CRM or Customer Relationship Management is a system that aims to improve the relationship with existing customers, find new potential customers and win back old ones.
This system can be implemented with software that facilitates the collection, organization and management of customer information.
CRMs are no longer just for large organizations with large customer databases, but they are beneficial for small and medium-sized businesses.
Designed to optimize your processes, a CRM can be one of the most powerful management tools in your arsenal. Other than the most popular CRM software available online, like the above-mentioned Hubspot, your business also has the option to design software that is unique to your company. Aside from not having to stick to particular templates and functions offered by generic CRM systems, designing and developing your own software suited to match the needs of the company as well as the client base, can be helpful in many ways. This process is usually called bespoke software development and is possibly leveraged by many companies who wish to have complete control over the software and operations, along with a host of other upsides. Bespoke software advantages are aplenty, and you could consider it as an option for CRM software development, too. No matter which route you choose for your business though, a CRM can definitely add a lot of value. See how the benefits of CRM can renew and expand your business!
1. Reliable Reporting
Data is a necessary part of business and is available on a number of resources: social media, Google Analytics, business software, applications and CRM technology. However, it is not useful until it is classified, cleaned, analyzed and accessible.
Companies of all sizes use social media and rely on metrics on these platforms. Google Analytics is an important tool that many business owners use, at least minimally, to monitor website traffic.
However, you cannot rely on these tools alone. A CRM system helps you to deepen all your data and metrics, including those from other sources.
When your company is dedicated to keeping data clean or error-free, you can use your CRM platform to collect, tabulate and organize that data, which is easy to interpret with reporting features.
This is one of the biggest benefits of a CRM system and extends to other benefits that are available when you have this usable data.
An advantage that CRM platforms have over other customer relationship management systems is that you can see who interacts with your company and how.
For example, a lead has successfully filled out a form on a landing page after seeing a specific ad on social media.
You can also generate reports to see where your opportunities are, how well you are interacting with leads and customers, trends in your sales and customer service efforts, and more.
2. Panels that show data visually
Using a spreadsheet to manage your business means entering or importing data manually, finding out what’s important and creating a graphical way to present that data.
CRM does most of that for you. After investing in the platform, you can take advantage of another CRM benefit, the dashboard. You can set up a dashboard for all individuals in your company who have login credentials for your CRM platform.
For example, a marketing director would be more interested in email marketing metrics, specifically the clickthrough rates for each campaign.
They can set up a dashboard that immediately displays how many people a specific email was sent to, how many people opened it, what the clickthrough rate is, and more.
A sales director, however, would like to know how many calls are made per hour and how many of them have resulted in positive action, such as a meeting or future demonstration.
Dashboards allow users to quickly see the most important data for their workflows without having to dig, filter, sort or generate a report.
3. Reach a personalized audience with automation
As you continuously capture data and insights about your audience, market and industry, you can create more relevant personalized messages and outreach – both in your manual efforts and in your automated campaigns.
This is the advantage of dynamic content and automated messages: you can put people who have an important similarity – for example, an interest in a specific product – in different engagement campaigns.
This feature is a benefit of many CRMs and allows you to set up a series of automated emails that speak specifically to this audience and are triggered by specific actions.
For example, on a travel company’s website, if someone creates a personalized itinerary for a trip to Thailand, instead of sending them generic travel emails, you can start them on a campaign for people who create personalized itineraries for Southeast Asia.
Automation also allows you to pull someone out of a top funnel campaign at any time, based on their actions.
If, for example, the person who was interested in a trip to Thailand finally booked the itinerary, the platform will automatically remove them from that specific campaign to avoid redundant emails and confusion.
4. Proactive Service
Just as the data on your CRM platform can help automate more personalized disclosure across the entire marketing funnel, they can improve sales team outreach efforts or customer service’s ability to help customers.
If a sales team has the knowledge of what matters most to a particular customer, a support representative can address the customer’s needs and solve problems more proactively.
This is a great advantage for a customer service team. With the relevant data available on the panels, there is no need to search for information, so that a representative can focus on what matters.
This saves time for everyone and makes your current and potential customers feel important when sales and service are conducted in a proactive and personalized way.
In addition, you can improve your financial results through greater customer satisfaction and less time to solve any problems.
5. Improved efficiency with automation
Automation is an advantage that CRM platforms offer users and can be seen across the company. Three examples include:
- Reducing the time needed to send emails and feed leads with top of the funnel campaigns.
- Scoring leads using customer parameters that you define, so your teams can better prioritize which Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL) MQL, can transition to Sales Qualified Leads (SQL)
- Handle simple customer questions, such as the status of an order, with chatbots and other automated messages.
6. Simplified collaboration
Your CRM serves as a record of conversations, interactions, needs, notes and contact information. And, if it’s cloud-based, it’s always up to date and your teammates can easily view your records to make decisions.
Everyone who has access to your CRM can work together through this shared record. For example, when a salesperson speaks to a customer and learns more about him, he can fill out certain fields in that person’s record or make notes in his file.
This helps to ensure that the rest of the team is working on the latest details and to the best of their abilities. Marketing, sales and customer service, despite separate sectors, work together instead of working with isolated information.
All team members can collect information and data and work together to provide exceptional service to their customers. The data organized and presented by a CRM platform leads to a better understanding of customers.
Of all the benefits of CRM software, using data and technology to drive a more efficient business is one of the biggest. This helps to serve customers more effectively, leading to better deals.
Conclusion
A good CRM process and solutions can be beneficial for a customer and a better prospecting experience.
Adnia’s Excel CRM template tool provides a spreadsheet for customers of all sizes to move in the right direction, automating segments of their processes, obtaining information about CRM data while using a single multi feature available tool.
Meet Adnia’s Excel CRM template and discover all its benefits!
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