The Role of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) in Business
Have you ever heard the term CRM? This term may be familiar to you as CRM which stands for Customer Relationship Management is a practical approach to managing corporate relationships with customers at a business level so that communication and marketing can be maximized through managing various different contacts.
In its implementation, CRM can involve various technologies and business processes such as customer data collection, data analysis, sales management, customer service management, as well as communication and interaction with customers via various channels such as email, telephone or social media. CRM helps companies to better understand customer needs and preferences and maintain good relationships with them. Furthermore, it helps to increase customer loyalty to the company and also to add continuous value with customers.
One example of CRM on the market is Pipedrive which is an omnichannel CRM to speed up sales and customer service. Through Pipedrive, companies can increase customer satisfaction, gain greater profits through up-selling and cross-selling, and build long-term customer loyalty.
In today’s digital era, the use of technology for CRM is becoming increasingly important and it plays a crucial role in ensuring the success of a company’s business strategy.
Purpose of CRM in Business
CRM is a system used to manage interactions and relationships between a company and its customers. The main function of CRM is to help companies increase customer satisfaction and loyalty by improving customer experience, expanding market share, and increasing company profitability.
Some of the main functions of CRM include:
Monitor interactions with customers
CRM helps companies monitor every interaction with customers, including marketing, sales and customer service activities. By monitoring these interactions, companies can understand customer needs and preferences and provide quick and effective responses.
Manage customer information
CRM helps companies manage customer information, such as purchase history, preferences, and contact information. With this information, companies can adapt the products and services offered to customer needs and personalize interactions with customers.
Analyze customer data
CRM helps companies analyze customer data, such as purchasing trends, behavior and customer preferences. With this information, companies can identify new opportunities in the market and improve marketing and sales strategies.
Increase operational efficiency
CRM can also help companies increase operational efficiency by automating several administrative tasks such as data archiving and order processing.By using CRM accurately, companies can increase customer satisfaction and strengthen relationships with customers, thereby improving the company’s reputation and increasing business profitability.
How to implement CRM in your company?
CRM can be carried out in different stages of sales cycle. The stages in question are:
1. Acquiring
Acquiring new customers can be carried out by providing excellent customer service or offering free trial to customers so that they have opportunities to try out your company products/services. With the help of CRM to send mass emails offering free trial, companies will have higher rate of reaching potential new customers.
2. Enhancing
Once customer is acquired, the next step is to increase value to customers. This is done through up selling, namely offering the same product but of better quality or through cross selling which is to offer complementary products to goods /service that customers already own.
Both methods will help companies increase profits and customer value will increase accordingly based on the goals set in CRM.
3. Retaining
Retaining is one way to ensure customers can remain loyal to using the services or products offered by the company. Apart from retaining old consumers, companies must be able to attract the attention of new consumers. Generally, this step is carried out by listening to feedback from consumers. One example is to send survey or feedback form that can be set up on CRM so that every response is captured and analysed accordingly.
Benefits of CRM
Some benefits of using CRM in business are as follow:
Encourage Customer Loyalty
CRM allows companies to utilize information from all points of contact with customers, whether via website, call centers or through marketing and service staff in the field.
With consistency and ease in accessing and receiving information, the service department can provide better service to customers by utilizing various important information about these customers.
Reducing Costs
By implementing CRM, sales and customer service can have a specific and focused scheme and can target service to the right customers at the right time. In this way, the costs incurred will be detailed well and not wasted, which will lead to cost reduction.
Increased revenue
As mentioned above, implementing proper CRM will increase customer loyalty, reduce costs, increase operational efficiency which will ultimately lead to increased company revenue.
In Summary
All in all, at first glance, CRM is not much different from a company’s public relations, but in fact these two parts are very different. CRM prioritizes customer relationships while public relations prioritizes the company’s image in the eyes of customers. These two parts can work side by side but cannot be combined.
Therefore, it is important to choose the right CRM for your company. One of the recommended CRM in the market is Pipedrive, an easy and user-friendly CRM that drives growth. Using Pipedrive, users can monitor the process from pre-sales (leads management, customer and deal management) to post-sales (service & project Management). Apart from getting feedback from consumers, companies can also carry out appropriate evaluations. It is not surprising that many companies see CRM as the right strategy to achieve greater profits and a provision for creating a growing company.
