Last Updated on 12/03/2021 by TheDigitalHacker
What is CRM?
CRM starts for Customer Relationship Management. It’s a system that allows you to reduce and optimize the work of your team.
In the olden day’s businesses used excel to store their data for marketing, sales, queries and questions and etc. Management and keeping everyone’s file used to be tedious and there used to be a lot of
A CRM solves that issue by centralizing the information in a single space and offers a bunch of advanced features that allows businesses and teams to connect to the customer easily, manage the permission of specific data easily and project the data to only team decision-makers.
CRM is now taking a lead to integrate marketing, helping companies do analysis on marketing, making online advertising easy right from a single dashboard. If you are a business owner, you should consider learning more about CRM as it changes and can improve the way you do business and customer management and interaction in general.
Types Of CRM
There are a variety of CRMs in the market. However, no single CRM may answer all the challenges that affect your business. It is therefore advisable that you select a tool that provides a common platform known as operational CRM. This is good for marketing, sales, and support units.
On the other hand, analytical CRM can help you with customer data analysis such as the analysis of purchasing trends, data mining among other business needs.
The other type of CRM is collaborative CRM. it facilitates information sharing with internal and external stakeholders. By making communication and information sharing seamless, partners or business teams find it much easier to run promotional campaigns and the impact is much bigger.
How to choose a CRM?
Choosing the right CRM is a process that requires a clear understanding of your need and the future need of your company before you can finally decide on the right tool to use.
As customer relationship management has become important, it is very important that you consider some of the most important features you must have in a CRM tool.
As per Creatio CRM, the decision to purchase a CRM system should be backed up by an informed decision. I hope that in this article, we took you through the very crucial factors to consider choosing CRM.
What is your business?
By understanding what your business needs, it becomes easier to decide the right CRM to bring. Remember, the best CRM labeled in the market may not be the right one for your business but the one that fits and fulfills your needs can.
What Features Should You Consider?
The market is full of products having a lot of features and you being a newbie in the market may get overwhelmed with the options.
Buy a solution not a problem that takes years of learning. Choose a company that understands your needs and pain points and someone who just sells you the stuff and leaves you to figure things on your own.
Coming back to the topic, When selecting a CRM software to use, there are some other very important features to consider.
Usually, vendors have these features offered in the products they display. However, just check that the software you buy has the following capabilities:
Important to consider
- Usability
- 3rd Party Integration
- Customization
- Collaboration
- Security
- Help and support
Important Features
1. Automation tools: The tool should support sales, processes, and workflow automation.
2. Lead management: this tool helps with lead management. This begins with prospecting and ends when the leads are converted.
3. Mobile Apps: these are tools made for Android or iOS devices and help you to access data remotely while on the go.
4. Social Media Integration: Social media is vital and when a customer experiences anything bad, this is the place where he shows his frustration.
Having a sensitive and fast tool is not just recommended but the need of the hour to maintain brand reputation.
Brands that ignore customer feedback on social media have very low chances of becoming a big internet brand as everyone across the globe reads the content.
Here is one of the most powerful businessman says
Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.
– Bill Gates
5. Collaboration: Having a common issue that requires multiple team members to resolve is very common and one of the most important things to consider. Generally, almost all CRMs have this in general but always consider cross-checking before you make the purchase decision.
6. Contact management: This helps your business to properly organize, store and manage contacts of your customers, external contacts, associates and team members and etc easily.
7. Campaign management: An advanced CRM can help you do marketing easily. They also have mass mail campaigns and personalized email campaigns to receive feedback from clients and customers.
8. Dashboards and reports: Dashboard provides real-time reports on customer behavior, trends, and even market trends in a few clicks.
9. Email tracking: Provides visibility and analysis over email campaigns done to your audience.
Businesses face numerous unique challenges. From poor client communication, long sales cycles, missing customer data, inability to retain loyal customers to poor agent performance visibility, you need a CRM system that can solve the problems your business faces.
The Cost
Every dollar counts. This is one of the major considerations when it comes to choosing a CRM to use. If you are starting from a low capital end, it is best to get a free CRM to begin with. CRMs have however become more affordable. The price depends on the deployment methods and subscription plan.
The Vendor?
Vendors or software companies are as good as the software itself. Confirm that the company has an interactive customer support team, they offer related customer training and are able to provide insights for business development and growth.
Check out software directory profiles and verify their reputation. Also, verify their trustworthiness and credibility to ensure you are only dealing with legitimate companies with quality products.
In addition, you can also talk to others about their experience with the software you are about to purchase. Positive customer feedback or reviews on company sites will be able to greatly influence your decision to use or avoid a product.
With access to this guide in the world of CRMs, you are better placed to choose the right and the best tool to manage customer interactions with your business.
