What are CRM Solutions?

Customer relationship management is the process of overseeing your company’s interaction with current and potential customers. And CRM solutions are the tools that facilitate the process.

Customers or clients are the people or businesses who purchase your product. For sustainable business and growth, you need to keep your existing customers and gain new ones. But how do you keep track of who’s who? Where can you reach them? What do they like? Have they inquired about your product lately?

Customer relationship management (CRM) is the process of overseeing your company’s interaction with current and potential customers (leads). As a result CRM solutions give you the means to handle it all.

What does CRM cover

CRM means documenting leads’ and customers’ history with your company, to help you improve business relationships with them. Compiled data may include

• Their visits to company’s website
• Telephone, email, live chat, social media interactions you had with them
• Marketing materials sent to them, etc. 

Therefore, it refers to more than a list of business contacts: it’s more of a strategy that involves internal sales activities and marketing as well. (Depending on the type of your business, it may also include vendor relationships, etc.) Given the extent and depth of the information, paper-based notes, spreadsheets, or emails would quickly become cumbersome to track it all. Hence, customer relationships are best managed with the help of a CRM solution.

CRM solutions

CRM solutions, systems, platforms, or software are tools that document sales, marketing, and customer support activities, and help streamline your people and processes. Further, they are accessible from multiple devices (PC, laptop, smart phone, etc.), which is an important feature for your on-the-go salesforce.

Some of their benefits include:

• Data ownership (your company doesn’t lose data when a salesperson quits)
• Better data organization
• Enhanced communication 

stored email templates + automated reminders = better follow-up → improved customer relationships

• Shared information between departments, managers, and salespeople
• Lead-to-customer overview
• Data analysis capabilities.

CRM solutions provide the means to analyze the stored information from various points of view, depending on the type of activity you need it for. For example:

• Gain insight into sales performance
• Track workflow (e.g. prioritizing; any missed appointments, late follow-ups, etc.)
• Check the impact of marketing campaigns
• Trace business growth.

Choose your CRM solution

We trust that this brief overview gave you a sense of how CRM solutions facilitate the process of learning more about customers and how to best cater to their needs. If you don’t yet have one, start thinking about ways a CRM solution can help your business in customer retention and in driving sales growth.