In this article, we would like to talk a bit about CRM software. What it is, why it is important, and some of its most important features. If this is a topic that might interest you, stick around for the rest of the article.
CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. Easier said it is software that is used by people to manage their relationships with their existing customers as well as any potential new ones. This helps increase sales and profitability, improve customer service, and also the overall customer experience.
Types of CRM
There are three types of CRM: analytical, operational, and collaborative.
Analytical CRM does exactly what its name implies, meaning it provides you with detailed analytics on your customer behavior. This helps you gain insight into what you have to improve, and what is working on your site.
Collaborative CRM helps unite sales teams, marketing teams, and customer support in companies where they might be either physically or virtually separated. This way, the whole process is made easier since all of them share the same up-to-date customer data.
Operational CRM provides you with tools that can improve the visual aspect of your site, and improve your overall customer experience. But, this one is special since it can even add some additional features that might impress your customers.
CRM Features
Now that we have explained CRM a bit closer, let us present to you a few of the most important features that come with CRM software.
The first feature you should look for in CRM is Contact Management. This is a really useful tool that allows you to manage your contacts in some way. Mostly it is used to group together your customers based on their activity with your brand. This way you can maybe make a group of your most active customers and improve your marketing strategy when you are putting out a new product. This isn’t its only use case, but Contact Management can also make your customers’ experience very personalized, which is a very important aspect of marketing. People do not want to be just a number in your process but want to have a personalized experience. This ensures their engagement and also increases your sales.
Sales analytics is possibly the most important CRM feature. This means the tool analyses your previous campaigns, and combines them with data collected from your social media accounts, polls that you have might be done on your site or social media, and as an end product give you a strong report on what you might need improvement in the future.
Mobile CRM has become really important in the past few years and is definitely a feature to look for when choosing a CRM. This is like having a small CRM right in your pocket. It is a helpful feature if you are often on the go, outside the office, helping you receive any alerts and notifications at any time.
Reports and a Dashboard allow users to view visual and engaging reports about your customers. Real-time data updates greatly improve your reports, and you can even customize them in almost every way possible, choosing which information is important to you and what you require on your reports.
Email client integration is a helpful feature with which you can automate and organize your client list inside of the CRM. This way, when a customer reaches out to you, needing your assistance, you can simply look them up or find information about the problem they are having. By referring to previous or similar interactions you will be able to resolve the situation in the quickest way possible.
Sales data is also a big thing when it comes to CRM. You can organize your sales and customer data into smaller groups in which you will have to spend less time searching for a specific item. This helps you save a lot of time and just makes your work easier.
Document management helps you deal with all of your documents; collecting them, uploading, and sharing them. This allows access for all of your team members, making it much more accessible for everyone, and for sharing documents with them. This is perfect for bigger teams, who have problems with staying in touch and keeping all of their documents in one place.
Workflow automation can help you with those boring tasks that you do over and over again. It will take some time off your hands by automating them, and you not having to deal with them. You can either automate them all the way, but you can also set reminders when the task should be done and handle it yourself.
Conclusion
As you have seen, each CRM will focus on various aspects, so we cannot recommend a single perfect CRM that is ideal for any scenario, because it all depends on what you are looking for, and what your business needs, but the points we have presented should hopefully be a useful guide when you are trying to find a suitable CRM for your case.
