History of CRM
Once upon a time, businesses and consumers weren’t familiar with frequent flyer miles, loyalty programs, and credit card points. But then came customer relationship management (CRM), which made these benefits popular.
Before CRM software development, businesses didn’t have effective personalized relationships with their customers beyond a card in a Rolodex. But in the 1980s, CRM emerged as “database marketing.” Although it wasn’t perfect, it improved throughout the 1990s, offering perks to customers and making customer service an evolving skill.
Today, CRM has evolved into a fully-developed system with advanced tools, software, and online capabilities. It helps businesses maximize their potential, while allowing for customized software and tracking customer behavior.
CRM is especially useful for technology and customer service-focused organizations, such as credit card companies and telecommunications industries. Today’s CRM, in fact can be beneficial to almost any business imaginable. It’s a powerful tool that can be used for customer acquisition, troubleshooting, and encouraging loyalty and so much more.
CRM history has shown that it has empowered consumers to choose which companies to patronize, making customer service a global interaction. As long as businesses continue to prioritize effective management of customer relationships, CRM will continue to evolve and develop.
Why use a CRM?
Sales CRM software is a tool that automates sales force management and analyzes sales promotions. It helps track account history for future sales, coordinate sales across various outlets, and manage call centers. Some software is designed for data warehousing, which merges transaction information with CRM products and provides performance indicators. This software can also be used for opportunity management and forecasting models.
For small businesses, CRM software focuses on customer-centricity, integrating documents, emails, SMS, and scheduling. It prioritizes customer preferences and enhances individual or interactive customer engagement.
Sales CRM software can help companies avoid missing sales opportunities by capturing valuable data points to generate effective leads, improving sales revenue, and reducing marketing costs. This software also allows for lead scoring and automated techniques for assigning qualified leads to the right sales personnel. It provides real-time insights to measure marketing impact on revenue, helping businesses convert more leads into effective opportunities and make informed marketing budget decisions.
Choosing a CRM
Have you considered how integrated business solutions can boost productivity for smaller markets by improving back-office functions like accounting, human resource management, and payroll? Well, CRM applications can do the same for your business as long as you choose the right modules that fit your budget and offer all the features you need.
To get started, you’ll need to assess your current customer relationship workflows and data gathering systems. Talk to your employees to find out where your system strengths and weaknesses lie. Once you’ve completed your needs assessment, you can begin researching and reviewing product reviews and online demonstrations. You can also speak with representatives of various providers to understand what their CRM modules can do for you. But before you begin any of these processes, it’s important to understand what CRM software is and how it can help your small business succeed during challenging business climates.
CRM software provides customers with direct access to your company 24/7 via portals established over the internet. Customers can place, change, or cancel orders, review product information, and find contact information that can connect them to customer service representatives during business hours. They can also find answers to frequently asked questions and leave comments or complaints. The benefits of a well-chosen CRM system are two-fold: it can improve customer satisfaction and reduce frustration, which can lead to impulse purchases and repeat business. Plus, the data gathered by a CRM system can be used to prioritize leads, improve marketing campaigns, influence new product ideas, and help customer service representatives deal with common questions and concerns.
CRM Software That Integrates Well with Your Sales Team
Every Canadian business owner knows that sales drives productivity, so be sure to choose a web based CRM application that is specifically geared towards increasing your sales. The web based CRM software should also increase your company’s visibility to the marketplace and expand your revenues with a service that is not too expensive for you to implement and is easy for your team to use. You should also look for CRM software that is flexible so that as the size of your sales team grows or shrinks the software would be able to accommodate the fluctuations in your size.
A Web based CRM System that Enhances Your Customer Service and Support
There is not very much in business that is more important than customer service. Therefore, it is very important that you choose a CRM system that will enhance and not detract from your customer service. The whole point of a web based customer relationship management application is to make your customer relationships better and not worse. If the software is unduly complicated and your staff finds it difficult to uncover information on customers quickly, especially when they are on the phone, then you know that your CRM software is not helping your customer service. In light of this, make sure that you are only considering the web based eCRM applications that complement your customer service and that specifically advertise their dedication towards improving the customer service of small businesses that use their web based CRM software.
It really doesn’t matter if you are a small or large business. If you want to outrank your competitors and dominate your competition – you need a CRM to manage your manpower (customers and/or employees). With the help of a well-managed CRM, you can reach the right customers, at the right time – thereby enhancing the overall customer experience and retaining your most valued customers.
More and more businesses are deploying CRM systems to manage their human resources. Have you ever wondered why so many giants across the industry are investing many millions after custom CRM development services?
Statistics say,
Using CRM can help improve your sales productivity by 34%
Just 5% increase in customer retention can increase business profits by 25% – 95% & 47% CRM users recorded a significant impact.
86% customers are willing to pay more for better service, and 75% adults say that good customer service makes them love a brand.
The average Return on Investment for using CRM is 8.71$ for every 1$ and 25% sales reps achieve their targets using a mobile CRM.
The probability of selling to a new prospect is 5 – 20% and to an existing customer is 60 – 70%.
The statistics themselves are powerful to prove the fact of the matter that – if you are hungry enough to dominate your competition, you should invest in integrating a well-managed CRM system. If you are yet not convinced, here are some benefits of having a CRM system for your business.
Improved Customer Relations:
One of the prime benefits of using a CRM is obtaining better customer satisfaction. By using this strategy, all dealings involving servicing, marketing, and selling your products to your customers can be carried out in an organized and systematic way. You can also provide better services to customers through improved understanding of their issues and this in turn helps in increasing customer loyalty and decreasing customer agitation. In this way, you can also receive continuous feedback from your customers regarding your products and services. It is also possible that your customers recommend you to their acquaintances, when you provide efficient and satisfactory services.
Maximize Upselling & Cross Selling:
A CRM system allows up-selling, which is the practice of giving customers premium products that fall in the same category of their purchase. The strategy also facilitates cross-selling which is the practice of offering complementary products to customers, on the basis of their previous purchases. This is done by interacting with the customers and getting an idea about their wants, needs, and patterns of purchase. The details thus obtained will be stored in a central database, which is accessible to all company executives. So, when an opportunity is spotted, the executives can promote their products to the customers, thus maximizing up-selling and cross-selling.
Grow Your Business:
Over time, a CRM will provide you with accurate information about your sales performance, while it also provides you with new sales and marketing capabilities and options. You will no longer need to rely on guesswork or gut feel to drive your sales and marketing, you will have solid facts you can use to drive the performance and profitability of your business.
Not just that, there are many CRM development companies that can help you grow your business and market your most amazing product.
Be More Productive by Automation:
The bane of a salesperson is the little tasks that take up most of their time. Imagine the amount of leads that come in on a daily basis. Now, if you have to manually check them and update their status and owner, then half your productive day is gone. CRM systems of today come with features that allow you to set rules and tasks and other features to help you automate these routine tasks and concentrate on what you do best: selling!
CRM takes care of all the small stuff allowing you to focus on the major things, the ones that really matter the most.
Final words:
CRM software can prove to be a turnaround for your business if implemented in a right way. With the help of a CRM, you can increase customer loyalty, maximize customer retention ratio, and build an unshakeable brand.
