Customer Relationship Management, or CRM, is a technological tool that allows you to record any and all interactions with your clients or customers, helping to manage relationships and develop your business.
How Does a CRM Work?
CRMs work by creating a central place to store information on your customers, including emails, social media, telephone calls and information from company websites. They make it easy for you to see at a glance when you last spoke to your customer, what was agreed and what actions you need to take.
The Benefits of CRMs
Depending on the system you choose, CRMs can help your business become more productive by:
– Managing leads and sales, automatically generating new leads from a range of sources, including social media followers and website visitors, calls to your company and newsletter sign-ups.
– Creating sales pipelines, including reminders of when actions such as follow-up calls are needed.
– Automating your marketing – sending out emails and SMS messages, for example.
– Providing real-time reports and dashboards that allow you to monitor performance and understand just what is and isn’t working for your business.
– Allowing you to manage workflows and gain approvals through task management tools.
Some CRMs also offer e-commerce and call centre capabilities, though these will likely come at a cost.
Choosing the Right CRM for You
Any company that has a large client or customer base will benefit from a CRM. Which CRM you choose, however, will depend on the business you are in and what you want the CRM to help you with. If you are a membership organisation,
Before you make a final decision, here are some questions you might want to ask:
– Is the CRM designed to meet your organisational needs?
– Does it offer value for money?
– Is it easy to implement and use?
– Are there a minimum or maximum number of users?
– Will it integrate with other software?
– How secure is it?
– What added features does it offer?
Once you have the answers to your questions, you can make an informed decision – one that will no doubt help your company be more productive in the future.
