What is CRM? Why does “it” become a concern of businesses? This is a customer relationship management software, a business strategy that businesses use to reduce costs and increase profits, by strengthening customer trust and loyalty on both sides.
If you are a manager, business owner or director, you must have heard the term CRM. However, not everyone understands this term well.
Therefore, in this article, Ola City will help you understand more about what CRM is as well as the importance of CRM in business. Let’s follow along!
I. What is CRM?
Customer relationship management (CRM) is defined as a system that manages the customer relationship. It is a technology that helps manage all of your company’s relationships and interactions with customers and potential customers. With a very simple goal of improving business relationships, a CRM system will help companies connect with customers efficiently, streamline processes, and increase profits.
In addition, you can understand basically that CRM is a useful tool to help businesses manage interactions with customers at the present time, thereby forming a bond with customers in the future.
II. Which objects that CRM is closely related to?
After understanding the basic concept of what CRM is, do you know what CRM is related to in today’s business? Here are the objects closely related to CRM:
- Customers
Customers are product users and have a high ability to choose products for their own consumption, in addition, they also choose different suppliers.
- Managers
CRM is a business activity that engages with customers on purpose. This interaction is formed into modules to assist in solving the needs of the customers. Therefore, customers are the center of the company’s activities.
- Business relationships
It is the activities of enterprises with partners to perform transactions. The processes help businesses understand the needs of customers, thereby identifying potential customers, increasing the opportunity to exchange sales.
III. What is the true nature of CRM?
CRM is a strategic piece of software used to learn about customer needs and behaviors, thereby developing stronger relationships with customers. After all, customers are at the heart of business success. So what is the true nature of CRM?
The essence of CRM is essentially a technology product, but it is not enough to just consider CRM as a technology product. CRM results in a process of storing and using a lot of information about customers, marketing, performance and market trends.
“If customer relationships are the heart of business success, then CRM is the valve that pumps the lifeblood of a company.” Therefore, CRM is best suited for businesses to use people, processes, and technology to gain insight into customer behaviors and values.
Thereby helping to improve and increase efficiency from the center to customer service as well as the marketing process. All of these factors help reduce costs and increase overall profits for the business.
IV. What is the goal of CRM?
As already familiar with the concept of CRM, the main goal of CRM is to help businesses have a broader view of customer behavior and values through different tools. If the CRM strategy is effective, the business can improve revenue in the following ways.
- Providing products, customer service desired in a better way.
- Provide more effective bundles
- Help sales sell more products faster
- Retain existing customers and add new ones.
V. What is the operational process of CRM?
CRM activities will usually be revolved around 5 main activities and form a closed circle. It can start a CRM campaign with any activity. However, the most important thing is to be customer-centric, because CRM is an activity that is focused on improving the relationship between a business and its customers. Let’s see 5 main activities of CRM including:
- Sale
Is the activity of CRM related to products provided to customers. These activities are sales operations such as: Email, quotation, appointment booking, contract, transaction, collection, delivery, ….
- Marketing
Develop CRM marketing plans with the aim of enticing customers to approach and buy your products.
- Services
CRM service provides the best service for customers. This is an important activity that helps to improve and enhance the relationship between customers and businesses. The main purpose of service activities is to retain loyal customers and reach many potential customers.
- Analysis
The data analysis of activities such as sales, marketing, and service helps provide more information to implement a successful CRM strategy.
- Interactive
Helps increase interaction between businesses and customers through channels such as (direct contact, phone, email, mail, web, …). Support the coordination between customer channels and employees. Integrating human interactions, processes, and data together helps businesses serve customers better.
VI. Why is CRM important for businesses?
More broadly, CRM allows a business to strengthen its relationships with customers, service users, colleagues, partners and suppliers. Keeping a good relationship with customers who already use the product and following up with leads is paramount to customer retention, which is central to the function of CRM.
You can see everything in one place – a customizable dashboard where you can see your customers’ previous history with you, their order status, any outstanding customer service issues and more. If you want your business to be sustainable over the years, you need a strategy for the future. For businesses looking to the future, understanding CRM, CRM is the foundation for that strategy.
The benefits of CRM:
- Advanced contact management
- Coordination of interests between groups
- High productivity
- Accurate sales forecast
- Trusted report
- Sales index improved
- Increase customer satisfaction and retention
- Increase Marketing ROI
- Diversify products and services
VII. What are the main functions of CRM?
Lead: Understood as the potential to help us manage potential customers. This gives them the opportunity to convert them into full-fledged customers. Some software pairs it with the client function.
Customer: Some software call it contact, Organization (applicable to B2B businesses). With this function, you can store and manage customer information about your business.
Potentials: Some of these ingredients are often referred to as Opportunity. Functions to help you manage opportunities per customer. In each opportunity, it is divided to include the source of the opportunity, the stages. When using CRM and understanding what a CRM platform is, you will realize that so far you have missed a lot of opportunities.
Task management: This function acts as an assistant that helps a lot for your work. When you have a large customer file then you will not be able to remember all the work to do and the CRM will remind you.
Conclusion
Nowadays many businesses are using technology and spending millions of dollars to improve and develop CRM. In addition to the above main functions, CRM also has many other functions based on the type of business such as: invoice management, document management, restaurant management, supplier management, deal…
Hopefully through the above article, you have clearly understood the nature of CRM as well as the importance of CRM in business. Surely using CRM will support your business to grow more in the future. Good luck.
Best regards,
Ola City Global
