6 Key Questions About Custom Relationship Management

By: Rick Cohen

CRM systems are becoming more and more popular, but not all business owners understand how they can benefit their company. This blog post introduces you to CRM systems, why they’re important and how you can benefit from using them in your business.

1. What Does Customer Relationship Management Refer To?

Customer Relationship Management refers to the area of strategies, tactics, and technologies used to manage and analyze information gathered from your clients. This information includes purchase history, buying preferences and analyzing your customer's problems. The goal of a customer relationship management system is to analyze this data and distill it into practical actions your company can take to improve your relationship with your clients.

CRM systems can pull data from multiple points of contact. This can include your website, phone, live chat programs, emails and social media conversations. By analyzing your audience, you make it easy to find similar people to market to in the future.

2. Why Are CRM Systems Important?

CRM systems are important because they create an opportunity for your business to improve. Manually analyzing customer interactions and extrapolating areas for improvements is something that would take a person hundreds of hours to do. CRM software makes it easy to identify gaps in how you’re serving your customers and quickly find ways you can improve.

CRM systems are also important because they make interacting with your audience much easier. CRM software can be integrated with your existing marketing and sales processes to contribute to making them more efficient. Using a CRM system is a convenient way to keep all your customer data in one easy to access and secure place.

3. What Kind Of Businesses Can Benefit From A CRM System?

The beauty of CRM systems is they can be applied differently depending on your business. For companies with long standing relationships and no classic sales focus, a CRM platform would be excellent for collecting, organizing and monitoring your customer information. In this situation, a CRM system is an excellent tool for maintaining relationships with your customers.

B2B businesses can also benefit from customer relationship management systems. When selling business to business, it’s important that your marketing, sales and customer service departments are in sync. Using a CRM system conveniently organizes your customer data and makes it simple for all your departments to access. Organizing with a CRM software creates fewer miscommunications, and makes data easier to track.

4. How Do CRM Processes Work In Sales?

CRM software is an excellent tool for your sales team. CRM systems let your sales team access complex analytics on your customers that makes lead generation a much easier task. CRM systems also make managing leads and tracking interactions with potential customers much easier.

CRM processes in sales also work to make the most out of your sales pipeline. The more parts of your sales funnel that are automated, the easier your job becomes. CRM and sales work together to make the most out of your team’s time.

5. How Do CRM Processes Work In Marketing?

CRM software in marketing is an excellent way to get a deep understanding of your audience. You can use the extensive analytics from your CRM to create efficient customer segments and automate your nurturing process.

CRM processes in marketing also improve the productivity of your marketing team by automating email interactions and integrating with your existing marketing tools.

6. How Do You Integrate CRM Into Your Business?

Fortunately, most CRM software is incredibly straightforward to integrate into your business. Larger CRM providers like Salesforce & SugarCRM offer custom modules that make integration with your website or current database much easier.

Before choosing a CRM provider, make sure you do an in depth analysis of your needs. Identify which department you want to start using the CRM system with and the results you’d like to see. Based on your analysis, you’ll have an easier time separating different CRM providers from each other.