There are many different tools and software that help your company to grow and improve operations. However, the CRM system is on top of the list of most important systems used by companies small and large across the globe.
For many businesses, CRM system is an essential part of their day-to-day operation that cannot be replaced. Now, before you start choosing your CRM system, it’s good to understand the basics, what is CRM, why businesses need CRM, and how it works. And in this chapter, we explain just that!
The Meaning of CRM
CRM is an acronym that stands for Customer Relationship Management (CRM) which is a technology used by companies to manage front-end activities such as sales, customer service, marketing, and field service operations. CRM system helps centralize, collect, manage, and analyze individual customer interactions and data throughout the customer lifecycle.
It also refers to all strategies and techniques used by businesses to effectively manage leads and customers to maximize business outcomes. The software helps companies standardize the data and processes, so everybody follows company standards.
Modern CRM system also provides AI and Machine learning capabilities helping you and your employees to transform data into insights to make smarter and faster decisions. Also, many CRM systems provide automation capabilities as well.
Why CRM System is Important for Your Business? [7 Reasons]
CRM system is a powerful tool that can help your organization to boost productivity, improve customer experiences and drive better sales and marketing outcomes.
It’s at the core of your front-end activities to help you attract customers, build relationships, and foster those relationships to drive more revenue for your business.
CRM system is one of the essential tools since day one your company is getting ready for its first leads and customers due to the functions CRM system brings to an organization.
However, because of the CRM system-wide range of capabilities, there could be many reasons why you should implement a CRM system for your business.
It all comes down to who will be using the system in the first place in your company. The reasons why you should use CRM for sales, CRM for marketing, or CRM for customer service will differ.
However, in this article we want to give you an overview and 7 reasons why you should use CRM system in general for your company:
1. Complete Customer Data
Perhaps your marketing is using some form of email marketing automation, then switch to Google Ads and Facebooks Ads to optimize running ads, and lastly, check out website analytics how your SEO strategy performs.
Your sales are most likely using different softwares as well to manage their day-to-day tasks and that same applies to your customer service that needs to manage customer interactions across different channels.
All these results in siloed information across departments and even individuals.
CRM system provides a wide range of capabilities which helps reduce the number of applications that need to be used so your employees can complete their day-to-day tasks. It also helps you to integrate second-and third-party applications to automatically flow data into your CRM.
This enables you and all your team to have access to data across marketing, sales, and customer service and gain a 360-degree view of your customers.
2. Improves Understanding of Your Leads & Customers
Having a complete view of your leads and customers in one centralized system enables you to better understand how your business is doing in terms of customer acquisition and customer experience.
CRM system gives you information on what channels are the most effective for lead generation, what leads convert the best, what customer segments drive the most value for your business and so much more.
All this information gives you information that helps you to continuously optimize your strategies and drive the highest quality leads for your business.
With that, you can also see the entire customer journey, therefore understand what type of customers are the most valuable for your business, what industries are particularly effective, and furthermore, segment your customers to really understand who your customers are.
It also helps you to keep track of common issues and difficulties your customers are facing and anticipate those before they happen. CRM system gives you the information you need about your leads and customers that helps you keep growing your business.
3. Create and Manage Customer Profiles
CRM system lets you collect data about your prospects and customers and segregate each individual customer into different segments based on numerous factors that are important to you like, company size, location, age, job role, products they bought, etc.
This gives you information on what group of people are most likely to buy your products or services and creates customer profiles out of them. Thus you’ll have a better understanding of your B2C or B2B target audience.
It enables you to truly understand your customers and create customer profiles that convert the best for your business and focus only on what works the best for you.
Like this, you can improve your conversion rates, increase average sales per customer and generate more business.
If you are not creating customer profiles, you are not optimizing your marketing and sales effort towards the best results.
4. Improve Sales Outcomes
CRM system helps streamline the entire sales cycle whether it is in B2B or B2C. Since a lead is entered into the CRM system, qualified, and passed over to the sales team, the sales team have already better visibility of the lead by looking at the history and touchpoints of the lead.
This results in a more personalized approach from sales right from the beginning by providing the right information prospects are looking for.
CRM system also helps the sales team to have a better view of the sales pipeline, sending intelligent notifications to salespeople to help them manage their targets, focus on the best opportunities, and in every other way CRM software helps everyone in the team to reach their goals and close more sales.
CRM is the best friend of sales.
5. Drastically Improve Customer Experiences
Customer experiences are becoming vital for many businesses and customer experience is becoming the top priority in the next five years.
