CRM, we need help
How do I manage my business relationships and the data and all the information associated with them?
When it comes to CRM, there are 3 theses:
- CRM in Technology: This is a technology product, often in the cloud, that teams use to capture, report, and analyze company-customer interactions. This is also called a CRM system or solution.
- CRM in Strategy: This is a business philosophy about how customer and leads relationships should be managed.
- CRM as a process: Think of it as a system that nurtures and manages these relationships
What is really the definition of CRM?
CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. What does that mean? The simplest definition of a CRM system allows companies to manage their business relationships and the data and information associated with them.
With CRM, you can store customer and leads information, accounts, leads, and sales opportunities in one central location, ideally in the cloud, so that information will be accessible to many people, in real time.
Just like ubiquitous social networking platforms like Facebook and Twitter, so the CRM system is built around people and relationships. And that is exactly what can be so valuable about a fast growing business.
How does CRM work?
Any business starts with the foundation of great customer relationships. You, the seller, connect with the people who need your product. However, as your business grows, these business relationships are becoming more sophisticated. It’s not just a buyer-seller transaction. You begin to manage countless connections, over time, within every business you do business with. You need to share information between different teams within your own organization that make contact with the same customers.
The CRM system can serve as a vital nerve center for managing the many connections that occur in a growing business. How do you translate the many data streams that come from controlling sales, customers, services, marketing and social media into effective business information?
CRM enables everyone across the business, including sales, customer service, marketing and business development, a better way to manage customer relationships and the interactions they achieve.
Thanks to the visibility and easy access to customer data such as contact information, sales opportunities, service issues and marketing campaigns, the CRM system can give you a clear view of your customers.
With a customizable dashboard that you can easily customize, you can see the customer 360 degrees, all in one place.
- Sales teams can use CRM to better understand their sales channels.
- Sales managers can access reliable information about the progress of individual team members in achieving their sales goals, for example, and see how successful and individual sales teams, products, and campaigns are. Sales results benefit from a reduced administrator and a deeper understanding of their customers, and the ability to spend more time on sales and less time entering data.
- Marketing teams can use CRM to make forecasts easier and more accurate. They can gain clear visibility at every opportunity or potential business and map the overall customer journey from query to sales, giving them a better understanding of the sales plan or future work to come. It’s also possible to include information about public users’ activities on social media — liking and disliking opinions about specific brands and businesses.
- Customer teams can effectively monitor conversations across channels.
A customer can run a problem on one channel — say, Twitter or Facebook — but then switch to email, phone or live chat to solve it privately. Without a common customer interaction platform, communication can be missed or lost in a flood of information — leading to an unsatisfied response from a valued customer.
How CRM Can Affect Your Growing Business?
For small businesses, a CRM system can easily help you put your data in the cloud, making it available in real time on any device. But as you grow, CRM can quickly expand to more sophisticated features to help teams collaborate with colleagues and customers, send personalized emails, gather insights from social media conversations, and get a complete picture of your business health in real time.
Today, growing businesses manage customer relationships and information in a variety of ways. Some use old-fashioned notes and Rolodex. Others store information on your mobile phone while on the move. Others use Excel spreadsheets or Google Docs. While it might help in the short term when you have a small team and are not planning to scale your business, if you want to scale for fast growth, it may be time to consider a CRM system that will help you gather valuable business data in one place and make it available through the cloud and free up your time to focus on delighting your customers, rather than letting valuable insights and information into the cracks.
Although CRM systems have traditionally been used as tools for sales and marketing departments, customer service teams also see great benefits from the CRM platform. Today’s customer has a wide range of channels to choose from when they ask for help with customer service questions — they can start by tweeting and then switching to email or phone to resolve the issue privately. The CRM platform assists service teams in managing customer requests that come from all channels without slowing them down.
Why you should get started with Cloud CRM?
Moving to the cloud from on-premises software, companies are relieved of the need to install software on every single desktop and employee mobile device in their organization around the world. By moving data, software and services to a secure online cloud environment, businesses can increase productivity, reduce costs and increase scalability.
Cloud-based CRM systems mean that every user is working on the same information and is constantly — automatically syncing. Your employees can work from anywhere, including your on-the-road sales team, which is able to update information immediately after meeting with potential clients. In addition, there is no hardware to set up or upgrade, reducing IT costs.
