Why your business needs customer relationship management?

As technological advances continue to lead to disruption across industrial sectors, companies cannot afford to unfollow the trend. Adopting advanced tech tools and techniques is important for companies to stay focused on approaches that are customer-centric, and keep customers engaged, and ultimately, stay ahead of the competition. Now, one of the most crucial aspects of customer-centric business strategy is Customer Relationship Management (CRM).

Whether a company serves 10 customers or 10,000 customers, customer relationships are of prime importance. Talking about the current market scenario, when customers seek 24*7 support and personalised services, companies need to rethink their customer engagement model to ensure best practices which are complemented by a CRM.

Understanding customer relationship management

The CRM systems are designed with a unique approach - "Put the customer first". It is an organisation-wide business strategy designed to enhance customer loyalty, improve revenues and profitability and reduce operational costs. According to Inc. 2019, ROI on a judiciously implemented CRM system can vary between $2.50 to $5.60 for every dollar spent.

Further, a CRM can be a secret recipe for transforming a start-up or a small business into a vibrant organisation by helping them effectively tackle some common challenges - competition, comparable prices, price and product transparency, specific customer requirements, etc. By helping build efficient and effective customer relations, CRM becomes the most effective way to stand out in the market. Also, the use of a CRM system can help businesses increase sales by up to 29% and sales productivity by up to 34%, as per statistics by Salesforce.

How Companies Will Benefit from CRM System Integration?

The global CRM market size will likely expand at a CAGR of 14.2% from 2020 to 2027, as per Grand View Research 2020-2027 forecast. These estimates highlight the rising significance and increasing adoption of the CRM system. In addition to managing contact list and helping follow up customers in a better way, CRM also helps to target the prospects effectively and track the leads that have higher chances of conversion.

Since CRM software is mainly used for marketing, sales, data management and request processing; CRM applications can be beneficial for any business dealing directly with customers - pharmacy, e-learning school, retail companies, travel agencies, banking institutions, etc.

Challenges that businesses can solve with the use of a customer relationship management system

Customer Targeting

A CRM system is the smartest and most efficient way to know your customers, increase conversion rate and enhance customer satisfaction. This is done by storing customer data in one place, grouping it, enabling analysis by changing task/user status and ultimately, segmenting your audience. This way, you can easily track the purchase history of every customer, identify their needs and preferences, improve targeting, create personalized offers and much more.

Data Storage and Management

Data is one of the most valuable resources of any organisation and also, one thing that companies usually face issues with - data storage, data management and data access. CRM system manages it all, enabling easy organisation and visualisation of data. Also, with all the necessary information at hand, your employees will get more time to focus on important tasks.

Client Handling

The key to handling and effectively managing client/customer relationships is "effective client communication". With an effective CRM software, a business can level-up their customer service as it makes messaging, calling or e-mailing a customer a very easy and quick task.

Activity Tracking

Tracking employee performance, monitoring process within the departments and viewing the history of customer interactions - everything is made easy with a CRM system integration. It further facilitates an organisation with efficient operations and more satisfied customers.

Summing Up

There is a high competitive advantage of CRM system integration as it helps to solve numerous industrial challenges - from reduced manual processes to improved activity management. A CRM application is a good choice for your business even if it is running on a small scale but has a sales department, offers some services or receives many customer queries/requests every day. It will also spare time for more important tasks than manual audience segmentation, checking user base, constant data input etc.

So, don't give second thoughts to your plan of CRM system integration. Get one now!

By RS Maan, managing director and global chief revenue officer, Codleo