Importance of Customer Relationship Management in Logistics

Customer relationship management in logistics is often overlooked in the industry, where timely deliveries, efficient supply chains, and seamless operations are prioritized. However, it is important to note that building and managing customer relationships is a necessity.

In this blog, you’ll learn more about the challenges faced when managing customers without a logistics customer relationship management (CRM) tool and how a logistics CRM can address each challenge by discussing its importance.

5 Challenges When Managing Clients Without a Logistics CRM Tool

When you manage clients without a logistics CRM, it is easy to miss critical blind spots, which can negatively impact your logistics company’s sales productivity. If you are managing your clients without a CRM, then you may be facing some of the challenges listed below.

1. Fragmented Logistics Customer Profile

Customer relationship management in logistics provides an overview of who your customers are and how they are interacting with your company. Without a logistics CRM, it would be hard to have a complete picture of them. Their profile includes their contact information, their sales history, and all of their interactions with you.

If you are managing your clients without a customer relationship management tool, it would be hard for you to have all this relevant information in one location. Therefore, your sales and customer service reports and strategies would be affected. They will not be as detailed as you want them to be since you have a fragmented image of who your customers are.

Without a logistics CRM – a centralized logistics platform, you cannot easily retrieve sales data and customer trends which are critical in analyzing your strengths, weaknesses, and the growth of your logistics business.

2. Decreased Conversion Rates in Logistics Sales

Insufficient understanding of customer behavior significantly impacts logistics sales. The lack of a logistics CRM deprives you of the capability to generate profitable quotes aligned with customer preferences.

Operating without a logistics CRM and integrated quoting tool leads to a lack of historical customer data analysis. This deficiency hampers your ability to effectively engage and close deals. Reduced deal closures directly correlate to a decline in logistics sales conversion rates.

3. Disorganized Communication

In logistics, disorganized communication occurs when vital information (messages, transaction details, quotes, and other communication histories) is dispersed in various platforms. The fragmentation of these details prevents you from efficiently tracking and managing your communication with your customers.

Without a logistics CRM to facilitate communication between you and other stakeholders, you will miss important messages and commit mistakes when communicating with them. For instance, you can send quotes multiple times if you were not informed that another sales representative already sent the quote. Moreover, emails are siloed into a member’s inbox and you won’t be able to view those critical emails once they are out of the office.

4. Manual Operation Errors

In the logistics industry, relying on spreadsheets or manual quote creation increases the likelihood of errors. Imagine the tons of effort and time you need to make in order to get the right logistics data and create quotes for your customers. Errors show up when you do not have a logistics tool that can produce quotes effectively. Since you depend on manual operations, expect that you may commit errors that could affect your credibility with your leads and existing customers.

5. Missed Opportunities to Track and Leverage Data

In addition to missing out on the benefits of studying customer trends, you will miss other data and analytics without a CRM. Sales key performance indicators (KPIs) are metrics used to measure the performance of your sales team and each individual team member. These metrics enable you to make intelligent and strategic business decisions. For example, you can create a new logistics sales pitch and track its effectiveness. Additionally, you could study the sales pipeline and actions of your most profitable salesperson to standardize and enhance processes across your team.

These challenges arise from the lack of a tool that can streamline your logistics sales process, a logistics CRM tool. The challenges mentioned above can be addressed if you invest in a logistics tool to help you manage your customers.

Importance of a Customer Relationship Management Tool in Logistics

A logistics CRM addresses many challenges and blind spots you can encounter without a CRM or even with a generic CRM. Whether you are looking to improve your sales strategy or scale your logistics business, here are some reasons why a CRM is important.

1. Complete View of Customer Picture

With a logistics CRM, you can access a host of information about your company and customers all in one place. This gives you a comprehensive picture of your customer’s preferences and communication history, enabling you to elevate customer service and improve quote conversion.

Using a logistics CRM, you can utilize your customers’ data to foster long-lasting relationships with them. Logistics companies, therefore, need to use an efficient tool that they can use to manage leads, customers, and carriers.

2. Secure More Shipments

A logistics CRM plays a crucial role in consistently securing more shipments. A CRM has a sales pipeline that you can use to track as your leads go through your sales process until they become your customers. The sales pipeline helps pinpoint areas of friction across the stages of your sales, enabling you to optimize conversion rates.

Additionally, when your logistics CRM includes a dedicated quoting tool, you can guarantee your customers that the quoting process will only take a few minutes. The faster you can send a quote and respond to a customer request, the better your chances of securing more shipments.

3. Unified Communications

CRMs are designed to manage your communications with leads and customers, especially when your customer base grows. With a logistics CRM, you can have all your team’s communications in one centralized application so that you can track, review, and analyze your company’s interactions with clients. This lets you easily catch up with existing customer conversations with a complete history of emails, calls, and meetings.

4. Reduced Errors

Logistics CRMs minimize the risk of errors in customer interactions and quotes since they can access customer and market data within the application. Because of this, employees no longer need to juggle multiple applications and manually input data often. All of this will contribute to maintaining your brand image and credibility.

5. Logistics Reports and Analytics

Since logistics CRMs have critical logistics and sales data, they can offer specialized logistics reports and analytics tools that allow 3PLs to monitor key performance indicators, track sales trends, and make informed decisions based on actual data. A logistics CRM removes blind spots and positions you to act strategically.

By leveraging the analytical capabilities of logistics CRMs, 3PL companies gain access to a wealth of knowledge – patterns, market shifts, and customer preferences. All of these are possible when logistics professionals incorporate logistics technology in their operations, serving as a catalyst for competitiveness in the industry.

Case Study: How a Logistics Service Provider Increased Its New Account Conversion Rate by 50%

A logistics company was looking for a customer relationship management (CRM) tool that would allow it to secure more shipments and have a complete view of its customer picture.

Looking at the market, the logistics company encountered a few challenges:

• Firstly, most off-the-shelf CRMs are made for all types of industries with limited data, features, and integrations.
• Secondly, CRMs made for logistics exist but are proprietary software of the biggest logistics service providers since they were made from the ground up and required millions of dollars to build.

Integrated Freight Systems approached the logistics company with a specialized proposal: Supply Chain Relationship Management (SCRM), a CRM designed explicitly for the logistics industry. SCRM stands as an advanced and cost-effective solution tailored exclusively for logistics service providers.

Three of SCRM’s best features are the logistics dashboard, its quoting tool, and logistics reports. The logistics dashboard is designed to present the most valuable data for logistics companies, such as awarded lanes, shipment frequency, client ranking by awarded shipments, and more. Moreover, it has a full logistics quoting tool that lets you create professional and highly converting quotes in five minutes or less. Ultimately, It also includes powerful logistics reports that provide deep insights into your organization’s sales activities.

These specialized features of SCRM helped the logistics company increase its new account conversion rate by more than 50%. It also helped them stay in front of their clients better, securing more shipments.

To learn more about SCRM, you can watch the video on this page. You can also request a free trial or demo.

Summary

Building and maintaining strong customer relationships is critical to success in logistics. Managing customers without a dedicated CRM tool can hinder growth and customer satisfaction. By investing in customer relationship management in logistics, companies can centralize customer data, secure more shipments, streamline communication, and gain critical insights. As the logistics industry continues to evolve, it is imperative to strategically use a customer relationship management tool to secure more shipments and boost your sales.

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