Who Needs CRM? – An AutoRepair Company Example

This is a question I get daily as I talk with small and medium sized business owners who desperately need it but don’t know what it means to their business. So I decided to shed some light on the topic from a very small business perspective. For those who are still getting familiar with what C.R.M is, there is an excellent article on what CRM is via Zoho’s CRM Website. For those familiar, keep on reading to see a simple small business’ example of a company that desperately needs a CRM solution.

Auto Repair Service Inquiries

Let’s take Joe’s Auto Repair & Towing shop. Joe is a business owner who needs CRM but he has never heard of the term. Joe’s business is all about doing body work on cars, as well as towing cars when they get into accidents. The way his workers manage invoices, and work orders are through filing tons of paper work. Whenever a car gets into an accident, they fill out 3 pages of handwritten paper work to process the claim. Shortly thereafter, the customers car is now in Joe’s autos hop. Upon towing the car into Joe’s shop, the customer’s paperwork is processed and filed away in a drawer with tons of other customers.

Joe’s office workers answer phones all day from customers whom have their cars in the shop. Whenever a customer calls about their car or insurance status, Joe’s service reps go through the alphabetically indexed list of folders in the drawer. They find the customers paperwork, and process their requests accordingly. When an insurance company calls the shop, they have to do the same thing. In fact, 85% of Joe’s incoming calls involve going through the dreaded Black Drawer.

What if Joe’s paperwork were lost? Even worse is what if Joe’s business was flooded as a result of weather conditions? How quickly would be able to get back in business? Joe’s business needs a Customer Relationship Management solution. A Solution that sits in the cloud. CRM Solutions would have allowed Joe and his phone reps to do a simple look up of your customer records, and invoices via a CRM Database lookup. In addition, his records would be secured and stored in the cloud protecting his business from any catastrophic weather conditions resulting in him being able to process orders the very next day by working from home.

Stay tuned as we come up with more small business examples who need CRM. What types of small business’ do you think need CRM?