Driving Growth With Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
by Laurie Griffith
Tyler King – Co-Founder and CEO of Less Annoying CRM Talks Simplicity, Service and Success
Simplicity is about making the customer’s life easier. Simplicity, customer value and exceptional service are the guiding principles behind Less Annoying CRM (LACRM), a rapidly-growing Customer Relationship Management system provider. Tyler and Bracken King are taking CRM to a simpler level. Their system is focused squarely on small businesses, offering a high tech, but simple solution to help small businesses succeed.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is an approach to manage customer relationships through their lifecycle from prospect to ongoing customer satisfaction. Businesses that use CRM systems to fine-tune marketing and sales efforts see value in efforts spanning:
• Customer Acquisition – Identifying target audience and focusing marketing efforts.
• Customer Satisfaction – Increasing visibility into customer needs and analyzing customer satisfaction.
• Competitive Advantage – Gaining insight into customers to maintain an edge over the competition.
• Efficiency – Automating, standardizing and tracking the progress of processes that drive sales and customer retention.
• Analytics – Reporting on sales and marketing performance vs. metrics.
Less Annoying CRM began operations virtually from two coasts in 2009 while the co-founding brothers, both St. Louis natives and Washington University graduates, held down day jobs. By 2014, the business had outgrown the virtual model and St. Louis was selected as the operating base to take advantage of the technical talent available from local universities, low cost of living, lower wage rates and T-REX, a co-working space and technology incubator in downtown St. Louis. That same year LACRM won an Arch Grant.
While LACRM offers functionality standard to most CRM packages including a contact database, calendaring tools for events and tasks, pipeline management and activity tracking and reporting tools, it seeks to alleviate many of the annoyances small business find with other providers; hence the company name. Their go-to market approach embodies a philosophy of simplification that benefits many other small businesses. LACRM makes pricing affordable and easy to understand, provides potential customers with a free trial period, has easy set-up, reduces the number of “clicks” required to accomplish the tasks and offers exceptional customer support and training.
It’s not about the app! Small businesses often don’t have the resources to handle complex technical questions. They need simplicity and support. As a bootstrap start-up, LACRM is able to focus on customer value vs. investor value and channel resources into customer service and customer-focused product development. “Customers want one tool that is simple to use and provides the functionality needed. We focus on giving our customers what they need and nothing they don’t,” Tyler explains. In expanding their product offering, LACRM invests in research to explore the unique processes within industry segments to further develop the core product. New functionality is designed to address industry-specific needs. For example, travel agents track trips, not widgets, and LACRM’s tools support the transactions that travel agents process on a daily basis.
LACRM proposes to help businesses “close more deals and improve customer happiness.” Their double and triple digit growth suggests that they are following their own advice.
Join us at our next Sharp and On Point Speaker Series on Tuesday, July 21, from 7:30 to 9:00 a.m. at the Lodge Des Peres as Tyler King – Founder and CEO of Less Annoying CRM (www.lessannoyingcrm.com) shares his strategies for growth and how CRM systems can help organize and integrate your customer relationship management efforts to improve topline success. To reserve your seat or for more information, visit www.sharpandonpoint.com or www.lopataflegel.com.
Laurie Griffith is a principal at Lopata, Flegel & Co. Accountants and Management Consultants. Join us at the free monthly Sharp & On Point Business Advisory Speaker Series from 7:30 to 9:00 a.m. on the third Tuesday of every month at the Lodge Des Peres. Learn business strategies you can immediately put in place to point your business in the right direction. For more information, visit www.sharpandonpoint.com.