Why your business needs CRM software

CRM in business

Customers now make more than half of their purchases online. For businesses, both retail and others, this has called for a greater online presence. But customers want a personalized experience. The larger your customer base, the more difficult it is to customize every interaction. One of the best ways to deal with this is by employing customer relationship management (CRM) software.

CRM software will help you organize and manage your contact information, making it easier to follow up with customers and business activities. It’ll create a central repository that collects all your customer data in a single place, giving your business the edge when it comes to building relationships with your customers.

Is it too late for your business to add CRM software?

The unfortunate reality is that businesses who are ready for CRM software often don’t realize it until it’s too late. Your top-performing salesperson, for example, might up and leave, taking all of their contacts with them. Or your customer service team may struggle to deal with an unhappy client leading to the loss of business.

The following trends are symptomatic of a need for CRM software:

• Low productivity

• A breakdown of collaboration between departments

• Limited accountability amongst your salespeople

• Poor or limited data analysis

• Prolonged customer unhappiness

• Missed sales opportunities

• Rapid business growth

As a business owner or manager, if you can see any of these trends in your business, then it’s high time to invest in some quality CRM software. Here’s why:

CRM accommodates business growth

Digital filing cabinets and ledgers may have been useful for managing a few clients, but if you want to build relationships with hundreds, perhaps thousands of people, then you’re going to need a better solution. A strong CRM software package scales easily with your business and can handle larger data sets and more clients as the company grows.

It organizes your data

CRM software acts as a central database for all of your sales records and transactions. Your customer information can be retrieved instantly at the click of a button, avoiding the complicated unorganized data storage techniques of the past. It’s now all cloud-based and available to anyone in the business that needs access to it.

It improves customer service

Your sales team could be the most persuasive people in the world and still fail if they can’t recall anything about their clients and their preferences. CRM software enables complete personalization. When your sales staff follow up on a lead or existing customers, the software will automatically retrieve contact history, previous purchases, and customer preferences – all data that will have been gleaned through the software. It’ll present it in an easy to understand format to your sales team. Now armed with all the information they need, your sales team will be able to get to work on closing a lead, dealing with a current inquiry, and delivering a professional service.

CRM streamlines your sales funnel

Most CRM software comes with workflow management functions that help support your sales pipeline. Imagine sending automatic and instant follow-up emails when a lead visits your website or track where people are in the sales funnel and customize your messages for them perfectly.

It analyzes your data

CRM software is able to give you real-time sales information with which managers can track marketing campaigns and adjust strategy accordingly. Say your click-through-rates for your promotional emails are higher on a Monday afternoon after lunch. You can focus your marketing efforts and budget during this time. You can also seamlessly analyze your customer’s online behavior, marketing demographics, conversion rates, and key performance indicators to help make informed business decisions.

Understanding your customers can give you an edge over your competitors. Using CRM software to streamline business processes and improve lead conversions can only be a good thing for your business. If you’re interested in learning more about improving CRM and customer service in your business, consider Clickatell Touch. It integrates seamlessly with any existing infrastructure and CRM software and will revolutionize customer care in your business. Touch makes use of machine learning technology to intelligently begin understanding your customers and their needs and will feed this information into any CRM software, allowing your sales team to spend their time acting on valuable, qualified leads.