Business

5 Reasons Why Any Successful Shopify Dropshipping Business Needs The Right CRM

Published

6 years ago

April 27, 2020

Here at SaleSource we often get questions like: “Is dropshipping legal?”, “Is dropshipping dead?”, etc. It’s important to get it out of the way first – the short answer is no, dropshipping is not dead and yes, dropshipping is absolutely legal.

Next off, what is a CRM? Well, CRM stands for customer relationship management. Essentially what that means is your CRM is your customer database and your leads database, and also your business management software. So it’s really important. If you want to effectively manage your business and scale your business, you’re going to need a great tool to do so and that’s a CRM. And that’s why it’s so important to have the right CRM. So if you’re not using a CRM, if you’re using yellow pads or spreadsheets, it’s a no-brainer, you need a CRM. And if you’re using a CRM that you don’t love, maybe this article will help you identify the right CRM to use to truly grow your business.

So there’s really six points that I want to touch on to help you determine if you’re using the right CRM for your business or which CRM you might use that would be the right CRM for your small business, so let’s go through those one by one.

1. Lead management

So the first thing to look for within a CRM is the appropriate lead management tools you have for your sales team. For any small business, such as shopify stores, to grow – they really need a good convertible process with regards to taking a lead and turning it into an account, that’s your sales process. And all of the leads that you have are your lead pipeline. And so you need a sales team to be most effective to grow your business in terms of taking those leads and turning them into accounts. Well, your CRM really helps for that because CRM will allow you to do things like when somebody fills out the lead form on your website or on social media, let’s say, like on an ad, it will automatically build that contact within your CRM, automatically assign it to your sales rep, and also give them the process that they should follow in order to close that deal. Whether it’s an initial call and then seven days later an email follow-up, and then another call; you can predetermine what that needs to be and you can build that template right into your CRM so that your sales team can just follow that and close more deals. So a CRM is really, really valuable because it allows you to optimize that process so that all of your sales people are following the same process with the same piece of software system so that you can have consistent performance over time.

2. Account management or customer management

Customer management is really important because you don’t want to have a bad customer experience and you want those customers to keep coming back. So a CRM allows you to do that because it does such things as when a lead becomes a customer, it unlocks additional fields of information that can be populated by your account managers and your customer service reps, et cetera, so that you have all the information you need for all of your customers. It can also do things like send email communications automatically. So as that customer moves through their life cycle, at key points when they need certain information sent to them, instead of counting on somebody to do this manually all the time, your CRM can serve as an automated worker for you, basically, and send this messaging out in an automated way to your customer base, which is really, really powerful if you create these journeys in the right way. The CRM also has all the notes and history logs that you might have had on a client, and it pulls in all of the data and all the pieces so that you can see the full story of each customer within a CRM. So if you don’t have that right now, definitely take a look out there and see if there’s a CRM software that fits what you’re looking for with regards to customer management.

3. Task management tools

So task management, really important. Basically everybody in your company has tasks that they’re trying to accomplish every single day. And so a CRM is a great way to have that basically streamlined in a more automated way to where as certain tasks are completed, other tasks are unlocked. So it really helps you to identify the things that need to get done. I found over the years that if somebody doesn’t really have their day planned out, they’re not very efficient because they’re always spending a lot of time thinking about what to do next, instead of just having tasks organized for them so they can come in and just start knocking them out one after the next. So a CRM allows you to think proactively because you can create these tasks for different leads you’re talking to, for different customers you’re working with, you can schedule them out so that you’re always building out your future plans of what needs to get done proactively so that when that day comes into today, I have the things that I need to do right in front of me and it keeps a log of all of this for me automatically within the CRM so that I always have a history of what’s been done.

4. Project management tools

The fourth thing to look for within a CRM is the appropriate project management tools that you might need. So you always have these little side projects going on, right? Whether it’s something you’re personally doing, or something for a customer, it could be a project you’re doing for a customer, it could just be something you’re doing yourself because you just want to do some self-development or something like that. Within a CRM, you should be able to create a project with different stages within it and tasks that need to be accomplished within each of those stages. And then you can use those templates moving forward if you wanted to, maybe it’s a project that you typically do for customers over and over again, right. Maybe it’s like a kitchen remodel, you need to do these things whenever there’s a kitchen remodel, it’s like a checklist, it’s a no-brainer. So if that’s a service that you provide, every time you have a new customer that needs a kitchen remodel, you just add that project to it and then your team can start working on it. This is really effective because it allows you to streamline and make sure that you have all of the checklists or processes built out ahead of time for all of your projects. And then if you ever need to add a stage or add a step, when you do that, it immediately is added to all the other projects because it’s a template. And so it really helps your whole team make sure that nothing gets missed along the way.

5. Company calendar

Company calendars are really nice because it helps you just see what’s going on at the company level with regards to all the events, things coming up, different customers that you’re interacting with for the day, that kind of a thing. So we all have our personal calendar usually in our email whether it’s in Gmail or those things, and that’s really good. What I’m talking about here though is a company calendar. As a team, you want to be able to see what the rest of the team is doing, and so a CRM is nice because the calendar there shows you from a business perspective what’s going on for the day for not just you but you can toggle and you can say, hey, show me everything that, all the events happening today for my whole team. And that helps you identify what’s going on as an organization, especially if you’re a manager, so you can make sure that you’re effectively managing your team appropriately.

Business

Ipsos Helps Brands Understand How They Get Customer Experience Wrong & Why It’s Costing Them Millions

Published

4 weeks ago

June 26, 2026

Matthew Wiles

For brands looking to succeed in the modern business ecosystem, the customer experience (CX) is not something companies can afford to ignore. CX is a direct driver of revenue, loyalty, and growth for organizations.

Ipsos, one of the world’s leading market research firms, helps brands understand that failing to focus on the customer experience can lead to lost sales, which in turn can translate to not only millions in lost revenue but also lost trust and credibility in the market.

How brands still get CX wrong

“The customer decision and desire to do business with brands directly affect the bottom line,” says Brad Christian, Chief Commercial Officer at Ipsos – Experience Practice.

Customer experience may sound like a simple concept, but many brands still get it wrong. CX goes beyond surveys and feedback. Leaders who fail to connect feedback in a meaningful way to goals such as retention, repeat visits or purchases, advocacy, and operational performance fail to deliver on their service promises. The emotional and functional disconnect can spell trouble for brands. The most polished advertising campaigns cannot make up for a frustrating customer interaction or a promise that a business cannot fulfill.

According to Ipsos’s internal research, many customers today see service as too automated and impersonal. More than half report that their experience is worse than promised.

These findings don’t just result in disappointed buyers. They result in lost customers, negative feedback, and a long-term impact on the business as a whole.

“Brands have to manage the entire customer experience across each and every touchpoint,” explains Christian.

Poor CX can be expensive

Executives can often underestimate how expensive a history of poor CX can be. Global losses can reach into the billions while leaders wonder what went wrong. In an age of rapid social media communication, a single negative interaction can spell disaster for a company, leading to reduced customer spending or the entire loss of its most loyal customers.

Those losses are not just reflected in lost revenue, however. Customer acquisition and marketing dollars can also be lost as companies continue to spend money trying to retain their customer base, often skipping right over the experience part of retention.

Poor customer experience can be a deep operating problem that creates a domino effect, decimating businesses from the inside out. These poor experiences can impact not only present and future customer acquisition but also business leaders and employees.

CX matters more in today’s business landscape

The customer experience has always mattered, but it may matter more to brands trying to make it in a modern, ultra-competitive, digitally-driven business landscape. Good experiences encourage repeat purchases, boost loyalty, and increase the likelihood that customers will go online and recommend a brand to others.

“Customer experience isn’t an isolated function,” says Christian. “It’s ‌part of a larger system that ensures that brands measure and manage customer experience data and then act on that data to drive action where customer experience gaps exist.”

Brands also have to seek to understand today’s customers, who expect experiences that are seamless, authentic, and relevant. As more and more companies hop on the automation train, they will want to reassure their customers that the human element that many people consider important still exists.

At Ipsos, six drivers of strong customer relationships form the bedrock of the company’s CX platform, something that they refer to as the “Forces of CX”: certainty, fair treatment, control, status, belonging, and enjoyment.

Customers want to feel that if they have an issue with a brand, it will be handled and that their concerns will be understood. They don’t want the customer experience to feel like a battleground; they want it to feel fair and human.

“Customer experience isn’t just a nicer experience,” says Christian. “It ties directly to specific financial outcomes, whether that be increased sales, greater market share, or stronger brand loyalty.”

How Ipsos helps businesses deliver customer experiences that matter

Ipsos turns customer feedback into reliable, actionable, decision-ready information. The company goes beyond simple satisfaction metrics and implements voice-of-the-customer programs, journey analytics, relationship feedback, and quality research.

“Brands don’t just need data,” Christian says. “They need measurements as to how they are delivering on their brand promise and predictive modeling to tie financial performance measures to those measures to help them determine where to invest to maximize the customer experience and understand what financial impact those investments might deliver for the business.”

Ipsos measures the interactions that matter ‌most and shows brands how each interaction can affect retention, share of spend, and efficiency. For brands that are trying to reduce the guesswork behind CX, Ipsos helps them move beyond cosmetic fixes to achieve real, meaningful change.

Customer expectations can shift on a dime, influenced by society, social media, and even changing trends. Ipsos helps brands meet those rapidly changing customer expectations with hard evidence and comprehensive metrics.

Today’s brands need to understand how to get the customer experience right. Ipsos has the insights needed to drive home the deep importance of CX in today’s marketplace.