A CRM should be a major consideration for every business. Here we’ll discuss what a CRM is, how your business can benefit from one, and why every small business can thrive with the implementation of a CRM.

What is CRM?

CRM is an acronym which stands for customer relationship management.

When people use the shorthand, CRM, they are referring to CRM software which manages all customer interactions with your business, and the entire lead funnel. There are many different CRM systems that exist. These can range from simple databases to highly complex software.

The essential purpose of a CRM is to document customer information. Although, highly advanced versions are available which manage all contacts, documents, analytics, and touchpoints your business has with any specific customer, patient, or lead.

This begs the question, what are the benefits of a CRM?

Benefits of a CRM

The benefits of a CRM are extensive and depending on which CRM software you use, highly customizable. Some of the main reasons a business can benefit from a CRM are:

1.   One-Stop-Shop

Between customer information, documents, and notes – there’s a lot to keep track of. A CRM affords your business a one-stop-shop to input data on every lead that walks through the door…or even lands on your website homepage.

2.   Efficiency

Between automatic email senders, excel spreadsheets, scheduling tools, and more – there are endless tasks competing for your staff’s limited attention and time. A CRM centralizes all necessary functions of your office, optimizing your team’s time. To put it simply, a CRM standardizes processes, saving you time and money.

3.   Consistency

If a team member goes on vacation or you have staff turnover, information is often lost in the shuffle. A CRM solves this issue by hosting a central login for all staff and a standardized system for documentation, categorization, and process.

4.   Real-Time Data

Advanced CRM’s don’t only just help manage information, but import it with highly efficient software and algorithms. This can give your business cutting edge information for marketing, trends, and help aid smart business decisions.

CRM is Essential for Small Businesses

Investing in CRM software is crucial for any business, regardless of size. The insight gathered from a properly engaged CRM system can set your company up for success from the beginning by keeping a pulse on the entire life cycle of a lead – from first impression to lifelong customer.

Imagine a system in which you can segment email blasts to specific customer segments. Or knowing when a lead is most receptive to a phone call or text. Detailed patient notes are uniform, searchable, and time stamped automatically.

As a small business, CRM doesn’t just manage the customer relationships you already have, but helps your business grow. The size of your business does not affect the indispensable benefit of a CRM.

A Custom CRM System Built for You: DLM Insight

Interested in learning more about what a CRM can look like for your business? Digital Limelight Media offers a custom built CRM system called DLM Insight. Capable of integrating analytics, marketing efforts, call tracking, eblasts, customer databases, and more – the system is created to help your business grow.

A finely tuned machine, DLM Insight is a customizable CRM platform which integrates relevant business strategies for your practice. The answer is clear. But if you need more convincing, Let’s Chat.

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What is CRM?

CRM Stands for Customer Relationship Management. Most frequently it references a database software used to monitor all customer contacts. These programs can offer many different features which monitor touch points, manage messaging, and categorize interactions with customers. Large and small businesses use CRMs. Learn more about what a CRM does here [LINK CRM BLOG].

How Long Does it Take to Learn CRM?

The length of time a CRM takes to learn depends on which program you use. CRMs can range from simpler programs with a few features, to intensive databases with hundreds of functions. While the difficulty level ranges from program to program, the important thing to remember is that CRMs are formatted for ease of use and optimized for user experience. With proper training and resources, a CRM can be easy to learn.

Tips for Learning CRM

• When choosing a CRM, ensure you have access to training sessions, manuals, and customer service representatives to aid your learning process.
• Choose a CRM that suits your needs. If you choose too simple of a CRM, it won’t serve your staff and clients properly. Choose a too complex program, and your client information may be lost amongst a difficult program.
• Choose a staff member to be a resource for your office on CRM processes. This will help when questions arise.
• Make good use of training materials – there are often built in resources and help sections to a CRM program. Don’t be afraid to reach out to your assigned rep and dive into FAQs on the subject.

Who Should Learn CRM?

You may be wondering who from your team should learn the CRM system. The short answer is everyone! Ensuring the entire time is familiar with client information management ensures that if team members leave or go on vacation, a customer’s info is still accessible. Common everyday users of a CRM are: front office staff, sales people, office admin, and marketing support.

DLM Insight: A CRM from Digital Limelight Media

Did you know Digital Limelight Media (DLM) has its own customer relationship management system? DLM Insight is created for small to medium sized businesses to manage operations, intake leads, and foster committed customers. Additionally, we offer initial training sessions to get you up to speed on our CRM system and ongoing support through our Marketing Specialists.

A CRM can help your business in a myriad of ways. With a little practice, a CRM will be an easy and helpful addition to your day-to-day operations. If you’d like to learn more, let’s chat.

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Show a Chronological History of Your Relationship with Each Contact

One of the most important functions of a CRM is that it allows you to track every phone call, email, and meeting with a lead or customer without losing track of old data, deleting, or having to switch to another spreadsheet. A CRM can keep a consecutive history of your relationship with patients without sacrificing past notes or transparency. You can even log email threads to contacts without the need for tedious copy and pasting.

Keep All of Your Info in One Place

When using a CRM, all of your data will be together. One CRM can hold the content of many spreadsheets and the functionality of numerous apps. With a CRM, you will not need to search multiple spreadsheets, file folders, or email threads to find the info you need.

Proactively Remind You of Follow Ups

A CRM will remind you of who you’re supposed to call each day, when your meetings are, or what follow-ups you forgot to do the day before. In your CRM, you can also check your calendar and task report for events and to-dos. This can be very beneficial for keeping on top of tasks.

Encourage Your Team to Collaborate

Multiple users can be logged in and can have access to data, tasks, and events through a CRM. This can be helpful if your team is working on a project together since you can read each other’s notes and emails, so you are always up to date. You can also assign tasks to one another and schedule internal meetings with your CRM calendar.

Automatically Backup Your Data

Many CRM companies will automatically backup your data, which is helpful if your data is ever lost in an emergency. Most CRM companies are going to securely encrypt and store your data in multiple off-site locations so you can have peace of mind.

Have Customer Support

With a CRM, you have customer support at your fingertips! Great customer service will demo the software to your team, customize your account, talk through workflows, and show you how to pull reports, import data, and more.

Contact Us Today

At DLM, we offer a CRM to help you streamline your lead communication, without worrying about messy spreadsheets. Want to learn more? Contact us today at 616-222-3735, or schedule a 15-minute demo.

The post Why is a Customer Relationship Manager (CRM) Better than a Spreadsheet? appeared first on Digital Limelight Media.

However, many CRMs out there for medical practices fail to integrate fully into other beneficial systems, such as your EMR. Or on the other hand, not every CRM gives multiple people access to every record, which silos information and can lead to poor customer service. Here’s what a centralized CRM can do for your practice and how DLM can help get you started with our medical marketing tools.

What is a Centralized CRM?

There are many CRM tools out there, some free, some paid, some designed specifically for medical practices (such as DLM’s). The point is to store information about customers (in your case, patients) to track the history of each person who interacts with your practice. Ideally, this is from the first phone call or contact form all the way through to your EMR, where their lifetime value can be tracked and used to report on which marketing channels are the most profitable for your practice.

CRMs should also provide tools to connect with patients in a central location, rather than having to log into, for example, a separate email software to send appointment reminders or treatment specials. Ideally, these would all be plugged into a single username and password for your office staff, so they only have to remember one login and every staff member can see what every other staff member is doing. This is the power of a centralized CRM.

Benefits of Centralized CRM

A powerful and customized CRM can help your practice scale healthily while maintaining a “personal touch” experience for patients. This in turn can make patients more likely to return for additional treatments, which in turn helps inform your marketing strategy, focusing dollars and expanded advertising on the treatments or channels that bring in the most revenue. Additional benefits of a centralized experience include:

• Easier hand-off for front office employees
• Access to patients’ entire interaction history when following up
• Easy-to-access tools for sending emails, texts, and making phone calls with automated record keeping
• Real-time tracking of leads and billing requests

There’s even more to the CRM provided by DLM, which you can learn about by calling a marketing specialist or contacting us online today.

CRM Built For Medical Practices

If you’re struggling to scale your practice effectively, it might be time to re-think your internal infrastructure, especially if you’re currently using multiple platforms to accomplish similar goals. Find out if DLM’s integrated CRM is right for you and get a demo of our products by calling our office or contacting our team online today.

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The Advancement of Medical Practice Technology

In the last several years, medical marketing technology and practice management software have accelerated in their development, covering more bases than ever before and allowing practices to expand their services while maintaining their staff’s capacity. However, adopting multiple new approaches to overlapping aspects of your practice management and growth strategies has its downfall as products like DLM Insight become more flexible and comprehensive – it can be hard for different systems to talk to each other, resulting in mismanaged data and a lack of insight into what’s actually working or not working.

The right technology solutions for your medical practice, as we hope to show you in this article, don’t rely on multiple “point solutions” that address one or two aspects at a time. Instead, the right technology incorporates a holistic approach to marketing, practice operations, and data storage and management across as much of the platform as possible.

How To Find The Right Practice Management Technology

Is the Software Easy to Use?

The first question you should ask yourself as a practice owner or manager is whether the people in your office (or potential future hires) will be able to use the new technology. There are a range of intuitive styles and a limit to the number of software systems available to medical practices, not to mention the human capability of your staff at any given time.

If the new platform isn’t going to be used correctly by people who want to use it or is avoided because the “old way” is easier, it’s going to lead to a low adoption rate and even lower ROI. When you can, allow your team to access free trials or demo software before going all-in on the latest product.

Does the Technology Address Multiple Needs?

It’s rarely possible to find a healthcare technology platform that can handle everything from outbound marketing to EMR transfers, but limiting the number of point solutions can help your team learn the technology that matters more efficiently.

This also helps lower costs, as an expanded single piece of technology can often cost less than trying to piecemeal multiple services to cover the necessary processes.

Does the Technology Simplify Office Processes?

Or, asked another way, does the new product streamline your processes? When finding the answer to this question, it’s helpful to have your staff weigh in—after all, they’re going to be the ones completing the processes day in and day out and comparing it mentally to the old way.

For example, if you’re using a one-off service to provide your staff the ability to chat with patients who are visiting your website online, it might be worth asking if your staff prefers having that tool separate than say, your email marketing platform, which could also be different than your practice’s CRM.

With a tool like DLM Insight, these distinct features all reside under one login. With a CRM tied to your unique EMR database, Iris Text AI empowering real-time or after-hours automated texting, and email marketing tools all rolled into a single platform, your team won’t have to remember multiple passwords and your leads will be fully streamlined so you know exactly where they came from and how much they may or may not have spent at your practice.

Does the Technology Integrate With Must-Have Systems?

Some medical practice technologies don’t “speak” to others, whether due to the competitive nature of the market or for lack of robust development. You know your practice’s must-have systems, usually EMR database tools or other HIPAA-compliant softwares, and with the latest developments in all-in-one offerings, you no longer have to silo these technologies from things like your marketing database.

DLM offers integrations that are HIPAA-compliant with the most popular EMRs in the country to help you make data-informed decisions from end-to-end lead tracking and reporting to help your practice grow and increase your marketing ROI.

Does the Software Collect and Report Accurate and Relevant Information?

This leads us to the last point. Real-time reporting on ROI, lead generation, SEO, website performance, and many other metrics are critical in the highly volatile and competitive healthcare industry. With DLM Insight, our reporting tools allow you to set and track your practice’s established key performance indicators, or recommend our own based on performance in your industry or region.

All-In-One Medical Practice Marketing Technology

As medical marketing experts, we know first-hand how valuable an integrated tool like DLM Insight can have for our clients. Whether you need the full suite of available tools or want to start with an updated website and see what can help you grow from there, our marketing specialists are happy to talk to you about your goals and current issues with your practice technology. Feel free to call our office at 616-222-3735 or contact us at info@dlmconversion.com today to learn more.

The post Why An All-In-One Platform Is Essential For Healthcare Practice Growth appeared first on Digital Limelight Media.

Customer Analytics

The basis for any business decision is gathering relevant data. Although this can seem overwhelming, a CRM can do it all for you. CRMs can compile information on any given customer for things like leads, browsing metrics, demographic information, purchase records, and contact forms so you can have a more complete picture of your customer and whether your campaigns have been effective in attracting the right customer base. CRMs can also help inform future campaigns by helping you choose customers most likely to respond based on different metrics.

EMR Integration

Electronic medical record (EMR) management is likely already a huge part of your practice. By connecting your EMR with customer relationship management software, you can get a full picture of your customers’ entire conversion pathway and automate the intake experience with a secure, HIPAA-compliant process (saving your team time). You can also interact electronically with customers with SMS and email, track calls, and much more. The best part is, you can match EMR data against leads to make targeted decisions about your ROI with real-time data.

Automated Reporting

Making the right decisions for your practice shouldn’t involve wasting time digging through data. CRMs can generate reports for you on many different topics like lead response times, campaigns, conversions, customer analytics, email and SMS drip automations, and key performance indicators (KPIs). If you’ve integrated a conversational AI with your website, you can even receive daily reporting on performance and new inbound leads.

Internal Communications

Successfully communicating as a team can be one of the best ways to optimize conversions by collaborating on your approach to each patient. With a CRM, your team can track their interactions with potential and existing patients so they can present an organized and consistent approach. You can even track customer outreach attempts and help your team focus their efforts on customers most likely to convert.

Let’s Get In Touch

At DLM, our comprehensive CRM suite, DLM Insight, offers everything your practice needs to reach your customer base, manage existing patients, and provide information you need to make smart decisions. To learn more about how Insight can transform your business, give us a call at (616) 222-3735 or fill out our online contact form.

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