Customer relationship management (CRM) is a business strategy that elevates revenue, and therefore profitability, while improving customer satisfaction and commitment. CRM technologies facilitate business strategy, and recognize, catalogue, and manage customer relationships – both virtually and in person. CRM software solutions provide the functionality to organizations within four key business segments:
- Sales
- Marketing
- Customer Service
- Digital Commerce
The principal objective of any CRM is to accomplish the balance between enabling value to stakeholders, and providing value to business customers — so mutually beneficial business relationships can grow and develop.
What are the Key Characteristics of a Reliable CRM?
A CRM is an essential business activity for any prosperous business. The following section outlines three key characteristics of a reliable and dependable CRM system:
- Simple Integration: Deploying a CRM should not require undue effort or excessive upfront work – especially with the CRM cloud options available today. A reliable CRM will allow an organization to import their customer business data quickly and efficiently from existing databases sources. This enables organizations to utilize swiftly their newly procured CRM for efficient customer relationship usage.
- Simple and Easy to Use: When deciding between CRM solutions, ensure one is chosen that is easy to use, has a natural end-user interface, comprehensive documentation, and excellent end-user support. The time spent training your workers on how to use the new CRM should be as short as possible, but with sufficient end-user support on tap if required.
- Versatility and Flexibility: It is crucial that whatever CRM is eventually chosen is readily adaptable to your current and future business needs. A reliable CRM solution will potentially be required to grow alongside the business, and it should include various business modules and features for seamless business integration.
The Different Types of CRM Solutions
The different types of CRM solutions are classified as either:
- Operational CRM
- Analytical CRM
- Collaborative CRM
Operational CRM
An operational CRM can streamline and automate sales and marketing processes, as well as key service support processes. It permits a central role to generate business leads and then turn them into business contacts within the CRM solution, while collecting all essential details during the process.
For sales, an operational CRM enables existing customers to be managed efficiently and permitting new ones to be acquired. The various CRM modules integrate contact and lead management data adjacent to sales forecasting information. It is most efficient when organizations focus on new business opportunities and favor the automation of associated repetitive tasks.
For marketing, an operational CRM helps those organizations when offering new products and services, and provides diverse channels ways of communicating with existing customers. In addition, marketing campaign management is integrated, managed, and regulated. The service automation functionality enables quality customer service to transpire, such as managing call management and monitoring processes.
Analytical CRM
Data acquisition and subsequent analysis are the primary functions of an Analytical CRM. For example, analyzing key customer data provides decision-makers with more measurable insight and understanding regarding the current business state. Accordingly, crucial business decisions can be performed far more efficiently and with a higher successful outcome occurring.
Sales and customer service employees can use the analytical CRM information to promote and improve customer relationships. Analytical data can be gathered from various channels and then examined in a structured and methodical manner, enabling organizations to establish relevant business strategies and effectively analyze the eventual KPIs.
Collaborative CRM
While sometimes connected with a Strategic CRM, a Collaborative CRM can readily share relevant customer information between diverse business units such as marketing, sales, customer support, and technical support .
The marketing team can use feedback from the support teams to connect with targeted customers, relating to certain services and products that they offer. Without a Collaborative CRM, the ability to perform this process would usually not occur as key customer data is not shared or available between different business units. The aim of using a Collaborative CRM is to improve the overall customer experience, grow customer loyalty, and increase sales.
CRM Solutions – The Bottom Line
Both CRM and cloud computing have transformed how organizations are approaching business relationship management. The most significant contemporary development regarding CRM systems has been their transformation into the cloud. Now liberated from the requirement to install CRM software on numerous desktop computers and mobile devices, global organizations realize the crucial benefits of moving their critical business customer data, and associated business services, into a secure online cloud environment.
If you’re a business owner looking to take your company to the next level, contact Empowered Pulse for a free consultation! We’d be happy to discuss how we can help you build better relationships with your customers.