“Relationships are hard” was probably the thought lingering in your head after your first middle school breakup. Now that you are older, the same thought may pop into your head when trying to build and maintain relationships with customers.

Luckily, nowadays, most businesses can afford access to customer relationship management (CRM) software and, more importantly, create CRM workflows!

These workflows ease and automate a range of customer support tasks, account management tasks, sales tasks, and even tasks done by marketing teams, thus allowing employees to be more productive and put their brains and effort into tasks other than repetitive ones.

In this article, we will dig deep into what CRM workflows are and the benefits of implementing a CRM workflow management tool to give your business and teams the competitive edge they need to win customers and work at their best.

So, if you have an appetite for learning more, keep on reading!

What is a CRM workflow?

A CRM workflow is an option that you may choose when using a customer relationship management system to help you complete a business process. Using a CRM system allows you to automate processes, which may enhance your workplace's efficiency in completing tasks. When using a workflow, you can set an action to trigger another task. For example, you may enable an automatic email to be sent to a customer after they sign up for your company's email list.

Read More: How to Use CRM for Lead Management OAS36TY

Why might you use a CRM workflow?

Here are some reasons you might use a CRM workflow:

• Boost efficiency: By automating common business processes, you may boost your workplace's efficiency and complete tasks more quickly. This may also enhance productivity since you may finish a higher number of tasks throughout the day using a CRM workflow.
• Enhance customer interactions: By using automated messages to communicate with customers, you may engage with a higher number of customers and encourage them to interact with your workplace.
• Keep track of files: You can program your workflow to keep track of digital files and transactions, which may lower the chance of losing important information. You may also set your workflow up to store important documents in separate files based on the file's content.

What is workflow management in CRM?

A CRM workflow is a series of steps within a CRM system or a business management platform that you can automate, rather than having to complete manually., Since each step is triggered by the previous one, the system can autonomously perform specific tasks and activities.

How to create a CRM workflow

While the specific steps to create a workflow may vary depending on the type of CRM system that you have, most systems follow a basic step of steps to develop a new workflow. These basic steps include:

1. Access your CRM's sitemap

Your CRM's sitemap provides an outline of the CRM's functions, settings and navigation. To access your sitemap, open your CRM system. Typically, the sitemap is the first window to appear.

2. Find the process centre

In your sitemap, click on the "Settings" option. This option provides you with an overview of all your CRM settings. In this window, find the "Process Center" option. Typically, this option is at the top of the screen. After selecting this option, choose the "Processes" option, then select "New." This allows you to create a new workflow.

3. Input the process name

After selecting the "New" option, a pop-up window appears that prompts you to input information about your new workflow. In the "Process Name" field, type the name of your workflow. Typically, the name may align with the workflow's purpose or benefits. For example, if you're creating a workflow to automate a sales process, you might name it "Sales Process Automation."

If your workplace has several departments that use the same CRM system, consider including the name of your department in the process name. This may lower the chance that a different department uses your workflow process to complete a similar task. For example, if the marketing department and sales department both use a workflow to perform email marketing, they must use the workflow that's specific to their department.

4. Select a category and entity

Next, you can select the category and entity of the process. Most CRMs provide you with a drop-down menu with several options. In the "Category" box, select the "Workflow" option to establish that you are creating a new workflow. In the "Entity" box, select the information that the workflow may work with primarily. For example, if you plan to use the workflow to automate account management, then you may choose the "account" option from the menu.

5. Decide if you want to run the workflow in the background

At the bottom of the window, you can decide if you want the workflow to operate as a real-time or background process. Real-time workflows operate as soon as a trigger takes place. Background workflows wait until the user refreshes the page to respond to a trigger. If you want to run the workflow in the background, select "Yes." If you don't select this option, the process runs in real time.

6. Select the trigger that starts the process

On the pop-up screen, you find the "Start when" option that allows you to decide when the workflow begins an automated process. You can determine what the record is, like if it's a sales lead, new client account or employee account. Then, you can select how the CRM responds to the record. Most CRMs provide you with several options that you can choose from, which include:

• Record creation: The workflow may respond when a user creates a new record. For example, if the record refers to a new client account, then the workflow may identify when a user creates a new client account and responds using the workflow steps, like sending a welcome email and offering new customer discounts.
• Record status changes: If the workflow identifies a change in a record's status, it may respond accordingly. For example, if an employee's performance drops, the workflow may send an automated email to notify the employee of their performance issue.
• Record deletion: If a user deletes a record, the workflow may address the deletion using the proper steps. For example, if a user unsubscribes from a company's email newsletter, the workflow may send them an email asking them why they unsubscribed.

7. Decide on the workflow's steps

Once a trigger takes place, you can determine how the workflow responds. To do so, set the workflow's steps by selecting the "Add step" option. This allows you to add a step to the workflow process. Decide on the step that you want to add, then input it into the empty field. Try to decide on steps by considering "if" and "then" options.

For example, if an employee deletes archived information, then you may have the workflow send them an email checking to see if they want to recover the information. After creating a step, select the "Insert step" option. If you decide you don't want to include a step, you can select the "Delete Step" option. Include as many steps as you may need until you complete the desired business process.

8. Save and activate the workflow

To complete your workflow process, hit the "Save" option. Then, look for the button that says "Activate." Typically, this button is in the bottom left corner of the pop-up window. If you have a real-time workflow, then your process begins immediately. If you have a background workflow, then the process begins after you refresh the page.

7 Ways CRM Software Helps You Manage Tasks & Workflow

‘Workflow’ is a term that is quite common in business circles. It encompasses a series of steps that can help accomplish certain goals. 

While this knowledge is pretty common, what most people lack is an understanding of how to create and manage a custom workflow for their business.

To have a consolidated strategy of how to go about various business processes, you need to have the right tech stack. This is why every business requires a CRM software workflow management system.

A productive workflow can act as a strong foundation for your business endeavors. Things are less likely to go south when you improve your business processes with workflow management.

You can schedule tasks based on triggers, notify team member about upcoming activities, manage your subscribers and keep track of your progress. All of this can be made possible with CRM workflow automation.

In this blog, we uncover the best practices for leveraging CRM systems for workflow management and list the most valuable features to look for in a CRM tool.

Benefits of CRM  

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools have significantly evolved in recent years. From being simple contact management software for small businesses, they have now transformed into much more advanced and comprehensive solutions for businesses.

Before we delve into how to use CRM for your task and workflow management, you need to understand all how CRM can benefit your business.

Contact Data and File Management:

With CRM, you can learn about the likes and dislikes of your customers. This can help you optimize your services accordingly. You can create contact profiles with custom fields to include relevant information such as company name, job title, address, social media accounts, last touches, etc.

CRM also allows you to store files against separate contact records, so you can easily access them when needed.

Lead Generation:

CRM can help you make more sales by allowing you to capture quality leads and reach out to them effectively. The benefits of CRM for sales managers is that it can help assign leads to team members and ensure that no promising prospect goes unnoticed.

Increased Customer Satisfaction:

Along with personalizing interactions, CRM with workflow automation can also help you respond to customers quickly. This can result in increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.

When your customers feel heard, they are more likely to make repeat purchases. Therefore, focusing on customer retention should be a top priority for your organization.

Analytics:

You can use CRM analytics to find out how well your efforts are doing. The reporting and analytics feature of CRM can help you track any metric of your interest.

You can keep a tab on your team members’ performance, find out how close you are to meeting your targets, or find any bottlenecks in your processes with the help of a CRM system.

Remote Access:

Another significant advantage of CRM is its remote access. All your team members can stay updated with upcoming tasks, customer data, and other critical information with a mobile CRM tool. This can drive productivity and help you deliver better service to your customers.

More Info: What are Workflow Automation Tools and Software?

How Does a CRM System Work?

An efficient CRM solution can accomplish a lot for your business. CRM has several advanced features that can strengthen the workflow of your business and help you achieve better results.

By optimizing the following key aspects, CRM can bring consistency to your business:

Contact Management:

CRM provides centralized access to all essential contact data. You can access this information to improve your customer experience. Keeping track of all previous transactions and interactions becomes easier with all the emails, calls, invoices, etc., logged in one place.

What is CRM Workflow Automation?

So far, we have covered the theoretical aspect of CRM workflows, but there is one more thing we have to address before getting into any technical steps or explanations, and that is CRM workflow automation.

With CRM workflow automation, you can partially or fully automate processes or workflow parts in line with pre-defined workflow rules. This has been proven to be beneficial for boosting productivity and efficiency as well as reducing the amount of human input necessary to complete processes.

Good examples of CRM workflow automation can be seen in the automation of sales processes, which typically consist of several tasks ranging from lead generation to creating customer profiles and voicing customer needs, as well as the occasional customer complaint to other members of your sales team.

When enhanced with CRM workflow automation, the sales process can go from being hectic to having a trigger-based structure such as the one described below:

1. A potential customer contacts your business by filling out a form
2. Your CRM software sends out communication to this individual
3. In case no reply is received, the CRM software will send a follow-up
4. In case a reply is received, the CRM software will proceed with lead scoring and then notify the appropriate team about the potential lead.

When to use workflow automation

Now you might be thinking, “Great! So, I should use workflow automation whenever the chance, right?”

The answer is, that it depends because not all processes are the same. You’ll have to assess which processes and teams could benefit from automating workflows and which won’t.

Workflow automation only works on mature business processes, not those that are inefficient or wasteful. If applied where a business process is not optimized, this approach might do more harm than good.

So, before diving headfirst into workflow automation, make sure it’s the right decision. If yes, you will have nearly unlimited ways at your disposal to create and customize automated CRM workflows!

The Benefits of CRM Workflow Automation

Boosting productivity as well as efficiency and reducing the use of human resources, we have already established these as the main benefits of CRM workflow automation. But are there more? Yes, plenty more!

• Less human error: CRM workflow automation can almost completely eradicate errors made by humans when completing repetitive tasks and activities. These errors can range from minor transcription errors to forgetting to reach out to a customer
• Greater productivity: Repetitive tasks are not only error-prone but can also hinder productivity. With CRM workflow automation, you can take repetitive tasks off your hands to give you the time and energy to focus on more critical, thought-provoking, and or creative activities
• More transparency and accountability: Within big teams or even medium-sized teams that are juggling a lot of tasks, it can become a challenge to keep track of task completion as well as individual team member performance. With the help of CRM workflow automation tools, managers and supervisors can provide a transparent overview of all tasks, and team members will benefit from automated notifications, reminders, and triggers to keep them up-to-date with their tasks and create an environment that supports optimal performance
• Better customer communication and engagement: Keeping a good line of communication with customers can be tricky, especially when managing numerous accounts at once. CRM workflow automation can help you engage with them automatically, at the right moment, and at every step of the customer journey
• More work satisfaction: It goes without saying that team members and employees are much more satisfied when there are fewer mundane and repetitive tasks on their plate. Give your team the gift of time to allow them to work on the more important and creative part of their jobs
• Lower costs: CRM workflow automation can also help cut costs by reducing inefficiencies and allowing companies to reallocate funds into product development, marketing campaigns, and so on
• More scalability: CRM workflow automation allows you to create consistent processes and allow you to focus on reaching more customers and focus on growing your business

Now that we have touched upon the most important ins and outs of CRM workflows, it’s time to go through the steps necessary to create them.

1. Decide which CRM processes need workflow automation and begin planning your ideal workflow

As mentioned earlier, not all processes are automation-worthy, so the first step in your CRM workflow creation process is to decide which ones you want to automate. As a rule of thumb, try to avoid automating processes that require human input to a considerable extent, as automation is more suited for repetitive tasks done earlier in the funnel (sales funnel, marketing funnel, etc.)

To help you out with making this decision, here is a list of a few automation-worthy processes you might want to keep in mind:

• Lead generation and qualification
• Contact generation and management
• Customer onboarding & customer journey
• Customer lifecycle management
• Deal management
• Email marketing
• Outbound sales
• And more

Once you’ve determined what processes you’d like to automate, then it’s time to plan your workflow to determine any potential blockers and ensure all steps are covered. You can use Oas36ty’s Whiteboard feature to create your workflow diagram from scratch or use the CRM Template by Oas36ty to help you map out your processes.

2. Build and customize your CRM

Before you get to implementing your CRM workflow, you have to select a CRM tool that can facilitate that and meet your business needs. If you fail to do so, you will not achieve the level of efficiency and productivity you were aiming for.

Our recommendation for all of you who want to build the perfect CRM is Oas36ty—a powerful productivity platform and all-in-one free project management software program. Oas36ty offers hundreds of advanced features and a fully customizable platform.

This gives teams of all sizes across industries the flexibility they need to configure Oas36ty to fit their needs. And that includes building an effective customer relationship management process.

To build your own CRM in Oas36ty, simply choose the custom view of your choice, from List, Kanban, Table view, or other custom views in Oas36ty. Then create tasks for each of your prospective and current customers, add Custom Fields to add important details about each customer, and Custom Statuses to organize and keep track of your customers’ journeys.

Once you start using Oas36ty for CRM project management, organizing and cultivating customer relationships will become easier than ever. More importantly, as your business grows and develops new needs, you’ll be able to adjust Oas36ty to fit your growing needs. No need to start over again and never lose client information again!

3. Set up your workflow automation to cut down your most frequent manual tasks

You’ve got the plan, and you’ve got the tool. Now it’s time to set up your custom workflows.

This process will differ from tool to tool. While we can’t cover everything that might be included in each instruction set, here’s a list of the most common steps that need to be completed:

• Creating tasks
• Building automation
• Setting up alerts and notifications

Out of the tasks listed, building automation is the most important step, that’s why it should be done using a tool that makes automating routine tasks easy.

Oas36ty comes with an automation feature that can set manual work on auto-pilot and thus help create a seamless CRM workflow. With Oas36ty, automation can be set up using custom actions and triggers.

You have the option to create your custom automation or use customizable automation templates consisting of pre-set triggers and actions that can be applied to any Space, Folder, or List to save time!

All in all, implementing a workflow in most advanced CRM workflow tools shouldn’t take more than a few minutes and a few steps. And in case you end up not being satisfied with the result, no worries, as everything is flexible and can be adjusted as needed.

4. Test the workflows first to avoid chaos

The only way to get an accurate answer to this question is to run tests! Once you have your CRM workflow in place, run it to determine any flaws and how effective each automation is.

Otherwise, you run the risk of unhelpful automation and confusion across your team.

Read More: Oas36ty will Provide Bulk Emailing Services

Test the emails sent by your CRM workflow

Within your CRM workflow, emails are bound to take on an important role as they are a crucial part of CRM itself. By using ClickUp as your project management and CRM tool, you’ll be able to send and receive emails directly from ClickUp tasks by using the Email Oas36ty feature.

But before you send emails, make sure you test your emails with tools like Mail Trap—an email delivery platform that lets users test, send and control their emails.

With Mail Trap’s Email Testing, you can preview emails, analyze their content for spam, validate their HTML/CSS, and do much more. On top of that, as Mail trap Email Testing works on the principle of using virtual inboxes, it creates a safe environment that comes with no risk of spamming users with testing emails.

To start testing your CRM workflow emails with Mail trap Email Testing, you simply have to create a Mail trap account and use the dedicated email address of your virtual inbox as the recipient address.

CRM Workflow Best Practices to Keep in Mind

Great CRM workflows are not a product of just copying and pasting. Instead, for their creation, you need an approach unique to your business and adherence to best practices.

Below, we have outlined a few of those best practices we believe will make the whole process a bit less daunting and increase the chances of your CRM workflow being easy to use, time-saving, and a tool for making you more money.

Know what to look for in a CRM tool

We talked about the selection of CRM tools in the “How to create a CRM workflow” section of this article, so by now, you should be aware of how important picking the right tool is.

But as we do understand that knowing what to look for in a CRM tool could be a challenge for many, given all the available options, we have compiled a list of CRM tool features that facilitate the creation of good workflows:

• Ease of use: Intuitive and require little to no technical knowledge
• Accessibility: Accessible from different devices
• Customizability: Can be tailored to fit specific business needs
• Flexibility: Ability to adapt and change to meet business needs
• Scalability: Allows you to grow create and run consistent processes
• Integration: Can be connected to other work tools for a seamless experience
• Custom automation: Gives you the power to create custom automation that fits any use case
• Support and training: Provides customer support and training resources

Of course, you can add other things to the list of features above and make it as comprehensive as necessary to aid you in your quest for efficient CRM solutions.

Remember, there are endless options on the market, and if you are clear on what you need, you should have an easy time filtering the good ones from the bad.

More Info: What Is a Performance Appraisal? Meaning, Advantages, Objectives & Benefits

FAQ’s

What is workflow management in CRM?

A CRM workflow is a series of steps within a CRM system or a business management platform that you can automate, rather than having to complete manually., Since each step is triggered by the previous one, the system can autonomously perform specific tasks and activities.

What is CRM process management?

The CRM process is a strategy for keeping every customer interaction personalized and meaningful that consists of five main steps. A customer relationship management system (CRM system) provides the data and functionalities your team needs to execute this strategy—and ultimately turn leads into customers.

What is a workflow rule in a CRM?

Workflow Rules are a set of actions (email notifications, tasks and field updates) that are executed when certain specified conditions are met. These rules automate the process of sending email notifications, assigning tasks and updating certain fields of a record when a rule is triggered.

What are types of workflow management?

The four major types of workflow management are sequential, state-machine, rules-driven and parallel. Sequential workflows must be completed in order; one step cannot begin until the previous step is completed.

What is a CRM tool?

What are customer relationship management tools? CRM tools support marketing, sales, and customer service functions and processes for your business. The purpose of your CRM tool is to organize, record, and enable action with customer data and help track and advance customers along every stage of the buying journey.

What are the 4 stages of CRM?

The customer life cycle in CRM is a process that involves identifying, acquiring, and retaining customers through strategic marketing campaigns. The 4 stage customer life cycle consists of four stages: acquisition, conversion, retention, and loyalty.

What are workflow steps?

Building a workflow comes down to 5 stages:

• Identify the tasks that need to be done.
• Determine who's accountable for those tasks.
• Organize the tasks into a sequence.
• Test the workflow.
• Review and repeat.

What is a CRM flow?

WHAT IS CRM FLOW? CRM BUSINESS WORKFLOW. Finding a lead — your customer — is just the first step. Project creation, deployment, and billing come next. Finally, gain your customer's loyalty through excellent customer support.

How is workflow managed?

Workflow management refers to the identification, organization, and coordination of a particular set of tasks that produce a specific outcome. Workflow management is all about optimizing, improving, and automating workflows wherever possible to increase output, eliminate repetition, and reduce errors.

What is CRM workflow automation?

With CRM workflow automation, you can partially or fully automate processes or workflow parts in line with pre-defined workflow rules. This has been proven to be beneficial for boosting productivity and efficiency as well as reducing the amount of human input necessary to complete processes.

What are workflow tools?

A workflow management tool maps out the tasks in the process. The tasks along with their dependencies and sequence of execution are mapped using workflow diagrams or flow charts. These flow diagrams help identify the bottlenecks in the process and find areas of improvement.

What is work workflow management?

Workflow management is the discipline of creating, documenting, monitoring and improving upon the series of steps, or workflow, required to complete a specific task. The goal of workflow management is to optimize workflow to ensure a task is completed correctly, consistently and efficiently.

What are 3 basic workflow management practices?

Process mapping, task management, and performance tracking are three basic workflow management practices.

What is workflow management in Salesforce?

Workflow is a Salesforce platform business logic engine that allows defining rules to automate certain actions when particular criteria are met.

What is workflow management in HR?

Human Resource workflows are the series of steps to complete anticipated and repetitive tasks. Every HR department in an organization needs to maintain a robust employee-centric process as it has a huge impact on the organization's bottom line.