Before we can understand the business benefits, we need to understand what a CRM actually is. CRM is short for Customer Relationship Management. Originally CRM platforms were used to collect and store customer data and to increase the effectiveness of marketing efforts.
With the rise of SaaS solutions, CRMs have taken on so much more. Today, thousands of businesses rely on CRM platforms to manage a wide range of business processes across the entire customer journey. You can now use your CRM to identify and nurture the right customers, improve productivity, make sense of complex data, and grow your business without even breaking a sweat.
It’s no wonder that 91% of businesses with 10 or more employees use CRM platforms. Any business with the goal of keeping customers happy and thriving in a competitive market needs a CRM. Here are some of the ways your business can benefit from using a CRM.
Give sales & marketing a boost
A CRM is considered a bridge between marketing efforts and sales activities. The marketing team is able to segment your contact database based on demographics, interests, and past engagement with your business. Automated email campaigns tailored to each customer deliver personalised communication to the right contacts, at the right time. Sales can then spend more of their time working on warm or hot leads that are more likely to convert.
Improve customer experience
Most CRMs have a service desk built in, and yes, all this information; the good, the bad, and the ugly are collected so you can accurately see what to keep doing, what to start doing and what to stop doing as a business to keep customers happy and keep them coming back.
From a single CRM interface, you can provide customer service across many channels, ranging from email and telephone support, to live chat, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Twitter, LinkedIn, Telegraph, Google My Business, and many more. With the superpower to be in all these places at once, your business can offer the best customer experience, improve your customer retention and grow your revenue. In fact, a mere 5% increase in customer retention can increase profits by 25% to 95% because returning customers buy more over time.
Connect your data
A CRM collects all prospect data from the start of their customer journey. It achieves this by connecting all your digital solutions such as social media, websites, landing pages, online forms, your eCommerce store, and all digital advertising efforts to your CRM so you can record the activities and report on them.
Discover the original source of the lead, track every single touchpoint, and learn which channels or activities are most effective. Focus on the metrics that matter by connecting marketing, sales, and service data in flexible dashboards. Visualise your data in a way that makes it easy to find answers to some of the most complex business questions. Establish a real-time data sync between your various platforms to ensure that your CRM reflects accurate, centralised data your entire business can rely on.
Automate your business
Business process automation is the most cost-effective way to scale your business. It allows small teams to handle more leads, generate more sales, and service a larger customer base more efficiently. By automating repetitive processes and simple tasks, your team can use their time more productively.
These days, CRM automation solutions go far beyond simple email workflows. You can now easily connect all the tools and apps in your tech stack and execute cross-platform automation from your CRM, or in conjunction with third-party solutions like Zapier or Make (formerly Integromat). Imagine putting your eCommerce store on auto-pilot, automating staff and customer onboarding, or streamlining your accounts payable process from days to minutes without lifting a finger. The possibilities are endless.
