Customer relationship management (CRM) software is a near-vital tool for businesses of all sizes. It’s software that helps businesses manage, track, and organize their relationship with their customers.
CRM is all about developing and managing relationships between you and your clientelle, including potential customers.
A quality CRM strategy is a solid foundation upon which a business can grow. Understanding customers’ needs and wants and dealing with them head on will lay the foundations of success.
A CRM within an organization allows departments to ensure that all customer-facing teams access accurate data to create the best customer experiences. CRM also makes it easier for employees to work together and share vital information by effectively integrating marketing, sales, and customer service departments.
A quality CRM also grants access to track and monitor the customer in their buying journey. This helps optimize CTA funnels, generating more leads.
The CRM software market is currently one of the fastest-growing industries, expected to grow at a rate of 14.27% from 2020 to 2027, driven by consumer demand for better customer service, automated engagement, and more nuanced customer experiences.
A CRM provides numerous benefits.
Here are 8 key advantages a CRM could provide to businesses:
1. Better customer service
2. Increased sales
3. Improved customer retention
4. Detailed analytics
5. Higher productivity and efficiency
6. Easier Customer Segmentation
7. Centralized database of information
8. Integration With Other Software
1. Better customer service
Before social media, consumers were limited in taking complaints beyond contacting customer service centres or informing others in their community. Social media has changed everything. Now, consumers can instantly voice public opinions about brands.
Consumers expect brands to engage with public comments, whether on a scathing review, a tweet, a comment on a YouTube video, or a Facebook complaint. Seventy-six per cent (76%) of social media users expect companies to respond to comments about their brand.
With such a high demand for immediate customer service, customer relationship management in a business is crucial for success.
Businesses need to make sure their teams can stay on top of complaints and queries. A CRM can report lapses in social media performance, improving a company’s ability to make informed business decisions and deliver fast and exceptional customer support.
Nobody likes to be kept waiting! In today’s world of instant click gratification and next day deliveries, if it takes a day to respond, they would prefer to deal with someone else.
2. Increased sales
CRM streamlines the sales process, builds and automates critical tasks, and analyses sales data in one central space, increasing sales. One can build up automated systems that take care of customers even when they’re on vacation.
3. Improved customer retention
Retention is the key to generating maximum profits while scaling a business. It is vital to put in the effort to retain customers and build long term relationships. Using sentiment analysis, automated tracking, and customer support automation will show exponential growth in businesses.
4. Detailed analytics
CRM software commonly has built-in analytic capabilities to contextualize data into actionable items and easily understandable metrics. Metrics such as CTR, bounce rates, and demographics information allow you to judge the success of a marketing campaign and optimize accordingly.
5. Higher productivity and efficiency
Achieving efficiency is one of the primary goals of using CRM. In a survey conducted by Salesforce, businesses that switched to CRMs increased sales by 29% and productivity by 34%. CRM also eliminates the error caused by employees like missing critical mail, handling critical reviews on time, etc.
6. Easier Customer Segmentation
CRM makes it easier to spot the prospect's behaviour and puts them into the specified categories as per their stage in buying journey. This enables customer-centric mail campaigns and targeting. Overall, it provides a competitive advantage over others whilst keeping marketing budgets in range.
7. Centralized database of information
Having a centralized database with all your customers' information makes it easy for the employees to take accurate decisions. Forming branding strategies becomes a lot simpler when CRMs play a central role.
8. Integration With Other Software
All integration platforms have prebuilt connectors for the most common applications which complement CRM systems. Some integration platforms have prebuilt automated process integrations which require little or low code to implement.
CRM tools can now integrate customer data from various social platforms to gather relevant information about potential consumers. This helps your team in efficiently segmenting and targeting prospects. Leveraging an integration platform like Boomi or Adobe Workfront provides a seamless system for businesses to flourish.
For those who value structure and organization, CRM software offers a much-needed advantage. It puts everything social media related under one umbrella!