Whether in sales, marketing, or services, almost every CRM user has had to build a report at some point. When we think of CRM reports, it’s easy to default to the standard types we use in daily business – forecast pipeline charts, top sales revenue line items, top sales by rep, marketing qualified leads, etc. But CRM reports have more potential! Here are three beneficial reports you must run for deeper data insights.

Customer Service Report

One of the most basic reports, the customer service report still delivers an incredible amount of insights. A customer service report highlights the products with the lowest and highest levels of customer satisfaction. It helps management learn the most profitable service offering, the product with the highest service costs, and the trends regarding certain customer service cases related to a product, allowing you to see if there is a deeper issue with that specific offering. This type of report is key because it reveals gaps in your customer service process that you may not have otherwise noticed. It dives deeper than surface level to help your team understand what they may be missing and strategize how to build the solution into their customer service workflow.

Opportunity Report

Acquiring a new customer is often very costly, but maintaining a customer is essential to your business. According to Jill Griffin, author of Customer Loyalty, the probability of selling to a current customer is 60-70%. This means, if you already have an established relationship with a customer, you are likely to make an additional sale with them. From the Small Business Marketing Strategies blog: “Acquiring a new customer can cost 6 to 7 times more than maintaining a current customer.” An opportunity report outlines the customer’s loyalty based on the customer’s purchases. The more loyal a customer is, the less marketing is required for that customer. In this case, you save money by reducing unneeded marketing expenses.

With an opportunity report, you can see a customer’s purchase lifecycle. The purchase lifecyle illustrates customer buying habits, giving you business cues on what products and services will grasp the attention of your most profitable customers. Their buying habits reveals trends on when they are buying from you. If you notice a customer usually buys a product or service in March, you can start reaching out to them in January or February to check in. This helps secure a reorder from them and opens the door to upselling a new product or service.

Exception Report

The holy grail of CRM reports is an exception report. An exception report is not a widely used CRM report – but it should be. It’s an excellent tool for gaining the insights to improve sales and marketing alignment and the accuracy of your data. One of the most critical insights a manager can gain from an exception report is how sales reps are plugging information into the CRM system. Incomplete information often leads to lost opportunities, so having the ability to see those missing fields is the first step to better sales.

If a sales manager is aware that reps are leaving critical fields blank or not using opportunity stages correctly, he or she can take steps to help them do better. For example, the manager can mandate required fields in the CRM to prevent reps from moving on to the next step in the sales process without having those fields filled.

The manager can configure the report to show how often the team is following up with MQL’s as well. Immediate follow-ups often lead to higher conversion rates. A blank exception report at the end of the day is key to running a successful business.

Standard CRM reports are great starter tools, but when you start to get creative with your reports you can pull more meaningful analysis on the inner workings of the day-to-day process and keep emphasis on long-term goals. When employees can better respond to their customers’ needs, it keeps the company more proactive and profitable. Technology Advisors’ CRM team are experts at specialized reports. We can help you learn how to build some of these for yourself. If you would like to get started on CRM reports for deeper insights, please reach out to us at sales@techadv.com.