CRM is an integral part of the business. But why has CRM become so imminent for business? What is CRM? What are its benefits and importance? Why is it important to align the marketing, sales, and customer services departments? Why do businesses need to put customers first? And many such questions will answer below.
CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. Managing customer relationships is a company business strategy designed to improve revenues, profitability, reduce costs, customer retention, customer satisfaction, and customer loyalty.
The philosophy of CRM is simple: Customer comes first.
It is about looking at every transaction through the eyes of customers. Your business will deliver a better customer experience, and in turn, it will increase customers’ loyalty towards your company. Let us give some examples:
Studies conducted have shown:
- 86% of the customers have expressed that they are willing to pay more for a better customer experience.
- The customer-centric businesses are 60% more revenue and profit as compared to those that are not
- 1 in every 3 customers will leave a brand or company they like after one negative experience
The CRM software is the solution to bring all information of different departments of the company from different geological locations as well to give one holistic view of the customers in real-time.
Critical is for customer-facing employees like sales reps, marketers, and customer support employees to make a quick decision and provide customer support. They should be able to make decisions regarding up-selling and cross-selling. CRM software enables improvement in the quality of customer communication. The responsiveness of the customer-facing employees improves as they can coordinate well. The collaboration of the sales and marketing campaign management is effective and efficient.
Successful implementation of CRM gives companies insight that helps to grab opportunities to grow business and each customer and provides measuring value.
Importance of CRM for your business:
CRM is very important to businesses because customer experience plays a huge factor in the success of the business. CRM helps you to gain new customers and helps to retain existing ones. The business growth due to changes in CRM shows no signs of stopping.
A study conducted has stated that CRM software solution revenues have overtaken database management systems. CRM has become one of the largest of all in the software markets.
Today competition is highly fierce. There are so many options for products and services available to choose from it makes the customer picky and ultimate boss of you. It is important to have customer loyalty which is a thing of the past in today’s era.
A new product is launched in the market. It takes a few weeks or months before that very product or service has some copies available. It becomes a commodity, and it means that customers switch companies so easily.
Not all customers are equal. A few examples are customers who drain the customer service team and spend little demand more. On the other hand, some customers do more business, buy more products or new products or services, etc., they become strong influencers in their market.
It is CRM that helps the company prioritize marketing efforts and sales, helps in dealing with different customer groups, and personalizes customer experience. The CRM offers companies ways to better understand customer needs and anticipate them. It helps to improve how the product portfolio is offered to customers. It helps to know your customers’ buying preferences, behavior, etc., to help you offer your customers what they would like. Thus offer on target.
CRM is that engine that drives customers’ trust and builds stronger customer relationships.
How does CRM work?
CRM is software, but it is more than just tech.
Technology, however sophisticated, will be successful only when it is guided by business strategy. Business strategy is a guide that will help implement and use CRM to the business, becoming a customer-centric plan.
CRM plays a huge role in business becoming customer-centric, automation, and customer data management.
Let us understand all this in detail:
CRM supports Customer-Centric business strategy
CRM system offers a solution that supports a strategy that focuses on the customers as the center of everything. It is called a customer-centric strategy based on vision, and clear goals of meaningful experience look like.
Customers experiencing value is an integral part of the CRM solution. Customer experience is essential for a business to run successfully.
Every time any customer comes in contact with the business through any of the channels, the customer has a chance to form its opinion. Opinions can be good, bad, or just indifferent. Through time, a collective set of customer experiences will form a picture in the customer’s mind and this form image of the brand and values.
Companies that are serious about CRM are serious about customer experience. They want to maintain a quality customer experience as it recognizes and understands that poor customer experience is a step towards customer churn and good customer experience encourages loyalty.
Auro CRM connects businesses with your customers by providing great insights from business data. Auro CRM helps transform a business into a customer-centric model that supports strategic growth plans.
Customer Data centralization
CRM Software integrates one central database with information across various sales, customer service, and marketing departments. The centralization of data means fewer silos in the organization. Today all businesses have to collect data on customers and prospective customers. CRM helps to achieve customer-centricity.
What data is collected?
Customer information data is collected. It includes phone numbers, last contact made, and addresses. CRM goes beyond the basic information. It can record what is discussed, when is next to follow up, and the status of the open item.
CRM is compliant with rules and regulations regarding the security of customers’ privacy. It is GDPR compliant.
Information collected is used for management, monitoring, and measuring marketing, customer service, and sales activities relative to the customer. This builds great customer loyalty and ensures a better customer experience.
CRM system centralized information regarding customers and silos. The discrepancies and deviation are significantly reduced.
A centralized database helps effective teamwork and cross-department work. The finger-pointing reduces as sales cannot blame marketing, and customer service will not blame sales. Sales cannot blame marketing for the communication gap, nor marketing blames sales for implementation of campaigns, and customer service people won’t blame sales for disgruntled customers.
A centralized database gives the same access to the same customer information across. The customer information is presented in a complete 360-degree view of the customers.
Challenges for a customer-centric organization:
- Functional silos preventing customer data sharing
- Company culture is not aligned around customer wants and needs
- Key technology and platforms missing to manage data
- Customer centricity has not been clearly defined
- The support staff is not equipped for the management of customer issues
- Insufficient expertise in data analytics
- Business is more focused on sales before the customer
360-degree view of the customer:
- Sales funnel status
- Company
- Contact
- Purchases
- Web and content
- Loyalty and support
Automation of Business process
All companies have a customer-facing process and a business-facing process. The Business Facing process is what makes the business run effectively and efficiently, such as planning, budgeting, etc.
Customer Facing Process is about sales, customer service, and marketing. The CRM software solution focuses on customer-facing processes and makes them better by meeting the needs and wants of the customers.
Marketing Automation:
- Customer Segmentation
- Campaign Planning and development
- Campaign Execution
- Project Management
- Event Management
Sales Automation:
- Lead Management
- Accounts Management
- Pipeline Management
- Cross-selling
- Upselling
- Activity Management
Service/ Support automation
- Service Tracking
- SLA Agreements
- Account Inquiries
- Request Management
- Prioritization
- Escalation
Let us now understand the CRM process of automation.
The CRM process starts with a lead- someone you think your business can sell to. This starts with outbound and prospective fills out the web form. This will give you your contact information.
Now you have a lead in the system. The software will take care of the sales process. The CRM system will guide the salesperson to call at the right time or time agreed on. The CRM system saves the interaction and activities of the prospect and records it. And so on, if any other salesperson or support staffs interact, the customer doesn’t have to repeat him or herself.
CRM tracks all lead-related actions and records what has been said and done. CRM becomes a library of all emails, calls, and documents. As interaction with a prospect is initiated, the customer will get instant and automated communication. Information is centralized, access to all relative people is available, which helps out customers.
Sales, marketing, and customer support are helped by a CRM system that automates the business process and automated process to work together. CRM helps define each business process and makes it efficient for a company to have good results.
Customer Facing the Automation Process
Lead Management:
There is the process for Lead to become a customer. Business needs to identify lead, qualify it, and then convert lead into a sale.A lead can come from various channels like Websites, Events, Seminars, Social Selling, Cold Calling, or it can be purchased.
It is important to be clear about which person and department are responsible for logging in the lead because this will determine how the lead will be routed and who and what will be the follow-up. With a clearly defined process and workflow becoming effective, leads can get lost. If leads are lost, it results in frustration, loss in productivity, and bad customer experience.
Process:
Marketing—Prospect—Lead—Customer
Customer Support:
CRM helps to set clear rules for how customers’ support requests and queries will be handled and managed.
Rules define how it will be defined, like first-line support handle or second-line support. Further, it states what resources to use to solve a customer problem. Finally, workflow and rules define CRM system automated the whole flow.
Conclusion
Today, buyers no longer need to tell what they want. Businesses know since customers search on the internet through blogs, social media, and search engines. Today customers want to be treated as Individuals. They want to feel they matter to your business and you care.
CRM system makes a lot of difference between gaining a new customer and retaining an existing one. Customers who feel valued are happy, and happy customers mean repeated business. And let me add improved revenue and bottom lines.
Auro CRM has the experience to help companies implement and integrate CRM platforms, offer ongoing support, and help your business achieve great results from CRM technology. Auro CRM is the digital transformation for your company that will improve customer interactions and relationship management. Your growth and increased ROI for success are leveraged with our Auro CRM.
