Post written by Show Jason Kulpa Jason Kulpa is the driving force behind Ue.co. He is responsible for driving the vision and culture for the organization. At its core, customer relationship management (CRM) is all of the activities, strategies and technologies that companies use to manage their interactions with their current and potential customers. A saying frequently heard and said in many businesses is “customer is king.” CRM helps businesses build a relationship with their customers that, in turn, creates loyalty and customer retention. Since customer loyalty and revenue are both qualities that affect a company’s revenue, CRM is a management strategy that results in increased profits for a business. At its core, a CRM tool creates a simple user interface for a collection of data that helps businesses recognize and communicate with customers in a scalable way. Leslie Ye, editor at Hubspot’s Sales Blog, describes a CRM in the following way: “Beyond contact info, CRMs log reps’ touchpoints with their prospects, including emails, phone calls, voicemails, and in-person meetings. Some CRMs offer the ability to track deal stages and reasons for closed-lost and closed-won deals.” According to Gartner, CRM software totaled $26.3 billion in 2015 and predicts that that figure will continue to rise through 2018. At its core, customer relationship management is simple. However, it can be implemented in a huge array of methods: websites, social media, telephone calls, chat, mail, email and various marketing materials can all be integrated into a CRM solution. Due to CRM’s diversity, it doesn’t only benefit larger businesses — using and maintaining a CRM tool is the basis for a scalable sales and marketing system. Any company will benefit from maintaining a record of which conversations, purchases and marketing material can be associated with leads and customers. At UE.co, we advise companies to make CRM a part of their strategy before the number of clients makes a CRM platform absolutely necessary. Small businesses and even freelancers can benefit from CRM processes as well. After all, who doesn’t want to increase their customer retention and, as a result, their profits? Some of the major ways in which CRM accomplishes this goal are listed below. • Learning. CRM helps businesses learn about their customers, including who they are and why they purchase your products, as well as trends in customers’ purchasing histories. This allows businesses to better anticipate their customers’ needs and, as a result, fulfill them. Effectively using customer relationship management can also provide a strategic advantage. Well organized customer data helps companies select the correct recipients for promotions and new products. • Organization. CRM allows businesses to become more efficient by organizing and automating certain aspects of the business. From sales processes to marketing campaigns and business analytics as well as customer data, CRM automates and streamlines these processes for businesses. This allows the businesses to organize these processes into simpler, easier to understand data. • Optimization. Finally, CRM software allows businesses to optimize their customer interactions. By simplifying and streamlining many of the more complex customer interaction processes, CRM increases customer satisfaction. Types Of Customer Relationship Management There are many different types of CRM. However, most CRM software primarily focuses on one major category below. • Operational. Operational CRM usually has to do with one of the three types of operations: marketing, sales and service. Operational CRM is an important tool for lead generation because it frequently deals with past customer data such as previous marketing campaigns, purchases and service satisfaction. CRM software also aims to automate these processes to create a better experience for both the businesses and their customers. Because of its concentration on efficiency, operational CRM is a great fit for companies with a shorter sales cycle and high repeat sales like e-commerce or business to consumer retail verticals. • Analytical. The main function of analytical CRM is to analyze customer data so that management can better understand market trends and customers’ wants and needs. The goal of analytical CRM is to improve customer satisfaction. Analytical CRM frequently uses data mining and pattern recognition to accomplish this task — it works well for companies in higher priced markets with a lot of competition. • Collaborative. Collaborative CRM is when companies share customers’ information with outside companies and businesses. By pooling their data, certain businesses are able to create an even greater experience for their customers by obtaining data which they otherwise would not have had access. It’s an excellent fit for markets where innovation and new product development is paramount to success because the additional data creates very detailed pictures of what consumers are currently responding to. CRM is an excellent tool that allows companies to increase not only their customer satisfaction but also their efficiency and profits. CRM comes in a wide variety of strategies and applications, which allows it to be modified to fit virtually any business type. Almost every business can benefit from CRM software, and it is much better to start using a CRM for your business before it becomes necessary. It is important for companies to consider their operations and sales process when considering which CRM solution to use: What customer information is relevant to your sales process? How many times do you usually make contact with a client before they purchase? How important is repeat business to your company? As a business owner, not exploring your CRM options could be a huge oversight for your company. CRM—Customer Relationship Management—is a system that aims to improve the relationship with existing customers, find new prospective customers, and win back former customers. CRM software facilitates collecting, organizing, and managing customer information—all in one place. CRMs are no longer just for large-scale organizations with huge databases of customers, but are advantageous to even small and medium sized organizations. Designed to keep track and streamline your processes, a CRM system can be one of the most powerful management tools in your arsenal. Some of the incredible outcomes from CRM systems include improved customer service, deepened customer relationships, retention of new customers, and much more successful sales and marketing initiatives. Here's how the benefits of CRM systems can renew and expand your business! #1. Improve Customer SatisfactionOne of the prime benefits of using a customer relationship management system is improving customer service through storing secure customer data. By using this strategy, all dealings involving servicing, marketing, and selling your products and services to your customers can be conducted in an organized and systematic way. You can also use CRM software to provide better service to customers through improved understanding of their issues. For instance, if you need to resolve an issue for a customer, your representatives will be able to retrieve all activity concerning that customer, including past purchases, preferences, and anything else that might help in finding a solution quickly. In this way, you can use CRM to receive continuous feedback from your customers regarding your products and services. #2. Improve Customer Retention (and Revenue)CRM helps improve customer relationships—but how? By using a CRM software for your business, you will be able to improve your retention rates for existing customers - which often translates into increased revenue for your organization. According to Harvard Business Review, a 5% reduction in your customer defection rate can increase your sales or profits anywhere from 25% to 85%. As far as CRM benefits go, this is a golden one for customer service. By using the data collected, your team can use CRM to proactively address at-risk accounts as well as reach out to satisfied customers at the right moment, to encourage repeat purchases. Download Whitepaper: Why Member Management Software Is Important #3. Better Internal CommunicationFollowing a CRM strategy helps in building up better communication within the company. Sharing customer data between different departments will enable you to work as a team and help optimize the customer experience—one of several major benefits of a CRM platform. Each employee will also be able to answer customer questions on what is going on with their product or service. By functioning as a well-informed team, will help increase the company’s efficiency overall and offer a better service to customers. #4.Optimize Your MarketingAnother important CRM software benefit? It allows you to have a more targeted and cost-efficient marketing program—particularly email marketing campaigns. By understanding your customer needs and behavior, you will be able to identify the correct time to promote your product and use marketing automation offers by a CRM system to your advantage. A CRM system will also help you segment your customers and give you insight into which are the more profitable customer groups. By using this information, you can set up relevant promotions for your groups and execute them at the right time. By optimizing your marketing resources in this manner, you give yourself the best possible chance of increasing your revenue. All this, in turn, will help your sales team greatly. #5.Gain Valuable InsightsHow well is your organization really doing? As CRM software stores all the information in one centralized place, this makes it a lot easier to analyze your performance as a whole. By pinpointing important information such as revenue generated, leads, as well as results of your marketing campaigns, you'll be able to easily generate reports. Better reporting data means you will be able to make effective business decisions and improve revenue in the long run. A CRM Also Maximize Your Business PerformanceA CRM system can help maximize your business performance by increasing your up-sell and cross-sell opportunities. Up-selling is where you offer customers an upgrade or premium products that are related to their purchase. Cross-selling is where you offer complementary products that fall into the same category of their purchase. Both these sales strategies can be easily conducted with CRM software, as you will have an understanding about their wants, needs and patterns of purchase. Having this information in a central database means that when an opportunity arises, your sales team can promote as required. The Bottom LineAs you can see, there are a myriad of great results through customer relationship management that will improve whatever size business you have. Is your organization looking for a membership management CRM system? PerfectMind powers small business and enterprise-class organizations in 21 countries. Click below to learn more about CRM benefits PerfectMind can offer your organization. Don't forget, you can contact us for a demo of how PerfectMind's CRM software can transform your small business! |