Customer relationship management or better known as CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is a company strategy to increase revenue and profits, reduce expenses and increase customer loyalty.
The use of CRM in the company makes it easier for you to achieve goals and objectives. Companies that use CRM prioritize customer value, customer lifetime value, customer equity and customer priority.
3 Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System Work
The goal is to create a good relationship with customers, thus creating customer loyalty. Learn more about the meaning of customer relationship management, its functions and implementation in the company in the review below.
What is Customer Relationship Management (CRM)?
Customer relationship management is an activity to manage customer interactions in depth to improve customer relationships and loyalty. Companies that manage customer relationships will have different views, goals and objectives from companies that do not use CRM.
CRM implementation helps you to focus on current customer trends and needs instead of finding new customers. If you can retain and attract your current customers, this will prove more profitable for you than spending time trying to attract one new customer.
What is the Purpose of Customer Relationship Management (CRM)?
The main goal of customer relationship management is to help businesses to build good relationships with customers. By doing so, businesses will be able to retain customers and generate sustainable sales growth.
However, the purpose of CRM is actually not only that. The following are practical customer relationship management goals:
- Acquire new prospective customers
- Providing the best service to existing customers
- Retaining customers
- Identifying potential customers and those who are not
- Provide the latest information about customers and sales anywhere 24/7 through mobile CRM
- Individualise the approach to each customer
- Provide an effective mechanism to view and schedule follow-ups to customers through sales pipeline management
- Track all customer information, from contact to interaction history
- Identify possible problems early on
- Provide an effective mechanism to handle customer complaints
- Track the preferences of each customer through their interaction history linked to social media (can be obtained through social CRM)
- Personalise product offerings for each customer
How Does a Customer Relationship Management System Work?
A customer relationship management system works by managing customer communication, interaction, and engagement with the business. All of this can be done by realizing a customer-centric business strategy. But not only that, the CRM system also works with the following steps:
1. Supporting a customer-centric strategy
The system of this program puts the customer first in everything you do. Companies and organizations that use this system are able to maintain the quality of the customer experience, as they realize the importance of the customer experience that can generate loyalty to your company.
2. Centralisation of customer data
CRM systems combine all sales, marketing and customer service information in one centralized database.
3. Automation of customer-facing business processes
Business processes that deal directly with customers can run more efficiently with the use of this program. Marketing, sales, and customer service can provide a better experience in fulfilling customer needs. It all starts with the prospect and ends with the customer.
Example of Customer Relationship Management
To help you better understand what customer relationship management is, here are some examples of customer relationship management in business:
– Providing consistent automated responses
The first example of customer relationship management is ensuring every customer who reaches out to a business can receive a consistent and quality response. For example, if a customer emails you with a question about receiving the wrong product, you can set up your CRM system to automate an immediate response with the appropriate answer.
This way, you can keep the conversation going while your support representative takes the time to research the issue and respond with a more personalised contact.
– Conduct business analysis
CRM systems can automatically collect and manage information and data obtained regarding customers and businesses into valuable analyses and reports. This way, you can easily gain holistic insights and perspectives on your business and customers, and use them as a basis for future business decisions.
– Manage customer feedback
The sheer volume of customer feedback can be a hassle to deal with, especially when you don’t have enough representatives to manage it all in a short period of time. But you don’t have to worry, because a CRM system can help you manage customer feedback automatically, and provide you with valuable insights from the feedback provided.
– Tracking customer activities
The next example of customer relationship management is tracking customer activities. Every customer has different activities depending on which stage they are in. However, with so many customers, it can be a hassle to keep track of every activity. For that, you can use a CRM system to easily track customer activities, and improve them according to customer needs. Thus, customers can have a satisfying journey and experience.
– Coordinating between applications
Another example of a better CRM is to increase efficiency by synchronizing your business applications. In this case, you can integrate with other business support applications for maximum business convenience.
Effective Customer Relationship Management Strategy
After knowing many things about CRM, now it’s time for you to know what strategies can be done to improve customer relationship management in your business. Here are the customer relationship management strategies that can maximize your business:
1. Using automation to increase profits
The first customer relationship management strategy is to use automation to increase business profits. You can utilize the CRM system to take over repetitive and ineffective administrative work. Thus, you can focus more on other work and things that are more important and profitable for your business.
2. Check the customer database regularly
Databases will certainly store a lot of valuable data related to your customers and business. However, are you sure that all the data is still relevant to your business? For that, you need to clean and audit your database regularly, so that you can also set aside more free space for new, more relevant data.
3. Leverage insights to drive conversions
The holistic customer insights and perspectives that you get from your CRM system should be put to good use. But how? You can start by meeting them where they are by creating relevant content that they will love.
4. Create more personalised communication
Did you know that 72% of customers only engage with businesses that personalize? This shows how important it is to have personalized communication with each customer. You can deliver customized messages to each customer to promote stronger customer relationships.
5. Build customised analytics and reporting dashboards
Instead of spending hours compiling reports, you can utilize CRM dashboards to do all your heavy lifting with ease. CRM systems are capable of creating customised reporting dashboards that will not only make data generation faster and easier, but also make the data more accessible and transparent to all concerned. The less time your team spends collecting data, the more time they can spend on getting their work done.
What about the above explanation? Did you understand it? If anything is unclear, you can ask questions, and write them in the comments column. See you in the next article!