link any record related to your contact like deals, cases, invoices, etc. and all the information will be displayed under One View. Along with that, you can see the ratings given to your contacts, the last time you contacted, etc., which makes following up very easy.
It also gives you an option to add a brief description about your customer along with basic details like name, organization, title, etc. You can contact your customer during their business hours using the Best Time to Contact feature.
Similar to List View, you can communicate with them directly from the record using the Phone, Email, Send SMS, and Whatsapp icons. It helps you address customer demands efficiently at a faster pace.
You can also understand the lifecycle of your record, i.e., the record is marketing qualified or sales qualified. Using @mentions, you can have a discussion about this particular record with your co-workers. You will also get to see upcoming activities and the next actions to be performed like sending a mail, scheduling a meeting, etc.
If your aim is to drive new and existing customer relationships, you need to have a system that allows you to perform multiple tasks with additional features. Vtiger presents you with a built-in component called Widgets to view detailed information about your customers. Campaign history, email subscriptions, all the transactions made, surveys conducted, chat history, etc., are some of the highlights of Vtiger Widgets.
Detailed View
The Detailed View feature provides every possible detail you need about a contact. From the name itself, it is clear that Detailed View provides a full-fledged description like credit card details, last time contacted via phone, email, or SMS, source of the lead, etc. It also lets you know the contact status- hot, cold, warm, or duplicate. Other information like engagement score, profile score, etc., help you strengthen customer collaboration.
Adding a contact
If you are thinking about what is so special about adding a contact in a CRM, let me enlighten you. There are multiple screens and ways you can add a contact in Vtiger CRM. You can add a contact using:
- The Quick Create feature: You can add necessary details about your contacts and detailed information can be added later on. This feature is available on all the screens and saves a lot of time.
- The Contacts module: You can use the Add Contact button to create a contact record.
- From different modules: You can add a contact from other modules like Deals, Products, Organizations, Invoices, etc.
- The Import contact feature: Data can be transferred from third-party apps to the CRM using CSV or VCF file format.
- Vtiger Enrich: You can save contact information by capturing details from social media like Linkedin.
Editing contact information
There are times when you have to edit contact information. Say, you have missed out on certain details when you used Quick Create to add a contact or that contact has informed you about a change in his postal address. You can edit information like company, employee, developer, industry details, etc., using the Edit feature located in the Summary View.
Communicating with your contacts
Communication is the heart of any business that acts as a strong bridge between business and clients. As a sales rep or customer support, if you can converse well, people will start taking your business seriously.
The communication channels available in a Vtiger contact record are Phone call, Emails, SMS, and Whatsapp. You can rely on all these features to reach out to your contact directly from the CRM. Vtiger integrates with multiple service providers like Twilio, Plivo, Asterisk, etc. to perform these actions effectively.
Collaborating with your team members
You can discuss about a contact with your team members using comments or @mention from the activity section of Summary View. For example, if you want to give updates to your manager regarding a contact, you can mention the name using @mention and provide details. In this way, you can increase team collaboration to provide a better service.
Keep meeting notes
Looking everywhere for a pen and paper to jot down notes while on the call? From the Contacts module, you can not only make calls directly but make call notes as well. You can save and view these meeting notes in the Phone Call modules. And, these notes help track essential details and make informed conversations seamlessly.
Sending documents
If you are a sales rep, you may have to send a document like an agreement, plan, or presentation to your customers. After sending it, you will be interested in knowing if they have opened the document or signed or read it.
The Document Sharing module makes it possible by centralizing all your documents in one place. You can send or share documents with your customers and track their engagement levels. You will also get real-time notifications if they perform actions on the documents.
Generating reports
You can create reports from the Analytics widget present in the Summary View to get key metrics about a contact record. Reports related to your contact like case count, queries count, etc., will be displayed in a chart or tabular form.
Benefits of using Vtiger Contact Management
By now, you might have got an idea of Vtiger Contact Management features. Let me walk you through the benefits of using the Contacts module to optimize team performance and improve customer experience.
Centralized Data
A centralized data management system helps you store all deal-related records in a single place and eliminates the risk of data duplication.
The Contacts module is a central repository of data – a single source of information. Your sales, marketing, and customer support departments can have access to real-time information which helps in boosting collaboration.
It helps you reduce cross-team dependencies, and the effort required to gather data. You can also stay up to date about the customer engagement level not only with your team but with other teams in the organization.
360-degree customer view
One of the reasons why you should have a Vtiger contact management system is its ability to provide unified customer data. Don’t you think it would be easy if you can see all your related contact records in one place?
Vtiger One View enables you to see related data for contact like deals, invoices, organization, etc., on a single platform. When you have a unified view of your customer, you can understand their behavioral patterns and pain points, thus helping you focus on catering to their specific needs. In this way, you can enrich collaboration and maximize deal conversions.
Automation
The boom of technology happened only to make our lives easier. So, why not utilize it to the fullest. With automation in your contact management system, you can set up workflows to accomplish your tasks efficiently. Workflow automation is triggered for certain conditions in the Contacts module.
For example, you can automate the process of creating lead or contact records from incoming emails. You can automate different processes such as assigning leads to the sales team, launching campaigns, scheduling interviews, etc.
Analytics
No business wants to keep expanding its operations without having a clear direction. With the Analytics widget in the Contacts module, you can monitor your customer-related activities, sales progress, performance metrics, etc. which helps you in making informed decisions. All these insights help the team to perform better and achieve targeted goals even before the deadline.
Now, ready to take up a test drive? Install Vtiger CRM and enjoy the benefits of the Contact Management System. Signup Now!
