What is customer relations management?
Customer relations management, also known as customer relationship management, client relationship management or CRM, refers to all the tools and methods a business uses to track and manage potential, current and past customers. Effective CRM is based on collecting and analyzing data about how a business interacts with customers.
That information is then used to create a strategic approach for contacting potential buyers. Even if you go on to hire a data manager, a good CRM system should make their life a lot easier. CRM systems also help business owners keep information organized, ensuring staff has easy access to details about customers’ purchase histories, website interactions, buying frequency and demographic information, among other data.
Good CRM systems collect data from each point of contact at a company, including phone calls, social media, paper inquiries, email, website forms and live chat, and consolidate it for quick retrieval. Before the internet, companies implemented CRM by using physical forms and address books, but the modern process of customer relationship management mostly takes place through free or paid software.
Benefits of CRM in business
CRM systems enable business management of customer relationships in a convenient central location. These customer service relationship management tools encourage data-driven business strategies and provide concrete metrics to uncover trends about how people interact with your business. Due to its many benefits, using CRM software is becoming an industry standard among both large corporations and small businesses.
Scalability
As small businesses grow, customer relations management software becomes essential to processing large amounts of customer data and understanding how to capture a growing customer base. Using CRM software when your business is in the startup phase gives your company room to increase its customer base and keep up with larger and more complex data sets.
Proactive outreach
Customer relationship management software helps you tailor your business practices to the unique buying behaviors of your customers. It simplifies the process of documenting customer information, letting you reach out to potential leads based on how they’ve interacted with your business in the past. This continuity between customer interactions often proves key in developing meaningful, profitable customer relationships and building a brand.
Efficiency
Automating the process of collecting, categorizing and analyzing customer information saves businesses time on administrative work and record-keeping. CRM software improves communication and collaboration among team members, eliminating confusion about who’s working with each customer. Online CRM solutions provide employees with easy access to essential information from almost any location, allowing sales reps in the field to focus on the most lucrative opportunities and leads.
Data security
Good CRM software gives business owners control over which employees can access certain types of customer data and sales reports. Businesses are responsible for protecting customer data and responding to possible breaches, and CRM software with security tools makes it easy to know who has access to customer information at any given time. This focus on data security helps customers feel confident when giving your company personal details.
Top elements of CRM systems
Depending on the system or software you choose, customer relationship management comprises a range of tools and strategies. In general, CRM systems manage the different ways a business can connect with customers, including:
Marketing
Because advertising and marketing create a significant point of contact with the public, good CRM software automates and tracks your marketing efforts. It can send out advertising materials through email and other channels automatically when a potential lead enters the system and follow up with past customers on a regular schedule.
Customer contact
CRM web tools, such as AI chat and prerecorded audio, can simplify customer service and assist clients with troubleshooting. CRM tools prioritize and sort customer inquiries, directing each person to the proper channel. They also help cut down on response time, giving customers faster service and providing automatic guidance to help customers solve common problems themselves.
Workflow automation
Some CRM tools automatically assign sales leads to individuals on your sales team, streamlining tasks and clearly outlining the next steps for working with each contact. Automated follow-up messages are a popular CRM tool within this category, as they help salespeople recapture the attention of potential customers.
Lead management
Lead management is the process of identifying prospective business relationships, collecting their contact information and following up with them. It allows salespeople to capture updated client data and use that information to connect with customers through their preferred channels. CRMs help salespeople identify who’s interested in buying and which former customers are likely to make a repeat purchase.
Sales history
Most customer service relationship management software lets your company keep a sales history database, enabling easy cross-referencing of customer information with sales trends. This CRM tool helps salespeople analyze the behavior of current customers to forecast purchases and determine the ideal timing to make contact with leads. Sales databases also drive analysis to determine how customers make purchases and what products and services are most in-demand.
Customer profiles
Customer profiles comprise customers’ contact information across platforms, including location, email and social media. They may also include customer complaints, returns and support interactions. CRM systems consolidate this information to help employees achieve a holistic ideal of their target customer, what pain points they experience and how they interact with your brand.
Website activity
Some CRM software can track how individual visitors spend time on your website. For example, they track how many people add products to a shopping cart and how many follow through on a purchase, helping you identify possible barriers to making a purchase, such as a confusing user interface. CRM tools that integrate with your website give you an idea of which pages are the most popular, as well as what types of website content are most effective at driving sales.
Visual dashboard
The visual dashboard of CRM software is a place that collects snapshots of each aspect of customer management. Some CRM software can make graphs and charts out of your data to display on the visual dashboard, allowing your team to identify and analyze trends at a glance.
Customer relations management FAQ
Here are some questions frequently asked about customer relations management:
What are the four stages of customer relations management?
The four stages of customer relations management include marketing, sales, product and support. The marketing stage reveals potential customers, while the sales stage filters those customers down to those who express interest in your product or service. The product stage fulfills their order, and the support stage involves continued communication about use and quality of purchased products or services.
What are the five stages of the customer life cycle?
The customer life cycle is the very thing CRM software was designed to capture and track. As such, customer relations management follows customers through five key stages. These include:
- Discovery: At this stage, customers become aware of your product or service and how it fulfills a need in their personal or professional lives.
- Education: Once you have customers’ attention, they typically educate themselves more about your offering, making high-quality content a must for engagement and data collection purposes.
- Conversion: Conversion refers to the point where potential buyers make the leap to customer. If you provide value and make the process smooth, they may purchase again.
- Retention: Retention helps you keep customers by encouraging interaction and feedback that deepens your relationship and ensures satisfaction.
- Advocacy: Brand loyalty, or advocacy, is worth its weight in gold when it comes to marketing efforts, and happy customers often spread the word on social media and review websites.
What industries use customer relationship management software?
CRM software is used in a whole host of modern businesses, since the process of customer relationship management covers both tangible and intangible goods. For example, construction companies can use CRM systems to track homes they’ve built for specific clients, restaurants can use these tools to send specials to customers who frequently order delivery and hotels can maintain records of guests’ preferences to boost satisfaction when they stay at any of their locations.
