A Company’s website is not often looked at when implementing a CRM solution or CRM processes, but it represents a major facet of the relationship that a company has with its customers. The website is the public face of every company, and represents a major entry point to customer communications and relationships. Yet the corporate website is often seen as separate entities from CRM, or at most, a gateway into CRM touch points (e.g. lead forms, support portals, etc.).
Yet the corporate website represents a major opportunity for companies to build those all-important customer relationships, and to gather information and behavioral patterns about their customers. How many companies, for example, prioritize their leads based on website activity? How many track what areas of interest on the corporate website a lead has visited and use that to shape their sales strategy to that customer? While it is not without its challenges, using website analytics to shape sales processes leads to more effective salespeople and in the end results in better qualified prospects and increased sales. Several companies offer these types of solutions, whether independently or integrated with a CRM such as Salesforce.com, but these tend to be expensive offerings that end up being geared to the high-end market, leaving the SMBs behind.
In any conversation on the future of CRM, it is tempting to get caught up in the hype of social media such as Twitter, Facebook, etc. While the reaching out of the corporate ecosystem into the world of social media is a critical development path for CRM, the internal ecosystem of the website should not be ignored or left behind. It is an element of CRM that remains relatively untouched, yet it is the most common interaction point for many leads and customers.
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