CRM BENEFITS: HOW CRM IMPROVES CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS
Posted on 15th Jun 2021
We’ve all heard about CRM, which stands for Customer Relationship Management.
Customers are important as no business exists without its customer base. And, of course, the way a company manages its customer database determines its business success.
But, let’s talk about the “R” in “CRM”.
Relationships are, by far, the most important part of the trendy acronym – CRM.
Why? Because relationships are a bridge between your business offering and your customer needs.
In fact, the majority of businesses that consider adopting a CRM system, first and foremost, are looking for a way to improve the quality and consistency of their relationships with customers and build customer loyalty.
This means that they want to improve their core business processes – managing contact information and streamlining their relations with customers.
According to Software Advice, contact management is the number one feature that is requested by 88% of CRM users, followed by the ability to track customer interactions (80%) and schedule tasks and set up reminders (75%).
Yet, when describing the benefits of a CRM software, very often “CRM evangelists” tend to focus on how the system can help you increase revenue, manage your sales pipeline, catch and nurture leads, send better marketing campaigns, manage your team, run customer service reports, and even analyze data.
And they are 100% correct – a good CRM system helps you do all that!
But … it seems like they fail to notice the elephant in the room – they spend little time addressing the greatness of CRM’s basic (yet key) functionality – contact management!
Better relationships = higher customer satisfaction
As your company grows, so does your customer database.
Eventually it becomes more and more difficult to centralize and streamline your communications with customers, both potential and existing.
Important conversations are hidden in emails, scattered around in spreadsheets, lost on Post-it notes, leading to patchy and inconsistent interactions with customers.
All of this leads to – simply and plainly – you losing money.
But, worry not!
Studies show that the answer to this problem could be a CRM system.
A report by Software Advice claims that 74% of all CRM adopters found that CRM “offered improved access to customer data”; meanwhile 61% of sales distributors claimed CRM allowed them to easier access to key customer information and data.
A study performed by Capterra, revealed that 47% of CRM users claimed that customer retention and satisfaction were significantly impacted by the use of a CRM system.
By: Zarema Plaksij