3 Ways to Prepare Your CRM for Your Busiest Season

In every industry, there are key events - moments of high traffic that are critically important to the success of your business that require reliable CRM support. For travel and hospitality industries, this could be the sharp increase of travelers in summer. Other key events could be the flurry of tax season for financial services, or the rush of open enrollment for healthcare providers. And let's not forget that online holiday shopping can make or break revenue goals for retailers.

During these key events, businesses see a surge in online customer activity. For example, global online sales reached $1.17 trillion during the 2023 holiday season in November and December. This emphasizes the importance of having the right technology to support high demand, as customers expect clear communication, personalized interactions, and seamless experiences.

When your critical business processes run on CRM technology, you need to be confident that those solutions are going to run at peak performance when you need them. If you don't plan and prepare for these moments, you could overlook a critical risk.

Follow these best practices so that when your key event arrives, your CRM platform and teams are prepared to navigate through it seamlessly.

1. Define your business goals

No one knows your business better than you. So be sure to define what you want your key event to achieve. Are you trying to drive revenue during a 24-hour sale? Or do you want to help as many new patients as possible during open enrollment? It's important to align on clear goals to prevent conflicting priorities and reinforce your team's commitment to success.

Next, set targets. Perhaps you want to grow revenue by $15 million or increase sign-ups by 10,000 users. Whatever your goal might be, setting clear, realistic benchmarks will help you stay on track, measure progress, and pivot as needed.

Once you've set your success metrics, map out your customer ‌journey. Think about every step of your customers' online experience, from the initial touch points to the final steps. Review how past key events performed on your current system and look for areas of improvement.

Ask yourself: Did customers have any trouble adding items to their cart or checking out? Did customer information display correctly when they were enrolling in their health insurance plan? Create a personalized, streamlined digital experience that meets your customers' needs and exceeds their expectations. A personalized experience will contribute to your customers' satisfaction and loyalty.

Now that you've got the foundation covered, plan and prepare for a flawless key event.

2. Prepare proactively

As businesses prepare for key events, it's common to overlook technical debt, which can slow down your system, make it less efficient, and cause performance problems. Technical debt can accumulate when you prioritize short-term gains over long-term stability. It's important to find these problems early so you can plan how you'll handle them.

A Technical Health Review can help you prepare for your key events by taking a holistic look at your solution, performance, and scalability. Think of the review as a comprehensive check-up to make sure your platform is running smoothly and to identify any potential problems before they become issues.

A well-prepared CRM platform is important, but you also need to proactively prepare your team. Make sure they're well-trained to use the system so they can use it effectively during a high-traffic period. Online learning platforms, like Trailhead, can be a helpful resource to get your teams up to speed on the skills and product features they need.

Create a playbook to help you keep track of the steps leading up to the event, including dedicated capacity testing phases and success metrics. Include a monitoring plan with key indicators to watch out for during the event. After the event, the playbook will help you highlight successes and identify areas for future improvement, such as implementing an AI-powered chatbot.

3. Optimize your solution

Once you know what you want to achieve and have your plan in place, it's time to make sure everything is ready to go.

Identifying technical debt is important, but cleaning it up is essential. Cleaning up technical debt refers to the process of addressing and resolving any technical issues or shortcomings within your platform. This can include fixing bugs or improving code quality. For example, a website built quickly with shortcuts can be improved by refactoring the code. This makes the website easier to use. It also makes it easier to maintain and update the website in the future.

It's also important to understand and predict your capacity needs for high-traffic volume. Review your system architecture for capacity and analyze historical data and usage patterns to forecast the expected increase in traffic. Then, ensure your CRM system has the necessary resources and design, like server capacity, to handle the anticipated load.

Finally, test, test, and test again. In the lead-up to your key event, conduct comprehensive performance and load testing under simulated conditions. This testing should include various scenarios and use cases to ensure your CRM platform can support different types of interactions and workloads effectively.

Get ahead of your key events with the right CRM support

When you know your business goals, analyze your CRM health, and test your system, you can optimize your CRM solution to support high-traffic periods. This will prepare your platform and teams for your key events to run with minimal disruptions and maximum customer satisfaction. For the most personalized, proactive support, consider the Signature Success Plan. You'll be able to plan your major events with confidence with a dedicated Customer Success Manager who will work with you before, during, and after your key event. So you can prepare your CRM solution and achieve your business goals during your busiest times of the year.

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