What is Customer Relationship Management and Why Your Business Needs It

What is the Purpose of Customer Relationship Management?

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) enables a business to cut costs and increase profits. CRM systems are used to organize, automate, and track business processes like lead generation, marketing, forecasting, sales, ROI measurement, and customer service. Hence, the purpose of a CRM system is to boost integration in these areas and also measure and track the value of customer relationships with the ultimate goals of increased profitability and efficiency.

What is the Function of Customer Relationship Management?

Forging good relationships and keeping track of customers and prospects is important for customer acquisition and retention, which is considered to be at the heart of a CRM’s function. Other key functions of CRM are as follows:

• It is capable of automatically providing you with instant metrics on different aspects of your business. Some programs can also produce reports, and a complete and detailed CRM will allow you to use this data to forecast and plan for the future.
• It allows you to view the complete history of your company’s interaction with a client. This can be treated as a guide on how to approach future customers, or give you a brief glance on how and where things went wrong if an interaction was unsuccessful.
• It allows storing all of your clients’ information in just one place, enabling this information to be easily updated and shared with the whole team. The best systems are also known to instantly save any updates.
• It enables all members of a team to see the exact point when your business last communicated with a client, and also understand the nature of that communication.
• A good CRM will also be integrated with your diaries and calendars, relating important tasks or events to the relevant client. A suitable time to contact a customer and set reminders is also suggested.

Customer Relationship Management Examples

Given below are two examples of how CRM plays an efficient role in an organization.

Wells Fargo

When your organization is accountable for keeping track of the property and money of close to 70 million individuals, you can be absolutely sure that customer service is indeed going to be one of your most vital concerns. This is true in the case with Well’s Fargo, one of the “Big Four” banks in the United States.

Wells Fargo goes to all extremes possible when it comes to connecting with clients as it has realized that many of its customers use multiple banks. This is attained by making use of CRM social media connectivity, so that they can always continue to be in touch and accessible to those who need them. This bank also employs CRM to make sure that all those who approach them with different concerns are quickly connected with someone who can provide a solution.

Bespoke Collection

Bespoke is a small organization that offers fine wines, elegant art experiences, and top-tier memberships. By adopting CRM solutions, they succeeded in continuously showing their customers the kind of personal attention that had defined their organization from the beginning. Bespoke succeeded in identifying the right CRM tools it needed to develop a direct customer connection.

Customer Relationship Management Process

A CRM system provides sufficient insight into a company in order to increase sales, maximize productivity, standardize business processes, and personalized customer experience. A Customer Relationship Management process involves the strategies and activities that companies use to manage their interaction with current and potential customers. Here’s how an efficient CRM system works:

Accelerate growth

Adopting a CRM will allow you to track all your clients and scope out opportunities for cross-selling and up-selling. A CRM will help you to grow sales and also maintain a good customer base.

Replicate best practices

A CRM will allow you to easily guide your employees through best practices allowing them to be more effective. To ensure that all key actions are included, you can develop checklists including key actions for every single phase of a particular process. Using a CRM, you can also give your staff all the tools they require to execute their jobs in a much better manner.

Personalize customer experiences

CRM will help you to differentiate yourself and learn how to win and keep customers and this in turn will define how you grow your business. Consumers are willing to pay more for a better customer experience. The increasing popularity of social media has demonstrated that companies no longer control the customer dialogue. Customers will eventually turn to their peers and friends to help them make purchase decisions.

Maximize your productivity

Organizations presently focus on opportunity management as they have to make it easier to maximize opportunities, provide exceptional customer experiences and develop the business.

Gain insight into your business

While handling any type of business, you always deal with your customers’ data all the time. A CRM with analytics will give you a detailed insight about your customers and help you stay ahead of the curve by tracking trends and events that will allow you to gain all the information you need. Gathering all customer-related information at a granular level will also help you to conduct an analysis and execute business decisions that are driven by intelligence, rather than just guesswork.