How CRMs Improve Business Efficiency Overtime

Gone are the days when Customer Relationship Management(CRM) systems were only used by large scale organizations. Large organizations used CRMs to maintain new and existing customer relationships. Nowadays, CRMs improve business efficiency in multiple ways. But before we move on to the multiple ways business operations are streamlined overtimes, let’s go through a brief introduction of what CRMs are.

What are CRM Systems?

CRM is a system designed to manage a business’s customers. The system handles every customer interaction that the company has. CRMs can be used to keep the customer’s contact details updated. Additionally, it keeps a record of every transaction they have with the business and manages client accounts. Not only do CRMs help improve business efficiency, but they also help improve customer lifetime value as well.

CRM software is now the biggest software market in the world and the growth isn’t slowing down. In fact, CRM is now expected to reach more than $80 billion in revenues by 2025.

Not only customers CRM systems help all sorts of business interactions including colleagues, vendors, service users, etc. Your organization and its employees create a lot of data through these interactions daily. For instance, when a potential customer picks up the phone and calls your representatives, creating a potential sales prospect CRM manages all the data created.

Typically, using notepads and manual entry systems the heaps of data can be forgotten about. Using a CRM however, even the minutest details are kept track of. Any interaction ranging from a phone call to a full sale can be followed up and taken to completion. Moreover, any employees with potential sales opportunities can choose to walk out the door with their potential clients. With all sales opportunities and instances recorded, all your data can be made meaningful that can transform business opportunities.

CRM Systems Improve Business Opportunity

Finding the Right Customers

With new businesses, it takes a lot of time to make your marketing efforts productive. These efforts help you attract and generate new market opportunities for the future. Now that you’ve gathered these new leads how do you approach them? Startups typically have smaller marketing and sales teams and without the help of a CRM, some of their leads may be lost.

Time is of the essence when you’re a small business looking to sell your services worldwide. B2B and B2C companies are now working to build CRM systems that align most of your marketing tools — email, social, marketing automation within a central platform. Both your sales and marketing get the complete picture of your new and existing lead to build campaigns accordingly. Salesforce.com estimates that by using CRM systems lead conversion increase by 30% making customers reach decisions faster.

Improved Employee Productivity

Marketing and sales teams work in collaboration with each other, sharing information to complete the sales process. Along with these tasks, employees are responsible for performing data entry operations. With a centralized CRM data entry is automated. CSR and marketing professionals can access the same information and retrieve any information they need with just a search.

Moreover, the data you collect can further give you an idea of what your sales revenue looks like in the coming months. This helps you and your team make informed decisions to help your business to grow at an exponential pace. With the help of these reports, every aspect ranging from new and open campaigns to leads can be monitored. With this data available, you can predict future revenue generation and improve processes as you go.

Customer Retention

Prospecting and creating a loyal customer from a potential requires a lot of time and effort by your teams.  The company has a whole invests and pays much more for a new customer. Statistics reveal that retaining existing customers can five times to 25 times less expensive than finding new ones. That is why customer retention is important for you. Your sales teams can proactively take care of at-risk accounts. Using CRM, loyal customers can be taken care of and be presented with new sales opportunities that interest them.

With each customer account in check, you can check for previous, open, and any upcoming cases so that you can present them with satisfying purchases. One positive experience on top of the other keeps your customer loyal, and coming back for more. Each CRM is designed to fit different sales criteria aligning the needs of your customers and the services that you provide. Usually, most CRMs offer a variety of options that increase your ROI. Some of the tools offered are:

• Data Analysis
• Custom Campaigns
• Case Management
• Knowledge Management
• Integrations
• Email Workflows

These are some of the tools that CRMs offer as per the preference of the business. The proper use of the features ensures long term customer retention and serves as one of the ways CRMs improve business efficiency.

Centralized Data Sources

When a project reaches completion, behind the scenes multiple teams: sales, marketing, development, etc. work together. All these interact with the customer in different parts of the sales pipeline. With no proper system in place, data will be all over the place. Collecting information scattered in various offline sources wastes a lot of time. Even if you have online databases that aren’t centralized your employees may end up wasting a lot of time.

74% of  their business say that CRM software has improved their access to customer data!

With CRMs all your data is centralized, making it easier for your employees to access the information they need. They update the data in real-time so all employees are up to date within the sales process. Moreover, the data is stored on the cloud making it secure and accessible at all times. You can set up custom backup times for your data to keep it secure and help your employees on the same page.

Access Over Multiple Devices

It was estimated that 91% of businesses with more than 11 employees use CRM systems. As businesses slowly grow they realize that CRMs improve business efficiency. Now that CRM is becoming so popular why not make the change and adopt a system that can be used on multiple devices.

With COVID-19 more and more jobs are now becoming remote. A second wave is on the rise in most countries. Even the post-COVID-19 era promotes globalization and works at home situations. You as a business may or may not offer remote work, but a Mobile CRM definitely helps your sales team. With an accessible system, your sales teams can manage appointments, tasks, and track deals more efficiently. With a growing competitive landscape within every business industry, you need to change to an accessible solution soon.

Big Companies: CRMs Improve Business Efficiency

Most startups keep a customer-oriented approach and eventually grow to be huge brands in a matter of years. These startups were once only a few ambitious thinkers, who took a simple idea and shaped it into a brand valuing our values, trends, and needs. These brands all did it following one strategy: Focus on the customer. They created customer bases so loyal that they rarely see a downfall. Obviously, there can’t be a single magic tool that made that possible but with thousands of employees, customer management is an immense task. That’s where these brands use CRM systems.

Uber

A Statista report recently revealed that in the second quarter of 2020, 55 million people used the Uber app on a monthly basis. With so many customers Uber manages the operational flow smoothly. Uber uses the industry’s leading CRM- Salesforce. This CRM shares the company’s strategy to connect social media threads of communication with the brand on different platforms. You’ll notice they’re very responsive in most cases. With the CRM system in place, representatives at offices worldwide can respond. Additionally, the system can track all interactions with the public from a built-in software interface acting as a board.

 

McDonald’s CRM

McDonald’s has been America’s top quick-service restaurant for decades. In 2019, McDonald’s was credited with productively operating 38,695 total restaurants. These restaurants serve a total of 25 million customers daily. On the contrary, with such a huge influx, the success of the fast-food giant depends on the satisfaction of its customers. McDonald’s partners with Astute Solutions, allowing the restaurant chain greater insights into consumer feedback and satisfaction levels. Based on regional analysis using the CRM, McDonald’s can quickly spot and solve any issues that arise, before they become a serious problem. This is how McDonald’s has managed to keep millions of customers happy.

Conclusion

Both these brands are of course industry giants and have budgets to manage customer interaction and satisfaction. New Businesses however can invest in custom or mid-level solutions to ensure CRMs improve business efficiency over time. CRM systems are one of the pillars for your company’s success and you owe it to your company and employees to choose the best one. Not only will it make the lives of your employees easier, but it will offer you the much needed competitive push. Nowadays custom CRM solutions can be developed to perfectly fit your company’s needs.

Novateus is a custom software development company that deals with the development of innovative solutions. We have years of experience working with both our offshore and in-house teams. If you need any help understanding anything or have a question please contact us.