CRM stands for “customer relationship management.” It refers to software that helps you track and organize interactions with customers. A CRM can also store valuable customer data for you: how long a customer has been frequenting your store, notes from the sales staff, what they’ve bought from you in the past, and more. You can use this information to make your sales more enticing and provide a better customer experience.

A CRM designed specifically for pool and spa businesses like yours can be even more useful. RB has been in the pool and spa industry for decades, so we know exactly what retailers like you need from your business management software. Keep reading to learn more about the benefits of a CRM in retail for pool and spa businesses.

Benefits of a CRM in Retail for Pool and Spa Businesses

Sales Growth

A CRM can help you build a sales pipeline, automate tasks and analyze data to streamline your sales process. Streamlining your sales process can make it easier for employees to, for example, upsell customers and increase sales and productivity. By establishing a repeatable sales process your employees can rely on every time, you create the opportunity to improve on it over time to grow your sales.

Higher Customer Retention

Retaining customers and promoting customer loyalty is vital — repeat customers often make up a high percentage of sales in retail. The loss of repeat customers can disrupt cash flow and diminish revenue. A CRM makes it easier for employees to provide customers with fast, efficient, and effective service. RB’s CRM tracks customer behavior to determine which customers are loyal, which are at risk, and how to adjust your marketing and advertising accordingly.

Single Source of Truth

A CRM also provides you with a centralized database of information about your customers, which is easily accessible to your employees right when they need it. RB’s CRM, for example, helps you build upon your mailing and email lists by tracking all sales and customers, categorizing customers through user-defined fields to create more targeted advertising campaigns, and distributing personalized maintenance calendars and chemical tip sheets to customers to keep them engaged and entice them back to your store. This saves time often wasted digging through files and offers a better experience for the customer.

Better Customer Service

The main benefit of a CRM is to improve your relationships with your customers. By managing your contacts and storing important information like purchase records, previous interactions, and demographics, the CRM makes critical information easily accessible to all of your employees. This way, your employees have everything they need at a moment’s notice to provide a better customer experience and boost customer satisfaction.

Improved Customer Segmentation

Manually managing a list of contacts can be overwhelming and time-consuming. A good CRM will help you automatically segment your contact lists based on criteria you choose. You can sort contacts by location, gender, age, buyer stage and more. This can be especially useful for developing more targeted and effective marketing campaigns.

More Accurate Sales Forecasting

Reviewing past performance and planning for the future is integral to any retail business, but especially for pool and spa businesses currently coping with chemical and supply shortages. With a CRM’s sales reports, you can observe trends to get an idea of what to expect from future sales performance and adjust your goals in line with forecasting.

Heightened Productivity and Efficiency

RB’s CRM uses automation, which makes basic tasks like drip campaigns easier and frees up employee time to focus on the work that only they can do. It can also prevent tasks from slipping through the cracks, like sending customer follow-ups — with our CRM, you can create timely follow-ups with customers to strengthen relationships and track the sales process.

Streamlined Internal Communications

A good CRM makes it easier for employees to communicate with each other through notes or alerts within one system. RB’s CRM allows employees to inform customers about outstanding balances, available in-store credit, open quotes, and open transactions (and with RB Online Bill pay, they can conveniently pay invoices online.) They can also attach pictures and files to specific customers and organize all of the customers’ unique equipment data and serial numbers in one place.

Managed Communications with Leads

Lead nurturing can be a complicated process, and many pool and spa retailers don’t feel they have time to follow the many steps and opportunities to communicate. RB’s CRM can help manage that process by auto-sending alerts to employees when they should reach out to prospects and help them create follow-ups.

Drive Growth and Efficiency Using the Benefits of a CRM in Retail

The right pool and spa CRM will improve efficiency in several ways. With more streamlined communications between customers and employees, customers enjoy a better experience and employees uncover new opportunities to drive revenue. Schedule a demo today to see how you can begin reaping the benefits of a CRM in retail with RB’s pool and spa business software.

RB’s business software is specifically designed to position pool service businesses for growth. To discover how to grow your pool service business with our 5-star rated software, contact us to schedule a demo.