What Is CRM System And How May Your Business Benefit From It?

A customer relationship management (CRM) system is an efficient way to achieve it. And apart from relationship management, CRM systems also contribute to the sales increase by up to 29% and sales forecast accuracy by 42%, according to Salesforce. So if you start a large business, want to grow and gain loyal customers, you need to know all the advantages of CRM. That is what our article is about, stay tuned!

What Does A CRM Do?

Let’s focus on what CRM is and its goals. CRM system helps optimize business processes due to interaction with potential and existing customers. Not all entrepreneurs use this technology, but it is worth paying attention to. 

Indeed, software cannot replace people when it comes to communication and social interaction. But CRM systems don’t replace employees, its main objective is to improve relations with existing customers, lead potential customers to purchase stage, and increase the efficiency of employees.  

Types of CRM

To choose your CRM, you need to determine what type of CRM is appropriate for you. There are four widespread types — operational, analytical, collaborative, and combined. 

• Operational CRM.

  This type simplifies the communication process with customers, systematizes data about requests and bargains, issues invoices, shows reminders about calls, automates workflow, allows managers to control employees’ work, etc. Operational CRM in business helps increase customers’ loyalty during direct contact.

• Analytical CRM.

  Unlike operational systems, analytical CRMs not only register the entire cooperation history but also analyze sales — where customers come from, what causes a deal-breaker, how customers are distributed across sales funnels. On the whole, analytical CRMs make it possible for employees to analyze the customer base and sales and build an efficient strategy.

• Collaborative CRM.

  This type focuses on the collection of customers’ feedback. Using collaborative CRMs, enterprises may adjust the range of products, price policy, and customer service processes. Thus, you may always provide customers with a high-quality level of services. 

• Combined CRM.

  It includes components of various CRM types. For example, operational CRM with analytical features (customer and sales reports, the performance of managers), as well as with integrated chat systems or social messengers for communication with customers.        

How CRM Helps Your Business Benefit And Solve Common Issues

Nowadays, when high market competition rules the world, companies that manage customer relationships are more likely to succeed than companies that ignore CRMs. Systems provide businesses with a large number of benefits and trouble-free solutions. What problems does CRM solve? Let’s spell everything out.  

Efficiency Growth

Many manual processes get automated, and it contributes to the high impact of work and the overall performance of a company. CRM allows employees to move away from using a bunch of different tools since it has lots of these tools integrated into one system. Besides, intercommunication between departments becomes more productive, and managers may evaluate a general efficiency level. 

Automation

Each company has some repetitive tasks that take much time. Many CRM systems help automate these tasks that will be implemented autonomously. Also, systems have reminders that notify employees about deadlines or some specific actions to do. There is no need to keep everything in the head and your employees won’t forget about important events. 

Who Owns The Data, Owns The World

All information about each customer is stored in one place, and data access may be shared with other employees on demand. Cloud CRMs ensure safe and well-organized data storage about customers and access is allowed only for authorized users. It both simplifies workflow and makes it more dynamic, so CRM systems prove its right to exist.  

Planning And Monitoring 

Do you have a problem with proper task control? Using CRM, you and your subordinates may plan and control tasks transparently and straightforwardly. In case any problem or failure occurs, it is easy to figure out the reason, when exactly it happened, and whose fault it is. In the future, it will be possible to prevent such situations due to CRM capabilities. 

Benefit For Marketing

One more issue is solved — it becomes possible to monitor each stage of the sales funnel, and it is clear how one or the other marketing activity impacts on a business stream. CRM system allows the sales department to detect the most profitable groups of customers and target them actively. It also helps optimize the usage of available budgets.

Integration With Other Products 

As one CRM system cannot include all the existing relevant tools, many systems enable integration with services like accounting software, email marketing tools, chats, etc. CRM makes the organization of business processes as seamless as possible, and a major part of work may be implemented on the basis of a single platform.   

Availability 

CRM system is available as any other modern software — you may use it via mobile, desktop or tablet. If it is an installed app, you may even work offline. However, cloud CRMs are more convenient since it is updated permanently, and you may access it from any point of the world.

Better Customer Relations

First-rate customer service — this is one of the greatest benefits of the CRM system for a B2C company. Departments that work with customers directly (like a sales department) always have all essential data about each customer, their preferences, purchase history, and so on. It leads to customer loyalty increase, high retention rate. Your company gains a profit!

Wrapping up this section, we would like to add that existing off-the-shelf CRM systems are unlikely to meet your business requirements entirely. So you need to think about custom CRM system development that will be created for your specific business processes to solve your business problems. 

Our specialists are always ready to assist you in the development process and build a top-notch design. Designers at Cadabra Studio have extensive experience in the creation of UI/UX design for CRM systems. You just need to get in touch with us. If you want to know how long it takes to build and design your future product, hurry up to read our relevant article. 

Examples of Companies Using CRM

Many companies use CRM systems successfully. We would like to list a few well-known brands that use customer relationship management systems and describe the way they do it. 

• Apple.

  Perhaps, everybody knows what Apple ID is. Users create IDs when they start using Apple devices and it allows them to synchronize all data. Requirements managers at Apple use a custom CRM system where a database of IDs is stored. They know all the preferences of customers to provide them with precise offers and top customer service.

• Lufthansa.

  A flagman German airline uses CRM along with the Miles & More program to improve return business rates. This program makes it possible for the Lufthansa sales department to offer customers the type of services they expect for at the moment. Also, the program offers rewards for loyalty based on each customer’s travel frequency.

• Amazon.

  This giant corporation needs no introduction. And such a large business cannot exist without CRM systems to provide millions of customers with first-rate service. As companies above, Amazon monitors preferences to promote interesting products, emails customers, offers incentives via CRM. Also, Amazon CRM helps employees manage pricing and loyalty program.

  This article may be interesting for you: How to Build a Website like Amazon

That is everything you need to know about CRM systems and how they can be used to the benefit of your business. CRM system may solve many issues to let your business succeed and improve customer relations as well as retain them. So think about the development of your CRM that fits your business perfectly. And our goal is to help you achieve it!