Customer Relationship Management

What is CRM?

CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management which is a software solution that delivers functionalities to help businesses organize and access customer data. It provides an infrastructure which organizes activities, notes and metrics that helps each stakeholder of the organization to easily connect with various departments, from marketing to conversions to customer service, all through one cohesive system. Every user connected to the organization’s network can gain easy access to the client data whenever there is a need. Therefore has revolutionized the way you connect with customers with unparalleled coordination.

Why CRM Software for my Business?

CRM is business software that entitles teams and individuals to intensify their customer relationships through effective communications and sales efforts. It helps to effectively build relationships to deliver future-proof customer experience in meeting their demands instantly. CRMs can be customized to meet requirements that varies from organization to organization. It helps to manage multiple processes in a business simultaneously with tailor-made layout with unique modules, fields and navigation buttons to match the business requirements. It assists in tracking the marketing and conversion opportunities and helps you examine and understand the possibilities and takes your business with you everywhere.

Benefits of CRM for Business

• Improves Informational Organization - CRM identifies, documents and records all the interaction that customers have with the organization. This helps businesses to understand their customers better and provide instant solutions.
• Ensures Enhanced Communication - CRM is cloud-based and never disappoints customers as it makes information accessible from any device. All the customer needs is an internet connection.
• CRM enhances Your Customer Service - With CRM customer support becomes a cake walk. This is because, when the customer reaches out to the company, the executive would be all equipped to retrieve information on the activities like the recent purchases made, priorities and any other assistance that customer requires.
• Automates our day to day tasks - A CRM is developed to automate performance of multiple tasks of the employees. This would help employees to focus more in converting leads and addressing customer issues while the CRM is at their disposal to take care of the details.
• Greater efficiency for multiple teams - The stored information entitles the users of different teams to access emails, phone calls, and calendar details from a secure and easily accessible console. The best part of CRM is that users can same data by multiple teams at the same time by tagging the required team to access the information. This new find, simplifies the work for the teams and gives the possibility to seamlessly work together to enhance the bottom line.
• Delivers accurate analytical data and reports - CRM systems archive data in one place that prompts enhanced data analysis. The tool is developed to easily integrate with plugins and other tools that can generate the possibility to generate automatic reports to maximize your time. This helps the users to make effective decisions to reap the rewards in customer trust and get good revenue in the long run.

Choosing the right CRM for your business?

Choosing the right CRM is a key to any successful business.

Following are the questions to consider to find if it’s the right for your business

• Is it for small business
• Are the any limitations to the number of users
• Is it easy to use?
• Is the API accessible?
• What are the default security features available
• Is it easy to integrate with other solutions that I already use?
• Is the software affordable and fits in your budget?

Following are the factors to consider knowing which CRM is the right for business

Implementation – Implementation plays a vital role. If you are changing or installing a new software to the existing process – there is a phase of implementation that has to be gone through. Understand if factors of implementation like training and testing and the associated cost incurred would be able to fit in your requirements.

User Adoption - The new change should be easy to adopt by the users of the team. Involving the teams in selecting the CRM process helps associates accept the change and the new system. The more the ownership the employee gets in selecting the new tool, the easier it is to adopt to the change

Mobility - Employees in the teams are more adoptive to the newest technology. So it is critical to choose a CRM tool that can be updated regularly and remain current with latest technology.

Customization - Each business process is unique and different and the demands are different too. The CRM you choose must be flexible and versatile to handle your business processes. It should also be adaptive and scalable to the changes in business processes without any replacement.

Compatibility - It is important to choose a CRM that is compatible with other existing applications involved in the process.

Product Demo - As a part of the user adoption, it is important to get access to product demonstration. This would help you understand the strengths and weaknesses of the tool and understand if it would be the right tool for your business needs.

Reporting - While you sit back and enjoy the functionalities of the product, it is important to check on the reporting capabilities that can assist you to successfully thrive amidst your competitors.

Essential features of a CRM Software?

• Contact management
• Reporting and dashboards
• Lead management
• Deals and Tasks
• Campaign management
• Email tracking
• Social media management
• Mobile version