Getting Your Team on Board with CRM: Overcoming User Adoption Challenges
As businesses increasingly adopt CRMs, a major challenge they face is getting staff to use the system effectively. Without proper user adoption, the project can become a costly investment that cannot deliver the intended benefits. In this post, we’ll discuss why user adoption is a realistic challenge and offer some ways to get staff onboard.
Why is user adoption a challenge?
- Resistance to change: One of the most common reasons for low user adoption is staff resistance to change. Employees will be used to their old way of doing things, and the prospect of learning a new system can be daunting.
- Lack of training: If staff members don’t receive adequate training on how to use the tool, they may not feel confident using it, leading to low adoption rates.
- Poor user experience: If implementation isn’t user-friendly or intuitive, your staff will find it frustrating to use, and they’ll avoid it, reverting to old manual systems as work-arounds.
Ways to get staff onboard
- To increase staff support and reduce resistance to change, involve the team in the decision-making process. Ask for their input and feedback on which CRM to choose and their thoughts on implementation priorities.
- Training: To ensure your team feels confident using the system, provide proper training. This can be done through a combination of in-person training sessions, online tutorials, and user manuals/videos or one-on-one focus sessions. Make sure the training is designed around people’s roles, not the technology.
- Make it easy to use: Choose a system that’s easy to use and intuitive. Ensure that it has a user-friendly interface, well thought out user-flow and that your staff members can easily navigate through the system.
- Offer incentives: Offer incentives for staff members who effectively use the system. This can be done through gamification, where staff members earn points for completing certain tasks or achieving certain goals. Other incentives may include leaderboards, vouchers and recognition.
- Provide ongoing support: Provide ongoing support to staff to ensure that they feel comfortable using the CRM. Use a help desk or support team that is readily available to answer questions or concerns.
User adoption is a critical factor in the success of any software or digital change implementation. By involving your staff in the decision-making process, providing proper training, choosing a user-friendly system, offering incentives, and providing ongoing support, businesses can increase user adoption rates and achieve the intended benefits of their CRM investment. With planning, businesses can overcome the challenges of user adoption and reap the rewards of a platform that is supported by the whole organisation.