Customer Relationship Management Explained in Simple Terms

What is a CRM?

Customer relationship management (CRM) is business software that provides automated workflows that enable your employees and teams to spend more time on strategic tasks, such as creating marketing campaigns that convert, analyzing the results from those campaigns, and testing different strategies based on the data. A CRM assists companies of all sizes in the growth, management, and simplification of all business processes.  A good CRM will automate, assist and analyze everything from customer data and interactions to team productivity and deals won and lost.

From the company’s perspective, this relationship encompasses processes relating to sales and services, forecasting, and the study of consumer trends and behavior. Ultimately, a CRM’s goal is to improve and reinforce the client experience.

This software guarantees the smooth running of every phase of the customer’s interactions in order to boost overall revenue. Customer information is utilized by the software through many channels. As a result, a CRM keeps a thorough account of all relevant customer activity and behavioral patterns.

What does Customer Relationship Management software really do?

When the term “CRM” is used, it typically refers to Customer Relationship Management software. A CRM system is a tool that aids in all aspects of managing a business from sales management, user productivity, contact management, and many other tasks. With the use of a CRM system, companies can enhance profitability, optimize operations, and improve customer relationships resulting in improved sales.

CRM systems can also provide your teams and other employees who deal directly with customers the critical and actionable insight regarding every prior interaction with that customer such as the purchasing history and any other information that would allow you to provide the best possible value to that client while giving you the best chance at closing the deal. It’s simpler to cooperate and boost productivity when data is visible and readily available. Everyone working for your organization has access to information about customers’ communications, purchases, most recent payments, and much more.

What Makes a  Good CRM?

At its peak level, CRM software should be the primary tool your organization uses for business growth while at the same time keeping things simple.

Good CRM solutions should have lots of extra features that improve every aspect of your organizational life

such as task and team management based on the system’s capabilities. A  good CRM should also include solid tracking abilities for all interactions with new and existing contacts through the use of email, SMS, phone, social media, chat, and many other common channels.

CRM components include:

• Marketing Automation

At various stages of the lead generation lifecycle, CRM tools with marketing automation features can simplify repetitive operations to improve your overall marketing results. To convert a lead into a paying customer, the system may, for instance, automate email and SMS marketing communications automatically as new prospects enter the system.

• Deal Pipeline Management

Deal pipeline management is the process of organizing, tracking, maintaining, prioritizing, and then analyzing your deals in every stage of the sales pipeline. The purpose of deal pipeline management is to seamlessly move deals through the sales process and ultimately convert prospects to clients.

• Contact Management

Contact management functionality enables users to easily store and access contact information, such as names, email, and phone numbers. These are contact-centric and easy-to-use databases that provide a fully integrated and simple approach to tracking all information and activities related to those contacts

• Task & Team Management

Some customer relationship management (CRM) systems have tools that make it easier for companies to monitor and track their users, employees, and teams’ overall productivity.

Task & Team Management is the ability to monitor all things related to your individual tasks as well as the teams and users that are performing those tasks through their life cycle. Some of what this involves is the planning, testing, tracking, and reporting of each task or team project. Task management can assist either individual users or employees achieve set goals or even teams of people collaborating and sharing knowledge for reaching one common goal.

Benefits of CRM Software

Does your business have a good CRM currently in place? Well, the basic answer is that it’s necessary for any company aiming for aggressive sales growth. Let’s explore some of CRM’s main advantages to better comprehend why it matters for your business:

• Improved Organization

All the relevant data about your customers can be kept and managed in one central location. Additionally, you may access intricate information on your contacts at any given time, as well as track each engagement with them.

• Improved Customer Relationship 

By managing the data for a single consumer, you may get a greater understanding of their preferences and individual needs, allowing you to respond to their issues more rapidly. As a result, you can offer your customers superior service while winning their loyalty.

• Increased Customer Retention  

Customer loyalty may also increase as a result of implementing a good CRM. For instance, CRM analytics should enable you to examine the customer life cycle to determine when and why customer churn occurs. This should also assist you in locating potential problems preemptively so you can implement practical solutions that will enable you to boost overall client retention.

• Task & Team Accountability 

A good CRM gives you the ability to simplify, automate, track and monitor all tasks and team activity thus making your organization more productive. By doing so, you’ll be able to save a significant amount of time and significantly increase your productivity.

Make Intelligent Data Diven Decisions & Make More Money

A CRM software solution that is without the proper human beings managing it, is not worth very much. A CRM should also be intuitive and a truly good CRM software will arrange your data in a way that organizations will be better positioned for maximum growth.

CRM solutions will free team members from tedious, time-consuming tasks. The insights you gain will also help your businesses more accurately forecast, and take the guesswork out of planning for your business future.

Ultimately, the main benefit of automation is that your sales, marketing, and customer success reps can focus more of their attention on what matters the most and that is generating, nurturing, and satisfying customer needs.

CRMs can have a massive impact on some very important metrics. A good CRM will improve conversion rates improve customer retention, and shorten your sales cycle, increase revenue per sale all while reducing associated customer acquisition costs. In other words, a CRM can help you increase sales, become better organized and ultimately make more money.