1st December, 2021
While small businesses live and breathe customer relationships, advanced tech solutions for these operators has been out of reach, until recently.
Understanding who your customers are is a fundamental part of doing business and it’s something that small and medium business owners think about every day.
Having a clear picture of your customers’ needs allows for better advertising and marketing, store layout and design and seasonal planning requirements like inventory forecasting, among many other things.
Today, there’s a wealth of information that businesses can glean from their customers based on direct feedback, survey responses and purchase details. But unless that information is accurate, accessible and all in one place it’s next to worthless.
That’s why customer relationship management (CRM) systems have become commonplace in some organisations and it’s why more small businesses are considering how to integrate systems like Thryv and MYOB into their operations.
Staying on top of sales, bills and invoices creates a lot of daily administration for small business operators before they consider how to capture (and use) additional customer data.
For many operations, such as hospitality and retail businesses, these processes begin to get divvied up into the ‘front of house’, where face-to-face customer interactions occur, and ‘back of house’, where admin arising from those activities takes place.
But systems like Thryv and MYOB integrate together, bringing businesses a solution that delivers the value of a sales and marketing platform with the efficiency of online accounting – something that has previously only been in reach of much larger organisations.
“By syncing invoices and quotes from MYOB to Thryv’s CRM, your data is constantly updated so you can check “at a glance” where your customer accounts stand,” said Stephanie Lawson, product marketing manager for Thryv.
“Having a centralised CRM that stores both customer data and prior communications, businesses have been able to expand their personalised service, been able to keep on top of their appointments and track their previous text messages and emails.”
In short, a small business CRM solution such as Thryv can work to help deliver efficiencies to a business, as Lawson explained.
“If you’ve had to flip through multiple pages in a diary, or had to use the search function in your email client just to follow up or finalise a sale, then you should be considering a CRM solution.
“For example, a hairdresser that had to keep track of customers’ hair colour and preferences would no longer have to trudge through countless text messages – they could see all their customers’ data at a glance and be able to offer personalised service immediately.”
Of course, the same applies to a wide array of industry sectors and business types where staying in touch with customers, and fostering great relationships with them, is critical to maintaining your footing in the market.
The Thryv website lists 12 key areas of business it solves problems for, with Customer Relationship Management sitting alongside Scheduling & Appointments, Customer Communication and Document Storage & Sharing.
But there’s even more to discover, with Thryv having recently expanded its service offering into Marketing Automation – tools that leverage CRM insights to send automated messages, such as a Happy Birthday promotion.
“Being able to help small businesses market like they are a large entity, yet maintain the local community feel of their business, means they get the best of both worlds – something that has yet to be achieved by the likes of Google or Facebook,” Lawson said
Find out how you can start getting Thryv and MYOB working together for you in MYOB’s App Marketplace.