Customer relationship management (CRM) strategies are implemented to manage a company’s interactions with customers, partners, and sales prospects. If done well, the company will have an opportunity to stay ahead of their competition and sell more of their products and services. CRM also involves using technologies such as Salesforce to organize, automate, and synchronize business processes—principally sales activities, but also those for marketing, customer service, and technical support.
However, over the last few years, CRM has become more about the technologies and less about giving these teams the tools needed to succeed in an ever increasingly competitive environment. The companies that have overcome this issue have made a commitment to providing and maintaining the most up-to-date information around product enhancements, new products, competition, industry trends, and tips on how to overcome common issues. And the list goes on. In most cases this information is being recorded as a video.
The other issue which needs to be overcome is access to this information. To best serve your customers and partners, this information needs to be accessible. The most logical access is your CRM platform. This is where your teams are spending their time already so why not make it easy for those with access to the CRM platform to have access to all of the information that they need to meet (and hopefully exceed) their goals.
There are many options to recording, managing and distributing video content through your CRM platform. However, like all technologies, all video platforms are not created equal. I recommend a video platform that integrates with your CRM platform and provides:
- Control over content creation & updates – Your video platform should support the moderation and approval of new or updated content. Instead of making one person the moderator, divide the responsibility by department or subject matter. Spreading the responsibility will eliminate potential bottlenecks in the process.
- Searchable – Let’s face it, most users want to quickly find the content that they need. Your video platform should be able to search all relevant content including metadata, chapters and PowerPoint slides.
- Mobile viewing – All video content should be viewable on mobile devices and tablets. This provides maximum accessibility, particularly if the sales representative is on-the-go.
- Security and permissions – Make sure that your valuable video content is only viewed by the intended audience and doesn’t fall into the wrong hands. Content owners can fine-tune permissions in order to maintain security and limit who sees what.
- Collaboration and participation – Videos can aid in the entire CRM process by emphasizing collaboration and participation by members of your team. Questions can be posted and answered within the video platform, increasing the level of engagement and collaboration between work groups and teams.
Adding video to your CRM platform is a simple way to improve your business operations by giving your teams the information needed to close deals, support existing clients and stay ahead of the competition.
Next week, we’ll discuss adding video into your learning management system (LMS). Stay tuned!
