CRM, short for, Customer Relationship Management, is a programme that gathers all the data about your customers in one central place. A CRM solution can help your business organise communication, interaction and relationships with your customers as well as prospects.
With a CRM software, all the data relating to your customers (both current and future) is centralised, so your team can keep on top of their tasks. Customer service agents can log accounts of customer calls, purchases, chats, emails, support tickets, etc. This way, you can maintain all the details of a customer’s relationship with your business.
You can choose a CRM programme to suit the size and budget of your business; from a simple SaaS-based model to an enterprise solution. So why does your business need a CRM? Let’s take a look at some of the things CRM can do for your business.
Streamline the Sales Process
If you find yourself inundated with new leads coming your way but can’t find the time to keep up with the flow, a CRM can come in handy. A smart CRM system can help you sort and prioritise your leads in no time so your salespeople can follow up with your leads promptly and efficiently.
The CRM system will accompany your sales executives at every stage of the sales funnel, from lead generation and conversion through to repeat sales, cross-selling and upselling.
If you want to ensure your sales team is better organised and works as a cohesive unit, a CRM programme can help. If your sales executives work as a group on a specific project or if some members take care of different parts of the sales process, coordination can be an uphill task.
A good CRM system allows you to programme customer-centric tasks and assign them to different members of the sales team. This way, all sales executives know what their role is, what their objectives are and what’s expected of them.
This means that no sales opportunity goes wasted, and no one in the sales team is left clueless.
Locate Your Customer Data Easily
Email, spreadsheets and sticky notes could have worked well for you when you started your business. But as your business grows, those tools will quickly become a bottleneck, impeding your ability to quickly make informed decisions.
That’s where CRM can help, giving your company a centralised location to store and access your data that you can leverage to drive conversions as well as customer retention.
In addition to giving you an organised, centralised location to store all your customer information, a CRM offers a complete picture about each customer – how you acquired them, when, where, what and how they buy from you or interact with your business; and from this, you can find out how to keep your customers coming back.
From contact details and social media activity to purchases and previous interactions, a CRM keeps a record of every interaction your customers have with your business.
Offer Stellar Customer Experiences
Winning customers is a tough task but retaining them is even tougher. One poor experience is enough to put them off and you can lose customers forever. If your customer service agents are spending more time reacting to consumer complaints rather than anticipating their needs proactively, a CRM system can provide all the answers.
By effectively managing case flow and providing a unified view of each customer, a CRM system will enable your customer care team to provide an unmatched experience for your customers whilst ensuring that they come back to you for more.
With intelligent CRM solutions, customer service agents can share their learnings with each other, thereby ensuring they can answer questions quickly and efficiently. Moreover, they can even route cases to the right representative.
That’s not all. With a CRM, you can even create a self-help community where your customers can go to look for answers to frequently asked questions on their own, allowing your agents to handle tougher complaints and requests.
Seamless Integration with Marketing Tools
You can effortlessly integrate your CRM with marketing tools including email marketing, messaging, social media, telephony and live chat to stay on top of your customers’ minds.
By integrating your CRM with your email marketing software, you can create a personalised message to ensure a high level of engagement.
By combining CRM data with a messaging service, you can connect with your audience, providing them a service they expect. You can send automatic reminders to customers about upcoming events and offers. You can send people a text such as product tracking information, discount codes to further grow your sales.
You can bring efficiency to your company by integrating your CRM software and telephony software. An integrated CRM enables you to make calls quickly thereby increasing the reach to your audience. Agents can take detailed, accurate notes that could be used to provide stellar customer service as well as in converting leads into customers.
Increase Your Brand’s Reputation
A CRM system ensures you have all the information you need to provide prompt responses to customers without any delays and provide unmatched service.
Imagine the impact of a stellar customer experience on your brand image. Consumers will consider your company as a highly efficient one in the market. Your team will be considered the best.
Reduce Cost
Another important benefit of a CRM programme is that it helps reduce your costs. When you reduce the time spent answering customer complaints, you are able to put your employees’ skills to better use – in delighting customers and increasing sales.
When your employees can find the information about your customers at a moment’s notice from anywhere, it results in improved efficiency.
With time, as you and your team understand how to make use of CRM to suit your requirements, your daily tasks will become a breeze and won’t take much time either.
Conclusion
If you can relate to any of these advantages, it’s time to take the plunge and invest in a good CRM for your business. A CRM system will help you generate more leads, close more transactions, keep your customers happier and connect your entire business – putting your business on the path of growth and stupendous success.
