Air Date

December 15, 2020

Featured Guest

Elizabeth Loge
Chief Executive Officer, CBS Rentals

Moderator

Jeanette Mulvey
Vice President and Editor-in-Chief, CO—

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Customer relationship management (CRM) has become increasingly important in the wake of COVID-19. As the pandemic continues to affect businesses of all sizes, managing relationships with customers remains a central activity in business. The use of a CRM tool can revolutionize these customer interactions and save businesses time in other aspects of their organization.

No Matter the Business Sector, a CRM Helps Organizations Provide Their Customers Solutions

Elizabeth Loge, CEO of CBS Rentals, and her team use the CRM tool Salesforce to create much-needed flexibility in everyday business operations.

“At the end of the day, our customers need a trusted and reliable partner to provide them a solution to whatever their issues [or] their needs are,” she said. “We strive to differentiate ourselves from other suppliers by being first, fast, and flexible. And [CRM] technology fits right into that mission.”

“It's a case-by-case basis for particular customers, but [flexibility] could be anything from equipment needs to billing issues or terms and conditions,” Loge continued. “We absolutely put a lot of emphasis on delivering legendary customer service, so we do this by providing our team with all the information they need at their fingertips.”

Loge’s team has customized their Salesforce CRM, creating a general sales process workflow and housing customer data, among other functionalities.

“We also have dashboards to help us monitor the business at a high level,” Loge adds. “Accounts receivable is in there, [along with] tracking and metrics, service calls, equipment health data, construction project stages [and] general operational performance dashboards.”

The Pandemic Demonstrates the Added Value of a CRM

As organizations continue to pursue the best ways to conduct business amid COVID-19 restrictions, having a CRM to manage data, create workflows, and give an at-a-glance metrics report can be invaluable.

“This year was … an adjustment for us,” Loge says. “But with the technology that we have, we were able to shift and pivot our focus for the business with all the data that we needed in a matter of days because we had all the information streamlined into one platform.”

“[For us, it’s] about communication, the ease of that communication and just being able to get it at our fingertips,” she continued. “It was just a huge improvement for us. We've been in business since 1965 and so you can imagine … just putting the [basic] information that we need into one platform has been a game-changer for us.”

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