Congratulations on choosing your customer relationship management (CRM) system! The next step for your company is to ensure that your team members complete CRM training. The training involves much more than ensuring that your team members have names and passwords so they can log in. Learning to use the CRM system effectively is a crucial step toward improving customer experiences and satisfaction rates. Teams must familiarize themselves with all of your CRM’s features to get the most out of this powerful software option.

CRM Training in 5 Steps

Before embarking on a training program, it’s important to understand the best way to teach adults how to do something. Adults learn best through practical and immediate application of a new skill. So, when you are considering effective CRM training, always view each task through this lens. Consider hands-on use of the system, common tasks, and a frequent need to guide you through the training itself.

Now, on to the steps for effective training:

1. Choose the Participants

Who should you invite to CRM training? Just customer service, or other teams, too?

Consider creating several training groups and tailoring learning outcomes and training activities to the specific groups. For example, you may have three groups: management, customer service, and others (such as marketing). Each group may interact with the system differently, based on their needs.

2. Generate Excitement and Enthusiasm among Participants

If you thought the next step was training, pause for a minute. You need to generate excitement and enthusiasm among the participants! Let them know that not only are they going to experience new software, but they will be able to solve customer complaints and problems more quickly and easily with it. Share how the new system will help them do their jobs faster and better, and work with the company’s managers to generate buy-in among participants. The adoption of the new CRM system will go much more smoothly if you work to build up the excitement for its launch.

3. Schedule Time for Training Sessions

Training should not be a once and done activity. Set aside plenty of uninterrupted time for the initial training, and for subsequent refreshers. People may listen attentively to the in-depth training but forget much of what they learned simply because they don’t use the skills or repeat them frequently after training. One in-depth training followed by many shorter refreshers is a better way for adults to learn and retain new skills.

4. Provide Several Types of Training Resources

Most people have a dominant learning style: visual, audio, or kinesthetic (hands-on). By providing a variety of training resources—written, video, and in-person training—you’re teaching to all learning styles and allowing participants to absorb the knowledge in a manner that works best for them.

5. Evaluate Training Results

As with any process, it’s important to evaluate the outcomes and results based upon the goals. Assess how well you accomplished your training goals.

Completing a sequence of training sessions is one thing, but has it cut down on the number of calls and emails to the internal CRM experts conducting the training? Is there any area of the system that seems to elicit the most confusion or calls, and can you schedule a refresher around that area to shore up peoples’ knowledge?

Logging training results, monitoring, and recording questions, and providing follow-up training sessions based on specific gaps all helps to ensure successful CRM training.

PositiveVision Offers Training and Support for Business Software

PositiveVision is pleased to offer its valued clients training opportunities several times throughout the year on multiple topics and business management software systems, including Sage 300 ERP and CRM software. We also offer training programs, including classes and in-house training, to ensure your team members feel comfortable with the system and can use it to its most significant advantage. Contact us today to arrange your complimentary consultation with one of our product experts. 

Linda Baran

Linda Baran is in charge of the people side of PositiveVision. Linda’s background includes working in a variety of industries including investment, manufacturing, and information technology.