In the world of CRMs, there seem to be so many….yet, it’s hard to find one capable of every function that’s important to our business. This means that you must find a way to decide which system is best for your business based on what’s more important to you, whether it be reporting, client communications, or task management.
Each CRM (Customer Relationship Management) has its strengths and weaknesses. In this episode, we talk through some of these features so that you have a foundation of what to look for in your system so that you’re working within the system that gives you the most out of what you need.
For this podcast recording, we were joined by Ashlyn Puckett, our community manager and client experience expert.
Client Communication
It’s not necessarily an obvious situation, but not all CRMs offer client-facing communications. They tend to offer more in the way of taking storing client information. A system that can actually hold email templates and forms is a powerful tool that allows a user to keep all client information, including communications in one space.
Our Tique workflow has fifteen forms, confirmations, integration with a meeting scheduler, and forty emails to address each step of the client process. All these items are kept in one place- which is a game changer for so many subscribers. With our Elevated Experience Workflow, our goal is to help advisors enhance the entire client experience through on-brand messaging and automation.
If you’re spending time typing out all of your emails, you’re wasting a lot of time every day doing the same communication with all of your clients. Creating a defined and templated flow will increase an advisors time to personalize the process by creating a beautiful itinerary and servicing the sale in other ways.
TravelJoy offers clients communications and is project management focused, hence why we have chosen to implement solely within that platform. Another option that we know allows templated emails is VacationCRM. While we have used this before, this is not a platform that we are knowledgeable enough on to share the nuances of the functionality. Many clients who work within other CRM systems outside of TravelJoy have found workarounds like creating email templates within GMail or another server, and hyperlinking the forms.
Information Hub
When looking at TravelJoy, you actually get to look at the client as if it’s one email string. Unlike email, you won’t have to search to find client interactions. In that same “trip” (i.e. a client’s trip folder), there are also tabs for files and notes. All signed waivers, invoices, and other client documents are stored in one tidy little package.
One thing to be aware of, is that TravelJoy doesn’t have an app (many CRMs do not). However, there is a workaround! Ther system offers the capability to sync an email account and see all sent communications in your email outbox. In addition, each client folder has its own “email address” in the system, so if you are on the go and need to make sure that a client receives a message, you can just “reply all” and the communication will be reflected in both the email outbox and in the TravelJoy message string.
Since TravelJoy is project management focused, the dashboard has buckets that you can actually edit and label and say like inquiry, waiting on fee proposal sent. You can move people through these statuses, and so when you go to check in on yourself and your communications, you can pop into those buckets and audit if you need to make a touchpoint with that client.
Reporting & Metrics
We’ll be honest that reporting and managing a team on TravelJoy can be a bit more of a challenge than we’d like. However, we do know, for a fact, they’re really trying to work towards more of a team-friendly platform.
To our knowledge, VacationCRM is agency-owner-friendly. However, if you’re working individually or if you are working with a smaller team, TravelJoy provides a lot of features that allow an owner to see their metrics
Legal Protection & Signatures
Adding forms and obtaining signatures throughout the process is incredibly important to protecting your business. Dubsado, while not specifically a CRM for advisors, is exceptional at providing an interface that properly captures a dual-signed contract and also adds lines of specific bullets that clients have to initial. Since, let’s be honest, we know that most people don’t actually read their contracts, having these bite-sized contractual details outlined can help ensure that the client has read the most important information.
TravelJoy provides a seamless way to capture signatures at any point of the process, but specifically when capturing payment authorizations. The important detail that your lawyer should be aware of when crafting your client agreement, is if your system allows for co-signing. This will signify to your lawyer what can and can’t be included in the contract, since certain contracts require both parties.
Automation
In TravelJoy, you can collect passport information, credit card information, and other details that should be collected and stored securely. The beauty is that you can connect forms that collect various data points to an email, and schedule it to be sent within a certain timeframe approaching the client’s departure.
For example, you can have touchpoints at 90, 45, a week, and 24 hours out from departure that automatically sends on your behalf. Another perk is being able to schedule an arrival day and welcome home email. This can liberate an advisor from feeling obligated to text clients while they’re in travel. This helps immensely with setting boundaries, reiterating that your clients should use email to communicate with you unless an emergency arises.
Proposal Integration
Electronic itinerary creators like Travefy and Axus create a live link with detailed trip information. To deliver this, you can enter the hyperlink into TravelJoy and it will create a preview window. We believe that this is unique to their platform.
Travefy, in recent years, has also increased its capabilities to include forms and payment authorization. So while they may not offer scheduling and email templates, Travefy is an amazing platform for a simplified CRM solution combined with an itinerary creator.
Impact On The Bottom Line
Of course, an important thing to consider is the actual cost of the system. Each business owner should consider the impact of the expense on their business and evaluate the return on investment.
CRM Options
For anyone who is currently seeking for a CRM solution, we have listed some of the options below:
* Tique HQ is not affiliated with, nor receives compensation from, any CRM systems.
What CRM are you currently using? What are the perks and the pitfalls. Share your thoughts below!
Comments +