Let’s zoom in on CRM

You plan to outsource one or several services in order to boost your business development. During this process, you hear about CRM, Customer Relationship Management. What is it about exactly? Let’s zoom in on this feature that can turn this step into an extraordinary tool in many ways.

CRM-definitions

CRM can be leveraged as a technology, a process and a strategy. Companies use it to manage interactions with existing and potential customers, as it represents a complete equation for:

• Streamlining processes,
• Building relationships with clients,
• Increased sales,
• Improved customer service and
• Increased profitability.

In other words, the Customer Relationship Management System allows companies to improve their business relationships, communication between different internal actors and also with customers and suppliers. It enables the recording and the analysis of the various interventions with users and the management and maintenance of the relationship with potential and loyal customers.

The various advantages of CRM

This list of benefits is not exhaustive. However, it is important to remember that CRM:

• Collects, analyses and sorts out interactions between the company and its customers, allowing each player in the trade chain to exploit the collected data.
• A centralised CRM system allows for improved management, tracking and access to contact history thanks to the recording of all interactions taking place.
• Allows the various departments of the company to interact seamlessly.
• Increases productivity by, for example, reducing the administrative burden of sales representatives.
• Provides sales managers with all the necessary updated data, in real time, to, for instance, assess the viability of certain transactions.
• Managers, for their part, are equipped with a tool capable of providing accurate forecasts, giving them visibility on current sales.
• Sales teams are able to analyse current data to predict future customer trends thanks to a predictive analytics system.
• The tool ensures the creation of reliable reports through a comprehensive view of sales tunnels. This circumvents any problem that may arise.
• In addition to making the required data more easily available, the reports improve team productivity by saving time on manual data extraction or through dynamic cross-tabulations.
• Provides ‘reportings’ that improve customer conversion at the right time, regardless of sales channel.

Operations of CRM in software format

The companies that adopt CRM wish to:

• Improve contact management,
• Render collaborations among teams more dynamic,
• Increase productivity,
• Manage sales,
• Anticipate and plan targeted sales,
• Obtain numerical reports,
• Improve sales statistics,
• Satisfy and retain customers exponentially,
• Improve their marketing ROI,
• Enhance their products and services

For this purpose, the CRM software will analyse the interactions between the company and its customers. It will do so by recording and saving the information of the company’s customers. These are phone number, e-mail address, etc. At the same time, it will extract, organise and store accurate information in order to continuously improve customer relationship.

The significance of CRM

CRM is therefore essential for several reasons.
It allows companies to deepen their relationships with several key players. These are:

• Customers,
• Those who utilise the services offered
• Collaborators,
• Providers and

Moreover, it allows firms to build strong and long-lasting relationships while keeping track of customers and prospects to cater for loyalty purposes.

For this, CRM has a table that can be customised by companies. This can be consulted easily and employees can use it without difficulty.

Take advantage of CRM – an approach benefiting various services

Yes, CRM is generally used as a marketing and sales tool. However, nothing prevents other services from enjoying its many benefits. Some examples are:

In the sales department, CRM helps to a better understanding of their pipeline, particularly by providing managers with information on sales objectives, products, campaigns, team performances, etc. As for sales representatives, CRM contains enough information for them to build customer profiles.

In the human resources section, CRM saves time by speeding up employee performance monitoring and recruitment processes.

CRM, a tool centred on customers!

CRM is a customer-centric management system with specific objectives and a clear vision on how the customer should live his experience. If we consider Gartner’s report titled “Improving the customer experience “, we can advance that customer experience feeds CRM because each contact between a customer and the company is an opportunity to elicit an opinion, whatever it may be. This contact will therefore be essential in order to maintain customer loyalty through a positive long-lasting image.

In our current era, quality is very important. This involves matters of customer relations as well, so businesses have every interest in offering a service, a personalised support, that will resonate positively with the consumer’s sensitivity.

CRM and outsourcing

If you are looking for a solution to offer a customer experience that is customised according to your targets, if you want your company to generate commitment with its customers and with prospective ones, choose a provider that will be able to offer you multi-channel marketing solutions, from the phone to SMS, emails, chats, etc.

The ideal provider must be able to carry out actions aimed at achieving an optimised conversion rate via several means:

• By segmenting your customer database for optimised targeting based on criteria defined with you (business affinities, geographic affinities and others),
• By setting up dashboards and performance indicators for a better monitoring of technical and commercial actions put in place,
• By analysing your client base, its expectations, its actual or potential needs and then adapting the discourse of its teams,
• By analysing the multi-channel campaigns carried out, allowing your company to make a better ROI calculation