Customer service is crucial to self storage operational success – from attracting new customers to increasing revenue and reducing churn. One of the most effective ways to improve your customer service strategy is to invest in a customer relationship management (CRM) software.

What can a CRM do for your self storage facilities? CRM systems automate the tedious, manual tasks that take up valuable sales and marketing team time, including customer activity tracking, interaction monitoring, and contact information recording. Contact management is another key component of a CRM. It manages active and inactive tenants, prospects who have made an inquiry, and those who make reservations or request a quote.

There are both off-the-shelf and fully customizable CRMs available. Understanding how these systems can be integrated with your management software and potential benefits will help you choose the CRM that will do the most for your self storage operation.

CRM and Management Software Integration

The right self storage CRM can fully streamline your processes and operational systems, including management software, call center, and phone system. Your CRM and management software can be linked to share one central database where call center agents, store managers, district managers, and executives can have instant access to tenant and prospect information.

Benefits of a Self Storage CRM

Delivering industry-exceeding customer service and increasing customer loyalty is just the beginning of what an efficient CRM can do. The potential benefits include:

  • Keep in touch with existing tenants and prospects
  • Maximize revenue from tenants and leads
  • Provides company-wide awareness and access – the key to creating targeted marketing campaigns
  • Allows corporate office to email all contacts and provide email campaign statistics

How to Choose the Right CRM for Self Storage

Before you select a CRM, make sure it is designed for your needs. It should be able to:

  • Automatically import data from lead generation sources
  • Simplify data entry with customized forms that can be associated with individual prospects and customers
  • Provide visibility into the sales pipeline, including insight into which sales team member is working what leads and their expected close dates
  • Allow for customizable workflows across the organization
  • Offer role-based access and security to operationalize routing of lead information

If the CRM can perform each of these duties, your business’s IT department should be able to integrate it into your office management system for ease of use.

Maintaining the CRM Database

While a CRM is a smart investment that can automate many of your daily tasks, it’s not something that runs on its own. It must be regularly maintained to work properly. Old, bad, and duplicate leads can push businesses over the CRM’s pricing threshold resulting in additional costs. Not maintaining it can also potentially hurt pending deals if a customer receives the wrong marketing materials.

Maximize CRM Efficacy and Turn Leads into Leases

There are a number of factors that can impact your leads-to-lease conversion rates, including customer service and the importance of automating with a CRM. G5’s recently published white paper, How to Turn Digital Marketing Leads into Leases details industry-specific sales and marketing team balance, how to choose a CRM, setting up a follow-up process, and how to properly nurture leads via contact management and email.

Download the white paper here.