How to use Trello for CRM

Julita Borowik | Tue, May 21, 2024 | 0 comments

Trello, an Atlassian tool and favourite amongst a variety of business teams can be used to enforce this strategy and help your team bring your customer relationships to the next level. With the help of Trello, companies can create exceptional customer experiences that drive loyalty and growth. Read more to discover how you can utilise Trello’s CRM capabilities to their fullest potential.

Why does Trello work for CRM?

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a business strategy that involves the use of software to manage interactions with current and potential customers. This includes a range of activities, technologies, and processes that companies use to monitor and analyse customer interactions throughout the customer lifecycle. This is where Trello steps in; an otherwise complicated process is simplified with Trello’s CRM-specific functionalities.

Wondering where to begin when introducing your CRM process to Trello? Here are a few steps to get you started:

1. Define your sales process

With the help of Trello’s interactive boards, you can efficiently manage your sales process by organising it into different stages and keeping track of your leads all in one place. Although every business has its unique way of developing and handling client relationships, there are some common stages that you can incorporate into your board.

Each column on your board will represent a separate stage in your sales pipeline, such as ‘Lead’, ‘Follow-up’ and ‘Closed’. Clients are represented through cards – which can be moved through the board as you progress through the sales pipeline. As these cards move through their pipeline, you can assign statuses to them, such as ‘in progress’ and ‘complete’ to indicate their progress within the sales timeline.

2. Populate cards with client information

Once you have a clear outline of your sales pipeline, you can begin to add client details to your cards. These cards can include important information such as main contact details, notes from previous interactions, dates of previous follow-ups or any other information that might help you build a stronger relationship with the client.

With Trello’s advanced checklists, activities within cards can also be given due dates and levels of priority to help you better manage your client interactions. These cards allow you to visually keep track of your progress and the current status of each individual client. If you prefer to use Jira for sales tasks, our application Crumbs provides a single source of comprehensive customer data.

3. Add automation and integrations

Trello’s native features give you the option to automate time-consuming routine tasks using your own triggers and conditions. This can be achieved by setting up rules tailored to your specific triggers and conditions. For instance, you can create rules that automatically move cards based on certain criteria, such as ordering tickets based on the time since last contact, or whether an initial meeting has been held. By doing so, you can save a significant amount of time and effort that would otherwise be spent on these manual tasks. With Trello’s automation capabilities, you can streamline your workflow and focus on more important tasks.

Trello offers a range of ‘Power-Ups’ that can help you streamline your work and boost productivity. These features can be used to integrate with other tools, add custom fields, set up automation, enable advanced search, and much more. Some popular third-party integrations supported by Trello are Slack, Microsoft Teams and CRM-specific integration Crmble.

4. Collaborate with ease

In addition to the features above, Trello also offers a multitude of collaboration functions, designed to adapt to your team’s needs. The ticketing system allows you to assign tasks to specific users, ensuring that each step of a process is handled by the appropriate team member. Additionally, a ‘blocked’ column can be included to indicate tasks that cannot proceed until a user reviews them, ensuring that no ticket is overlooked. Another way to facilitate collaboration is by tagging people in on questions. This feature allows team members to easily ask for assistance or input from their colleagues, which can help to resolve issues quickly and efficiently. By utilising these collaboration tools, teams can work together seamlessly and effectively to provide support to their customers and improve their sales process.

Looking to the future of CRM with Trello

Trello provides a great solution for those looking for a simple way to manage their client information and sales pipeline. However, depending on the needs of your team, Trello may not provide all the features required for a comprehensive CRM solution. For instance, Trello does not offer granular data on sales activities, such as lead sources, conversion rates, and revenue generated by each sales representative. If your team is looking for a more in-depth alternative to Trello, Atlassian’s Jira provides a wide range of sales board functionalities. We would still highly recommend Trello for your standard CRM solutions, and we’re excited to see any new features that Trello might introduce in the future.

If you would like to find out more on how you can utilise Trello for your CRM solutions, get in touch with our Atlassian Platinum-certified team of experts.