What is CRM?
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is as the name says, a system to manage relationships with customers. Customers can refer to past, current and potential. A CRM is a tool to organize and keep track of all history with customers so that the necessary information is grouped into one convenient and central place. A CRM tool has the ability to organize all the important information of leads and customers such as name, email, phone number, so that you can easily locate and identify each customer and reach out as needed.
Components of CRM
The purpose of CRM is to gather all customer data and centralize them into one software. As CRM tools began to see an increase in popularity, more functions have been added over time. The most common element from these improvements is the function of automation. CRM tools give businesses the advantage of automating many services, making it much more efficient for businesses to keep in contact with customers and leads, which can increase conversion rates if used effectively.
Some important CRM components to note are:
Marketing Automation: Many aspects in marketing are the same for every client. Whether it is to make that first contact with new prospects or send follow up emails to ensure potential customers are actively engaged, marketing has repeated tasks for managing leads and customers. With CRM tools, you can easily automate many of these customer service processes to increase productivity. Tasks like sending lead prospects promotional marketing materials via email is a great example to highlight the use of CRM tools.
Workflow Automation: Every company has mundane, day-to-day tasks that are simple and repetitive. By automating these tasks, companies can save a significant amount of time for their employees. CRM systems allow businesses to streamline these tasks that can help promote more efficient use of time for employees. As a result, employees can spend less time on tedious jobs and spend that time fulfilling other critical marketing responsibilities.
Lead Management: As CRM gathers all information and documents from business relationships, it is a great tool to manage sales leads. The system allows you to keep track of every new lead and ensure prospects are turned into actual customers. CRM systems also have the benefit of linking special lead generation tools so that you can once again, centralize all information. For example, implementing a chatbot onto your website helps generate more leads for your business and these leads once contact information is gathered, will be stored into your CRM system. From there, you can easily identify if these leads were generated from the chatbot and reach out.
What Does CRM Do & Why Is It Important?
A CRM system helps businesses build relationships. It is an excellent tool for companies to stay connected with their customers as well as ensure lead prospects are transitioned into actual customers. As CRM streamlines processes into one database, businesses are ultimately making investments into increasing conversion rates and improving profitability. CRM systems help gather customer information such as their name, phone number, email, company website, social media and more valuable data. By actively using CRM, you are ultimately storing your company’s information and history of customer relationships into one place so that over time, you can better understand your relationships and identify methods to make improvements in your business operations.
Who Should Use CRM?
Most businesses have gradually transitioned into incorporating CRM systems into their business. However, there are still many small businesses that utilize traditional and inefficient methods to track customer relationships. A key indicator of when businesses should progress into using CRM softwares is simply business growth. Once businesses start experiencing rapid or exponential growth, considering special CRM tools is highly beneficial and recommended as businesses are now required to make more efficient use of their time to run their business. In addition, having one central place to store all customer information is extremely valuable for businesses to stay organized and keep record of important customer-focused services.
Transitioning from traditional CRM to an automated CRM system can be challenging, but highly beneficial in the long run. If you think your business is ready for this growth opportunity, check out our Lead Generation services and feel free to reach out to us any time to learn more!
