Customers are the beating heart of any business; they are the lifeblood that keeps the organisation running. Without customers, there would be no need for businesses to exist. This is why it is so critical for businesses to have a strong customer service presence; without it, they risk losing their most valuable asset – their customers.
A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform allows you to understand your customers and their needs better. Armed with this information, you can provide them with the top-level service they expect and deserve.
In short, a CRM platform is critical to the success of your organisation because it helps you better understand and serve your customers. CRM works hand-in-hand with sales enablement resources to enable customer retention and generate sales.
What are Customer Relationship Management platforms?
A Customer Relationship Management platform (CRM) is your one-stop-shop for tracking, managing, and improving your customer relationships. A CRM will give you a complete view of your customers by tracking their interactions with your company, whether that’s phone calls, emails, meetings, or social media interactions.
This data is then used to help you improve your sales and marketing efforts. In other words, a CRM system helps you better understand your customers so you can sell them more stuff—and do it more efficiently.
Not all CRMs are created equal
When choosing a CRM platform for your organisation, you must select one that will support your business needs and maximise your revenue operations. A CRM system can be the difference between a profitable and struggling organisation – it can help to improve customer satisfaction levels, increase sales and revenues, and streamline processes.
There are various factors to consider when selecting a CRM platform, but the ease of use, functionality, and ability to integrate with other platforms and processes are the key feature to consider first.
CRMs are necessary for success
Customer relationship management (CRM) platforms are critical for the success of businesses. Businesses can more effectively manage their interactions, identify opportunities, and improve customer service by automating and centralising customer data.
Let’s examine five reasons why a CRM platform is critical to the success of your organisation.
1. Manage the sales process
A CRM platform can help streamline sales processes by providing a centralised place for all customer information. This includes contact details, communication history, and purchase history.
Having this information readily available can help sales teams identify and follow up on potential leads, as well as nurture existing customers. In addition, a CRM platform can automate various sales tasks, such as sending out price quotes or thank-you notes after a purchase.
This can allow sales staff to focus on more high-value activities, such as building customer relationships and closing deals. Overall, a CRM platform can be critical to the success of an organisation by helping to manage sales processes.
2. Provide data and insights
A CRM platform can provide your organisation with data and insights that will improve your business processes and strategies and help you understand your customers better.
The data from your CRM platform can be used to track customer behaviour and trends and then use this information to improve your marketing and sales strategies. For example, you can use the data to target specific customers with relevant marketing messages.
A CRM platform can also help you to improve your internal processes. For example, you can use the data to track employee performance and pinpoint areas where there is room for improvement. This information can be used to implement changes that will improve the efficiency of your organisation.
Overall, a CRM platform is critical to the success of your organisation because it provides data and insights that can be used to improve customer relationships, increase sales, and boost efficiency.
3. Helps go-to-market teams be more efficient and effective
A CRM platform is critical to the success of your organisation as it helps go-to-market teams become more efficient and effective. By automating repetitive tasks, a CRM platform enables organisations to focus on their core competencies and allows them to allocate resources better.
Additionally, a CRM platform provides visibility into the sales pipeline, which is essential for forecasting and planning purposes. Organisations that fail to implement a CRM platform risk losing out on potential revenue and market share.
4. Enable organisations to understand their customer better
Organisations need to understand their customers to succeed in today’s business world. They need to know who their customers are, their needs and wants, and how they can best be served. A CRM platform can help organisations achieve this by providing valuable insights into their customer base.
A CRM platform enables organisations to obtain a 360-degree view of their customers. This data can be used to categorise customers based on their needs, behaviours, and preferences.
By understanding these factors, organisations can provide targeted communications and offers that are more likely to resonate with customers. This connection increases the likelihood that customers will purchase from the company.
5. Helps organisations to manage customer relationships better
A CRM can help a company better manage customer relationships in many ways, starting with providing a 360-degree view of each customer. This lets organisations see all customer interactions with the company, allowing them to provide more personalised service.
Additionally, a CRM can automate and streamline processes such as lead generation and nurture, customer onboarding, and contract renewals. This saves time and money and allows organisations to focus on more strategic tasks.
Finally, a CRM can help organisations to better measure performance by tracking key metrics such as customer satisfaction levels and Net Promoter Score. This information can be used to inform the decision-making process about where to allocate resources and how to improve the customer experience.
What CRM should you use?
When deciding on the right CRM for your company, knowing what you need and what will work best for your business is important. Before choosing the right CRM for your company, you need to know some things.
You must know your customer
To make the best decisions for your organisation, you need to know your customer. This is especially true when it comes to selecting a CRM platform. Your CRM platform should be based on a deep understanding of your customer’s needs, wants, and behaviours.
Organisations that don’t take the time to get to know their customers often end up with a CRM platform that doesn’t fit their needs. This can lead to frustration and inefficiency and can even cause customers to take their business elsewhere.
You must map out the customer journey
The next piece of the puzzle in choosing a CRM is mapping out your customer journey. This means identifying all the steps a customer takes, from first learning about your product or service to becoming a paying customer or client.
Once you know the steps in your customer journey, you can start to match those steps up with the features and functionality of different CRM platforms. This will help you narrow down your options and find the best CRM for your business.
You should map out the internal sales process
When choosing a CRM, you must map out your internal sales process. By doing so, you will better understand what features you need and how to use the CRM to its fullest potential. By mapping out the stages, you can also improve your sales process and make it more efficient.
You need to identify the data and insights your teams would like
It’s important to understand what you would like your CRM to do for your organisation and what data and insights you need before making a decision. The best way to do this is by identifying the specific needs of your sales, marketing, and customer success teams.
Once you know what everyone needs, you can start evaluating which CRM platform will work best for your company.
Always consider the customer lifecycle
Depending on where you are in your customer lifecycle, the Customer Relationship Management platform you choose will have different features and functionality to support your business needs.
For example, if you’re just starting out, you might not need all the bells and whistles that a more established business requires. Conversely, a business that’s been around for a while might need a CRM with more comprehensive features to keep up with its customer base.
And don’t forget, you need to ensure that whatever CRM you choose can integrate with any other features and platforms you may want to use.
Where are you in your CRM journey?
As we’ve seen, a Customer Relationship Management platform is key to the success of any organisation. Businesses can improve communication and target marketing efforts by automating and streamlining customer data, resulting in improved customer retention and satisfaction. With so many benefits, it’s clear that a CRM platform is essential to the success of any business.
Whether you’re just starting out with your CRM platform or frustrated with your old one and ready to start shopping for a new one, Ellivate has the answers you need to get you on the winning track. Contact us here if you’re ready to go to Next Level Efficiency.
