[Infographics] 6 New Year's resolutions every business should make

When you enter the new year, you're probably thinking about your New Year's resolutions. Businesses also want to have New Year's resolutions to kick off the new year. In December and January, we made a series about New Year's resolutions every business should make. 

Introduction: Digital transformation

2020 wasn't an easy year for every business. Many companies were forced to go into a digital transformation or to accelerate their digital transformation. 

Advantages of digital transformation:

• Data-driven customer insights
• An overall better customer experience
• Increased profits
• Increased agility

Disadvantages of digital transformation:

• It takes time to implement new technologies.
• It's a never-ending change. Digital transformation must be an ongoing process.
• It can cause stress for your employees. Make sure you train your employees in a personalized way during this process.

Stop using your non-user friendly CRM

User-friendliness is an essential requirement for every business when they're deciding which CRM they're going to use. But we often hear from our clients that their commercial departments (marketing, sales and service) are not using their CRM because it's too difficult to use. This is unfortunate, because a CRM solution is a must have to unify your marketing, sales and service departments. 

Our recommendation is to stop using a non-user friendly CRM, because your business is losing opportunities or revenue and not reaching their goals in the upcoming 3 years. But most importantly, your sales leaders and marketeers are not using a centralized overview of the customer data. 

Download our free HubSpot CRM Suite one-pager

Enable your teams to align more

Many companies are still struggling to align the marketing and sales departments. Even if they have already adopted new customer journeys. Why? The sales department is working on their CRM system, while the marketing department is using a marketing automation tool, without any integration.

Attract or retarget more visitors to your website

Most companies have already a website, but they're struggling with attracting or retargeting visitors to their website.

It takes 0,05 seconds for visitors to have an opinion about your website, so it's crucial you give a good expression to your visitors. 

There are a lot of things you can do to increase your website traffic. The key is to create a personalized website.

Improve the overall customer experience

It's crucial you know the latest trends and statistics about customer experience, so you can quickly adapt your strategy to the latest insights and create the best customer experience in 2021. 

According to HubSpot, your marketing, sales and service departments have different insights about the customer experience. Your marketing team is more focused on customer acquisition and your sales team have more insights into the early stages of the customer relationship and your service team. It's important that your service team knows what your marketing & sales team is communicating. In this way, you can actually align with your customer's expectations. 

Start with remote selling

The current pandemic forced a lot of companies to move towards virtual selling. The way companies sell now looks very different than how it used to be. This corona situation will come to an end, but we're convinced that the sales model will look different after COVID-19. It's important that you consider starting with remote selling. 

Benefits of remote selling:

• Reduced costs associated with in-person meetings
• Fewer hours spent in public transport or in the car; your sales reps have more time to conduct virtual meetings. Your sales reps become more productive and efficient. 
• Reductions in the amount of office space
• Possibility to include key leaders in a virtual meetings; this can lead to quicker decision-making and a more efficient process overall
• You can still offer a personalized experience; creative introduction of your team, a deeper look into your products and/or services or a virtual tour of your facility

Deliver a personalized service experience

In 2021, you should improve your customer service experience. Why? Because consumers have higher customer service expectations than one year ago.

Some companies put marketing and sales before service, but it's wrong to think like this. Your customer service team should be just as important - if not more important - than your marketing and sales teams. 

Here are successful ways you can deliver a more personalized experience to your customer:

• Address customers by their name. Make sure your service team knows to which person they're speaking to, across different channels.
• Recognize & reward their loyalty. 
• Offer several customer service channels; e-mail, telephone, Facebook Messenger, Twitter, live chat on your website, etc.
• Use your customer data. Consumers are more likely to buy something when your system recognizes their name, recommendations based on previous purchases, purchase history, etc.
• Train your customer service agents. Use a personal tone when it's appropriate to do this.