How to Choose the Right Senior Living CRM: 5 Tips

Managing a long-term care (LTC) facility entails many responsibilities, from optimizing care for current residents to employing various marketing channels to attract new ones. Without a way to organize all of these interactions, it can be difficult to provide high quality and individualized care. A senior living CRM can help streamline these common workflow processes, enabling staff to deliver the best services possible.

There are many different types of CRM software available. Selecting the right one requires careful consideration of your facility’s needs, structure, and capabilities. In this guide, we’ll walk through what a CRM is, why it’s useful, and key tips for selecting one that suits your LTC facility.

What Is a Senior Living CRM?

CRM stands for customer relationship management, which is a type of software designed to streamline customer data, communication, and insights. Within the context of long-term care settings, the “customer” refers to residents and their families. For senior living communities, a CRM will have the capabilities to centralize and automate common points of workflow, such as:

• Lead and referral tracking
• Sales actions (e.g., sign-ups, follow-ups)
• Resident profile management
• Resident communication
• Marketing campaigns
• Data tracking and analysis

What Are the Benefits of Using a CRM for Senior Living?

A CRM can bring many benefits to the workflow and care processes at your LTC facility. By automating predictable and repetitive tasks, administrative staff can focus more on providing individualized attention to each current and prospective resident. The specific benefits of using a CRM are outlined in the table below.

What to Look for in a CRM

Some popular senior living CRM companies you may have heard of include PointClickCare, Welcome Home, and MatrixCare. However, not all CRMs have the same capabilities, and it’s important to adopt one that meets the unique needs of your staff and residents.

A good CRM should have some baseline capabilities that ease the workflow at your facility. Here are a few key features that you should look out for when browsing different CRMs:

• User-friendly interface: While every new software platform takes time to learn, a good CRM should be fairly easy for your team to adopt.

• Automation: A good CRM should also automate redundant tasks and improve overall efficiency. For example, email templates and communication logs should be automatically generated each time a potential resident/family fills out a form.

• Integration capabilities: Choosing a CRM that allows for third-party integration is important. This will allow you to seamlessly pull and link data from key systems such as your electronic health record (EHR) system and website as well as scheduling and calendaring systems.

• Real-time data: A CRM should also feed you real-time, accurate data to inform your business decisions. This may include information on where your leads are coming from and feedback from your current residents.

• Customization: Every facility has different needs, and a good CRM will offer flexibility. Some CRMs will allow you to choose which features you’d like to include in your package and even customize fields and dashboard elements.

Tips On Selecting the Right CRM

Now that we’ve walked through what a CRM is and why it can be beneficial for your LTC facility, here are five tips on how you can select one that’s right for you.

1. Define Goals and Objectives

Before you browse CRM vendors, it’s important to clearly define the goals of your LTC facility. Are you more focused on attracting new residents, enhancing care delivery for current residents, or both? Figuring out your needs will help you assess the capabilities of different CRM software. Ask yourself the following questions as you work on defining your goals:

• What are the needs of your resident population and staff?
• What channels of communication do you, your residents, and your prospective residents use most often?
• Are your priorities and goals expected to change?

2. Understand Your Facility’s Capacities

After you’ve set clear goals and objectives, it’s important to figure out the logistical capabilities of your facility. As you look for a senior living CRM, cost should be a key consideration. Compare pricing between various vendors to find ones that realistically fit into your budget.

Additionally, any hardware at your LTC facility should be compatible with the CRM you select. Discuss with your IT and administrative staff to figure out what types of CRM can enhance workflow and minimize burden. Other key considerations include:

• HIPAA compliance and data security of a CRM.
• Types of access a CRM provides (mobile, web-based, or cloud-based).
• Integration capabilities with your EHR system.

3. Research Industry Vendors

Once you’re ready to browse CRM software, it’s important to conduct thorough research on the vendors in the industry. Look through online reviews and figure out which vendors are well received by other LTC facilities.

Additionally, look through vendor websites and connect with customer support staff who can give you more information about their product. Throughout this process, consider these important questions:

• Is the software ready-to-go or does it need technical implementation and require additional adoption costs, such as software updates, ongoing subscriptions, or training fees?
• Are online reviews by other facilities mostly positive or negative?
• Does this vendor seem reliable if I need to reach out to them for technical help?

4. Consider the Scalability

If your goal is to grow your resident-base, it’s crucial to think about the scalability of a CRM. Over the years, your facility could expand in the number of both residents and staff, and a CRM should be able to adapt to your changing needs. Assess whether a CRM can:

• Be upgraded without significantly hindering care flow.
• Securely record and store large amounts of information.
• Keep up with the latest LTC marketing trends.

5. Test the Usability

When selecting a senior living CRM, training needs and usability among your staff are important considerations to factor in. Many CRM vendors provide free demos for facilities interested in adopting their services. Take advantage of these demos, as they can help you assess whether the needs of your staff can be met in practice. During the demo, look out for these signs of a user-friendly interface:

• Platform is intuitive and easy to navigate among staff
• CRM resembles existing management software that staff are familiar with
• Platform increases the efficiency of tasks, rather than complicating them

Ready to Deliver High Quality Care to Your Residents?

Adopting the right senior living CRM is one of many ways to enhance services provided by your staff. Discover more useful healthcare tips and strategies to enhance care for your residents with the latest free resources from IntelyCare.