what is customer relationship management software? What does CRM mean to enterprises? Why should your enterprise care about and use CRM? We answer all these questions and show you how CRM can help your business and how it can be consistent with sales, marketing and customer service departments. By putting customers first, you can break through the bottleneck of enterprise development and become a cool customer-centric company. The following contents will explain that CRM is not only a technology, but also the application of management concepts. When you successfully implement CRM, CRM will help you build better customer relationships, increase the company's income and create an excellent customer experience.
1. what is CRM?
you may have heard the acronym CRM before-customer relationship management. You know that "C" stands for customer, so what is customer relationship management? CRM is a company-wide business strategy, which aims to improve revenue and profitability, reduce costs and improve customer loyalty. The concept of CRM is simple: put customers first. When enterprises look at each transaction through customers' eyes, they will have to provide a better customer experience, which in turn increases customers' loyalty to the company.
excellent CRM software brings together all the information from different departments of the company and gives the overall view of each customer in real time. This allows salespeople to upgrade their sales skills, carry out accurate sales and cross-selling, and at the same time improve the quality and responsiveness of their communication with customers. Managers can coordinate various factors such as sales and market management, so as to make quick and wise decisions. After the successful implementation of CRM, you can not only gain insight into the opportunities to develop business with each customer, but also provide a way to measure its value.
if you think the above statement is too obscure, we recommend you to read the following easy article, which can help you master CRM in ten minutes.
how to understand the CRM customer relationship management system-dingole's answer
second, what is the main function of CRM to enterprises?
CRM is more important than ever for your business, because it can help you acquire new customers and keep existing customers. CRM helps you to treat sales and marketing correctly, so that the company can better understand customers and their preferences and needs, so as to improve the way of providing products to them (sales process optimization and sales methods). The more you know about your customers and their buying preferences and behaviors, the more likely you are to achieve your goals.
The CRM market is still developing. As a Gartner report in 217 found, the revenue of CRM software has surpassed that of database management system, occupying the largest share of the software market.
Does your company encounter the following problems? If so, that's why CRM is important to your business.
In today's competitive market environment, with so many products and services to choose from, customers have become picky and customer loyalty seems to have become a thing of the past.
you find that you can't please all your customers with one model, even though they all bought the same product from you.
some customers spend little, but they are a burden to the service team.
competitors of your size often take away your business.
The sales process often makes mistakes, and the turnover rate is getting lower and lower, and the sales staff begin to complain.
There is more ...
Third, how does the CRM system work?
although some people think that CRM is just a technology, it is much more than that. If it is only technology, no matter how complicated, such technology will not play any role without an enterprise strategy to guide its implementation and application. Enterprise strategy and technology must work together to realize the customer-centric plan. Let's look at the role of CRM in customer center, customer data and automation.
1. Support a customer-centric strategy
The p>CRM system supports a strategy that the customer is the center of everything you do. This customer-centric strategy must be based on clear goals and meaningful customer experience, and take it as the vision of the enterprise.
according to Gartner's report "improving customer experience", a valuable customer experience is an indispensable part of CRM. Whenever customers contact with enterprises through any channels, customers have the opportunity to form their own opinions-whether good, bad or indifferent. As time goes by, the collection of these customer experiences forms a picture in the customer's mind, thus forming the image of brand value.
How to Understand Customer-Centered Management Mode
Those companies that take CRM design seriously and maintain high-quality customer experience can always realize that a bad customer experience will be the first step of customer churn, and paying attention to customer loyalty is an iron law of management.
2. centralize all customer data
CRM software combines all sales, marketing and customer service information into a central database. Enterprises centralize customer data and access all data in the database in a unified way-this is the first step to achieve customer-centric. Customer information includes but is not limited to telephone number, address and contact record. CRM also records the detailed communication content, the next follow-up date, the current status of the customer and all historical data. This information can be used to carry out marketing, sales and customer service activities related to customers.
generally speaking, CRM database provides a foundation for building customer loyalty and better customer experience. Because CRM system concentrates all customer-oriented information, the opacity of customer information is significantly reduced. Sales can't blame marketing for not communicating with them, marketing can't blame sales department for not implementing their activities, and customer service department can't blame the handover of sales department for not being in place.
demo video: intuitive 36-degree customer view of CRM software
the whole business process starts with the basic information of customers, and once the customer data is imported into the system, it is equivalent to bringing customers into the sales process. CRM will assign customers to salespeople according to the rules and remind salespeople to call at the appointed time. Every time a salesperson interacts with a customer, it will be recorded in the CRM system.
in short, CRM keeps track of all customer-related behaviors and things said and done. Before the interaction with customers begins, you will get an immediate and automatic communication track. Because the information is in a central position, it means that other people in the company have helped you with your next contact work.
prospect management: five steps of lead transformation
3. automate customer-oriented business processes
does your company have business-oriented processes and customer-oriented processes? Business-oriented processes refer to those processes that make the business run more efficiently, such as budgeting and planning, while customer-oriented processes include sales, marketing and customer service.
whether you are engaged in sales, marketing or customer support, CRM system can help you realize automated business processes and customize the ways of collaboration at each process stage. However, it goes without saying that each business process must be well defined and effective in order for the company to obtain good results.
How does "CRM software+sales channel" improve sales efficiency?
There should be clear rules for customer-oriented process management. These rules define whether a request is transferred to Department A or Department B, what resources should be used to solve the customer's problem, and how to promote the implementation of the process to ensure that the problem is solved. Once the workflow and rules are defined, the CRM system can automate the whole process. At the same time, CRM also automatically records the process historical data and communication process, so that the customer service team can check the information, so as to better understand how to help customers and ultimately improve customer satisfaction.
Conclusion
Customer-centered has become an important strategy for most enterprises to gain profits. As its literal meaning, CRM software helps enterprises to build better customer relationships. What customers really want is personalized service and the value you can provide them. Customers who have a sense of value for your products are satisfied customers, and satisfied customers mean word of mouth and repeated business, which is why CRM is very important to enterprises.