CRM Software

What is CRM software?

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a tool used to help businesses keep track, manage and interact with customers, new and old. It holds all the information about customers in a single place, making it more efficient, productive, and time-saving. Whether you’re using it for sales or marketing, teams can collaborate on the same data to build a more in-depth profile of customers helping to increase sales and conversion opportunities for increased revenues.

What is a CRM system used for?

CRM software manages communications and interactions with customers, whether in a b2b business or a b2c business, to hold identity data, qualitative data, and quantitative data.

Depending on the software you use, it can be used as simple management of customer details like name, address, email, telephone, and social media profiles.

Aside from identity data, you can use it to collect and store more quantitative data, recording customer interactions like when they contact customer support, their order history, and how they interact with your website.

You can then use the right CRM tool to gather qualitative data through the use of online surveys to gather information about how they use your service, business, or website and how’d they rate it. Information that can be beneficial in improving areas of your business and promoting it.

On top of the customer data gathering, a CRM can also be used for internal business data, holding information about employees, contracts, and emergency details.

Common CRM features

Online CRM software can be easy to learn and comes with many features out of the box that you’ll be able to use without too much time dedicated to learning how the system works.

These include:

• Contact management – store and manage details
• Customizations – create custom fields and rules
• Data importing – import data from spreadsheets or other CRM systems
• Document Uploads – upload documents and attach to client information
• Data Backups – data is backed up regularly and secured so you never lose your data
• Collaboration – interact with team members to build better sales funnels
• Analytics and Reporting – analyse your data and create reports
• Mobile app – get hold of your data no matter the platform

To get the most out of CRM systems online, you’ll want to set up more advanced features, which can take time to learn. Tasks like setting up automation and integrations with other software like email marketing, ecommerce platforms, project management, finance software, and communication software can be tricky.

What are the benefits of CRM tools?

It doesn’t matter if you’re a one-person business or have multiple employees. Customer relationship management software offers many benefits.

• Single point of contact – a centralized database of information that multiple teams can access to get the information they need, when they need it, making sure it’s up to date.
• Saves time and increases productivity – not having to scramble through spreadsheets or multiple programs lets you save time trying to find the data you are looking for. This time saving helps us be more productive, which leads us to our next point.
• Increase sales and conversions – being able to answer questions quickly, and having the data at hand helps build sales funnels which you can analyze to increase performance and ROI.
• Marketing automation tools – with the right CRM, you’ll be able to set up automation rules to accomplish tasks when customers interact with your website or make a purchase that would otherwise take you time.
• Analytics and Reporting – create automated or custom reports to find areas in which your business is performing or not.
• It’s tax deductible – As an online service, you can deduct CRM software and tools from your taxes in many countries around the world

Take a look at the benefits of CRMS for small business in more detail.

Who is CRM software for?

No matter what type of small business you run, whether it’s a restaurant, ecommerce website, or offer online services like copywriting, having an easy-to-use tool to store your client information is a time-saving must.

You don’t have to have a marketing team, sales team, or HR department to use many online CRM tools, as anyone can use them. However, many offer features that can benefit specific departments of small businesses, including the sales and marketing teams for external business activities. In contrast, HR teams can help make their lives easier using it for internal business data gathering.

CRM is for those looking to increase efficiency and productivity across their business and, in the process, help increase prospective profits.