Why Customer Relationship Management Software is the Best Gift For Your Business

If you asked us to give you one reason why customer relationship management (CRM) software is a must for 2021, we’d say “improved profitability”. And that is an excellent reason in itself—but, it’s not all.

There are heaps of benefits that your business stands to gain by investing in a proper CRM system today!

A CRM System Will Help You to Start the New Year Poised For Business Growth

About Customer Relationship Management

Though the name sounds self-explanatory, many people misunderstand Customer Relationship Management (CRM).

Some naively assume that good-old, courteous customer service is CRM. Others may realise that CRM entails a great deal more—but they mistakenly place all the responsibility on marketing’s shoulders.

What is Customer Relationship Management?

Customer Relationship Management (CRM):

• Is a business function. It is a combination of strategies and processes carried out throughout the organisation.
• Goes beyond communication: it manages ALL interactions.
• Targets past, present and potential customers.

What goes into CRM?

CRM strategies and process should culminate to:

• Centralise customer data,
• Streamline and facilitate omnichannel customer communication.
• Share customer records internally, helping to
• Improve interdepartmental communication for
• Enhanced customer service and support.
• Collect customer behaviour data for analysis to
• Apply learnings from customer data to anticipate future needs, and
• Further improve business processes and service delivery.

The Biggest Wins: More Sales and Better Customer Retention

When you look at the role of CRM and what it enables your organisation to achieve, it’s not hard to see why you need to implement CRM in your business. However, in case you missed it:

When all things are considered, though, CRM seems like a momentous undertaking. How do businesses carry out their core functions and execute CRM?

Expert CRM lies in Automation

CRM automation software separates the heavy-hitters from the lightweights.

Better Organisation

A digital CRM holds your customer database (replacing outdated, manual spreadsheets that are emailed—and mauled—from department to department). Everyone in the organisation has access to the same, centralised information where updates reflect in real-time.

What’s more is that most CRM platforms can integrate with other software such as your email, accounting and even warehouse management software. That way, you only need to go to one place to see a customer’s status and purchasing history.

Users can filter and view the information that’s pertinent to their workflow and update other stakeholders along the way.

Pro Tip: Excellent input guarantees excellent output. Or in layman’s terms, you’ll get what you give. Make sure that information is captured uniformly, keep your database scrubbed at all times, and gather as much information as you can. Finally: Segment, segment, segment!

Increased Productivity

Everyone in your business gets on with their work efficiently.

With all your information centralised, and with easier interdepartmental communication, no hours are wasted. There’s no scrounging to find the information you need to respond to a query. Better yet, anyone in the organisation can do it—what a pleasure for customers. No getting passed from person to person or lengthy waits.

You free up resources to focus on critical functions.

With the right CRM system, you can automate messaging to clients.

• Nurture leads with timely drip email campaigns
• Welcome new clients with a zero-friction onboarding email sequence.
• Set up chatbots to send relevant content in response to keyword triggers.

Your CRM will support your customers while taking the burden of time-consuming correspondence off sales, marketing and support alike. Giving your internal teams more time to focus on selling to warm, qualified leads, analyse customer interactions to refine the customer journey, and dedicate sufficient time to solving more complex support queries respectively.

Laser-Focused Target Marketing (And Record-Breaking Sales)

Wield the power of centralised, organised consumer behaviour data. Create a rock-solid, hyper-targeted marketing campaign that converts more customers than you ever thought possible!

This is why it is essential to capture as much information about your customers as possible. Use your CRM to learn and capture how they entered your funnel, how long it took to convert, why they converted, what they’ve bought and what drives them to purchase (with automated customer research surveys). Use the data to craft a killer digital marketing campaign that speaks to the very heart of your audience.

Unequalled Sales Opportunities: Cross-Selling, Upselling, Renewals and Referrals

Did we mention, “sell more”?

A CRM system helps your organisation to provide an excellent customer experience, and happy customers are priceless.

• Happy customers don’t leave. They will readily renew their services.
• Happy customers trust you, so they need little convincing to spend more with you.
• Happy customers want other people to be happy too. So, they will endorse your business to others.
• Happy customers are low-maintenance. Need we say more?

Oh, and revivals

It’s not enough to sell more to your existing base AND enjoy easier customer acquisition. A robust CRM solution will also help you to re-engage past customers and revive old leads (remarketing).

Remember, you’re wiser now than you were before because you’re armed with way more information about what makes your customers tick.

Can you afford to wait?

If you don’t have CRM software in place, or you suspect that you’re not utilising what you have to its full potential—there’s no time to wait. Let’s boost your Customer Relationship Management today!