Customer relationship management, or CRM, is just as important now as ever before, especially in the world of senior living. After all, your employees’ interactions with prospects are what your entire senior living community is based on.
But getting all of your employees to use your CRM isn’t always that easy.
Perhaps your employees don’t feel that it’s worth it to fully adopt your CRM initiative. Maybe they are resistant to using new technologies. Or maybe they just don’t know how. Whatever the case may be, here are five ways to increase CRM adoption among your employees.
Explain the personal job benefits
All too often, companies explain the benefits CRM will have for the company, but don’t take the time to bring it down to the individual level. The problem is that most people don’t want to adopt new procedures unless there’s something in it for them.
CRM automates and synchronizes sales, customer service, and other parts of your business. This makes everyone’s job easier. Show your employees how this works, and they will want to start using the software.
Offer rewards
If personal benefits aren’t enough to motivate your employees to adopt new CRM measures, offer rewards to those who do. Give out gift cards, bonuses, or other rewards to top adopters as a form of encouragement.
Just be sure to offer proper training to anyone who is having trouble. Seeing everyone else getting rewards can be frustrating for employees who want to learn but aren’t sure how.
Start slow
When you’re looking to make big changes, it’s tempting to want to see results as quickly as possible. But CRM is all about people, and those people are naturally going to have different rates of adoption.
Try a gradual rollout, where you introduce new procedures bit by bit. This will allow everyone to get used to the new system without getting overwhelmed, and it will give slower adopters time to catch up.
Communicate
There’s an old adage that says “the key to any good relationship is communication.” This goes for employee relationships, too. If your employees feel that you are simply telling them to adopt new CRM procedures without communicating with them about their concerns, they won’t want to do it.
Get your employees’ input and make sure they understand why CRM is important, as well as a timeline of the projected steps and goals you expect to achieve.
Make adjustments when needed
Most likely, your new CRM plans are not going to be perfect the very first time you try to implement them. It’s going to take some time and practice.
Your employees may be the first to notice problems, so listen to their critiques and make adjustments when needed. Articulate your goals and perform frequent audits to make sure you are hitting those goals. If you aren’t, figure out why and tweak the system until it works.
As with any new business practice, CRM can have some growing pains. But encouraging overall employee adoption doesn’t have to be difficult. It just takes some flexibility, education, and patience.
