The importance of building relationships with customers hardly needs to be emphasized for both small and large businesses. Having a good customer relationship management (CRM) solution is key to finding, building and maintaining relationships with customers in order to grow your business, but how do I find a CRM solution that is both dedicated and effective?
Here are some things to consider:
But first, what is CRM?
A CRM system is a program that helps manage your relationships with your customers by storing all of your customers’ details in an organized, user-friendly database. It then uses this information to perform a wide array of tasks along the customer’s journey.
From building brand awareness and marketing, finding and preparing leads, to managing customer purchases, offering service and support, to even nurturing a long-term relationship with your business, a CRM is a flexible tool and platform for everything you need to find and manage your customers.
For deeper insights, CRMs also analyse user behaviour, letting you know how they interact with your website and social media from, the types of transactions made, and where they are on the customer lifecycle. This allows you to create campaigns and promotions that can best target your customers specifically, so that you can retain your customers for as long as possible.
1. CRMs improves the efficiency and speed of operations
CRMs automate often mundane day-to-day tasks, speeding up your time-consuming but necessary work. This frees your manpower for more essential, fulfilling tasks, and reduces the risk of human error impacting the necessary if slightly mind numbing minutia. CRM automation usually includes data entry and contact record updates after every interaction, as well as things like:
Follow-up communication
Email sequences
Chatbot conversations
Campaign analytics
CRMs also help foster cohesion and productivity in your business since everyone works with the same data, reducing the chances of miscommunication.
2. Increased customer visibility through CRMs help to save time
A centralised hub for storing data, CRMs provide a complete record of every interaction with new prospects or existing customers.
This significantly cuts down the precious time used up in the absence of CRM, generally taken to browse through inbox or call history to find a prospect’s contact information, since a single click shows the entire customer touchpoint.
CRMs also offer a clear view of the sales pipeline, so reps can understand exactly where they stand and can plan for their next step of action.
Since the database can be accessed by the entire company, other teams can also plan and set their KPIs based on the different stages of sales in the company.
3. CRMs help you identify the right opportunities for conversion
Other than identifying and adding new leads, CRMs are also very good at categorising them. Your sales and marketing teams can focus their attention and energy on creating campaigns that these categories of clients would be most receptive to, in order to maximise their chances of becoming paying customers.
Personalised campaigns and marketing efforts would also show your customers that you understand them better, keeping them happy with better service, and it is proven that happy customers are likely to become repeat customers!
4. Gather insights on improving your product and service offerings through CRMs
CRMs allow you to observe your customers’ interactions with your websites and track their purchasing habits, while also giving you the space to gather their feedback through email marketing or other forms of communication.
This gives you an edge over your competitors because you receive insights into how your customers truly feel about your products and services, either through direct feedback or maybe you have noticed that one of your products is always saved under wishlists, but is never transferred to the checkout cart. Now, you get the chance to spot problems early, identify gaps in your offerings and improve what you offer, so that you can get the sale instead of all the other competitors’ products your customers have access to.
5. CRMs also support complex workflows and is sustainable for growth
With the ever-evolving digital landscape, it is easy to lose track of all the various channels where customers can be reached, and which channels are preferred by certain customers. CRMs can accommodate these complex workflows by offering a comprehensive and cohesive system that tracks and strings together all forms of customer interactions that the company has engaged in.
Since CRMs are easily scalable, you can easily support fast-growing sales and acquisition of leads.
In conclusion, CRMs are a useful long term investment due to their customisability, and are scalable to support any new business ventures or strategic approaches you may choose to adopt. The data a CRM provides is also useful beyond the sales and marketing teams, and can help the various departments adopt a customer-centric approach in handling their individual tasks. Indeed, CRMs are the way to go for helping your business, and we are here to help you reach your maximum potential. Do contact us today to discuss how we can work together to help you implement a CRM!