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What is CRM?

Everything you need to know about CRM and why it's so important for your business.

What is CRM?

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How exactly does a CRM help?

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Benefits of using a CRM

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Features of a CRM

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CRM for your functional area

What is CRM?

CRM is an abbreviation for customer relationship management, a technology that not only lets you store data of all your customers; it also enables you to keep track of all the interactions that you have made with them, along with helping you manage follow-ups. It doesn’t stop there, a customer relationship management software also allows you to group your contacts, generate reports, send emails, automate your sales processes and a lot more.

How exactly does a CRM help?

As commerce becomes increasingly global and ultra-competitive, businesses that are better able to understand their customers’ needs, create more long-term customers. A CRM allows this by bringing everything together: all of your customer histories and preferences, all of your ongoing and prospective deals, all emails, all notes, all leads, all scheduled and previous appointments; basically all the pertinent information you could need, available within one beautiful interface. This enables sales teams and business owners to be more vigilant when dealing with customer queries, be certain that they never miss an appointment, formulate targeted marketing strategies and most importantly, build enduring relationships with the customers.

A survey conducted on Act! customers revealed that
75% of users believe that their CRM software helped them grow their business.1

Benefits of using a Customer Relationship Management software

"The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer."

Peter Drucker,
Management Consultant

Build customer relationships that last

In the modern technological world, a customer expects a lot more from a company than just a reasonably-priced, high-quality product or service. They want to feel understood and they want to have an engaging, personalized experience whenever they get in touch with the company or vice versa. A CRM captures and stores every customer’s journey from the start till the very end. By knowing their preferences, you are able to understand their needs and by eventually giving them what they need, you get their loyalty in return.

CRM has been shown to improve productivity by up to 34%.

Forbes Magazine

More automation, less manual work

Businesses often execute various processes on a daily basis that comprise of a series of redundant tasks carried out by multiple users. A CRM system can help you automate those processes to save time and drive consistency. From scheduling follow-up activities, to sending email campaigns, and assigning contacts to a new sales rep, automating tasks with a CRM ensures all your team members are following the same process from start to finish and eliminates the need for repetitive manual work.

74% of CRM users say that their CRM system offers improved access to customer data.

RingLead

Collaborate and communicate seamlessly

By integrating data from different teams of a company into a single, concrete reservoir, a CRM sets new precedents for internal collaboration and communication. So, if a customer asked your sales representative to change their email address, the change will also be known to your technical support agent because they share the same database.

Sales increases due to advanced CRM technology range from 10% to more than 30%.

Harvard Business Review

Better pipeline management

By being able to visualize your sales pipelines, you are able to see exactly which deal needs your immediate attention and which deal has gone stale. By periodic monitoring of deals that pass through your pipeline, you are able to identify areas of concern and eliminate them, ensuring a clog-free pipeline at all times.

Every £1 you spend on a CRM system returns a whopping £6.13.

Nucleus Research

Increased revenues

A CRM lets you increase levels of customer satisfaction and retention – happy and long-term customers entail increased revenues. It also lets you save a lot of time by automating important business tasks and enhancing intra-business collaboration – saved time (since time is money) entails increased revenues. Lastly, it lets you create targeted marketing campaigns which ensure that you reach out to the right people – more sales entail increased revenues.

Key features of a CRM

Advanced contact management

Advanced contact management

Rich contact management features allow you to go beyond just storing personal information and keep documents, notes, activities, history, social media updates etc. against each contact. You can also divide contacts into groups or companies to ensure targeted and personalised communications.

Activity tracking and alerts

Activity tracking and alerts

If you want to schedule a meeting with a client, a CRM lets you add a calendar entry and also keeps a track of it. By being able to have a history of all activities associated with a contact and by generating alerts in case certain conditions are met, a CRM lets you stay on top of your responsibilities and commitments.

Opportunity tracking and sales management

Opportunity tracking and sales management

A customer relationship management software allows you to track your opportunities and maximize revenues. By knowing what sales stage you are on, what the deal status is, who the contact person is and what the product offered is, at all times, you are able to prioritize and adapt accordingly.

Reports and dashboards

Reports and dashboards

Only when we see where we lack, can we take steps to improve; similarly, only when we see where we are doing well, can we keep doing the same; a CRM helps you understand this by providing you with real-time metrics and insightful reports for you to stay on the right track. A good CRM system will provide you with built-in reports and graphical dashboards to help you visualize critical business metrics at individual, team, or business level like leads closed by employee, sales pipeline health, top performing products, win/loss analysis, and more.

CRM for your functional area

Whether you work in sales, marketing or customer service, whether you are a small business or a one man band, CRM solutions can help you build long-term relationships with your customers.

Marketing

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Customer service

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Sales

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Small businesses
CRM1
CRM-2
CRM-3
CRM-4

CRM for better marketing

Marketing is not just about creating the perfect campaign; it’s also a lot about reaching out to the right people. With a CRM, you can divide your customer base into segments depending on pipeline stages, geography and other characteristics, allowing you to send customized messages to every segment. Additionally, a CRM offers efficient project management to marketing managers allowing them to keep everything structured and synchronized in a central repository, ensuring visibility and traceability. Lastly, by using a CRM’s automation features like automated emails, alerts, campaign generation and scheduling, you are able to save valuable time.

Enhanced customer experience

With a CRM, you are able to store customer preferences and track all activities associated with them. If a customer tells you that they don’t want to receive weekly email updates, you can simply tick a box against them in the CRM and the emails will stop. If you want to schedule an appointment with a contact, all you have to do is add an entry against them in the integrated calendar and you will be notified just in time so that you are not late. Similarly, by going through call lists and contact histories, you can identify customers that are more interested in hearing from you and ensure that you get back to them before everything else.

Improved sales function

With a modern CRM system, you can streamline the whole sales process. By being able to visualize your sales pipeline, you are able to identify the deals that need to be sped up and the ones that need to be removed from the pipeline. Additionally, you can generate reports to compare your sales from say, this year or this month to those from last year or last month before formulating strategies in the future. By analyzing all communication with a specific contact, a sales agent can identify the ideal time to contact a customer for say subscription renewal or product replacement etc.

CRM for a small business

A CRM software can prove to be an invaluable asset for small businesses. By organizing all the important customer data in one place and by allowing you to track all communications and schedule efficiently, a CRM lets your small business establish a strong brand reputation. By generating reports and by closely analyzing customer actions and interactions, a CRM gives you actionable insights that allow you to enhance the overall customer experience. Additionally, by integrating with other important business software like email servers and accounting tools, it helps you in establishing a sound infrastructure. Lastly, by segmenting your contacts and by filtering out leads with higher interests, it allows you to concoct targeted marketing strategies that almost guarantee increased revenues.

Ready for some CRM action?

Try Act! CRM which comes with the most diverse set of contact management features and adapts to your business needs, giving you the flexibility that you have always craved. If you want to try before you spend, we have got you covered with our 14 day free trial.

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