Startup Guide: Why Does Your Business Need Customer Relationship Management (CRM)?

As technological advances continue to lead to disruption across industrial sectors, companies cannot afford to unfollow the trend. Adopting advanced tech tools and techniques is important for companies to stay focused on customer-centric approaches. It keeps customers engaged, and ultimately, stay ahead of the competition. Now, one of the most crucial aspects of a customer-centric business strategy is Customer Relationship Management (CRM).

Whether a company serves 10 customers or 10,000 customers, customer relationships are of prime importance. Talking about the current market scenario, when customers seek 24*7 support and personalised services, companies need to rethink their customer engagement model. They must ensure that CRM complements their best practices.

Understanding Customer Relationship Management

The CRM systems are designed with a unique approach - "Put the customer first". It is an organisation-wide business strategy designed to enhance customer loyalty, improve revenues & profitability and reduce operational costs. According to Inc. 2019, ROI on a judiciously implemented CRM system can vary between $2.50-$5.60 for every dollar spent.

Further, a CRM can be a secret recipe for transforming a startup or a small business into a vibrant organisation. It will help them effectively tackle some common challenges - competition, comparable prices, price and product transparency, specific customer requirements etc. By helping build efficient and effective customer relations, CRM becomes the most effective way to stand out in the market. Also, the use of a CRM system can help businesses increase sales by up to 29% and sales productivity by up to 34%, as per statistics by Salesforce.

How Companies Will Benefit from CRM System Integration?

The global CRM market size will likely expand at a CAGR of 14.2% from 2020 to 2027, as per Grand View Research 2020-2027 forecast. These estimates highlight the rising significance and increasing adoption of the CRM system. In addition to managing a contact list and helping follow up customers in a better way, CRM also helps to target the prospects effectively. It also tracks the leads that have higher chances of conversion.

Since CRM software is mainly used for marketing, sales, data management and request processing; CRM applications can be beneficial for any business dealing directly with customers. These include pharmacy, e-learning schools, retail companies, travel agencies, banking institutions etc.

Let’s explore the challenges that businesses can solve with the use of a CRM system:

Customer Targeting

A CRM system is a smart and efficient way to know your customers, increase conversion rate and enhance customer satisfaction. This is done by storing customer data in one place, grouping it, enabling analysis by changing task/user status and ultimately, segmenting your audience. This way, you can easily track every customer's purchase history, identify their needs and preferences, improve targeting, create personalized offers, and much more.

Data Storage and Management

Data is one of the most valuable resources of any organisation and also, one thing that companies usually face issues with - data storage, data management and data access. Customer Relationship Management system manages it all and enables easy organisation and visualisation of data. Also, with all the necessary information at hand, your employees will get more time to focus on important tasks.

Client Handling

The key to handling and effectively managing client/customer relationships is "effective client communication". With effective CRM software, a business can level up their customer service as it makes messaging, calling or e-mailing a customer a very easy and quick task.

Activity Tracking

Tracking employee performance, monitoring processes within the departments and viewing the history of customer interactions; Customer Relationship Management System integration makes everything easy. It further facilitates an organisation with efficient operations and more satisfied customers.

Summing Up

There is a high competitive advantage of CRM system integration as it helps to solve numerous industrial challenges - from reduced manual processes to improved activity management. A CRM application is a good choice for your business even if it is running on a small scale but has a sales department, offers some services or receives many customer queries/requests every day. It will also spare time for more important tasks than manual audience segmentation, checking user base, constant data input etc.

So, don't give second thoughts to your plan of CRM system integration. Get one now!