What Makes Up An Effective Customer Relationship Management System [Infographic]

What Makes Up An Effective Customer Relationship Management System

Customer service is one of the pillars of success for many businesses. Companies cannot expect to achieve optimal growth and increase their revenue if they do not have a solid customer service support in place that allows them to maximise their interactions with customers.

Every company needs a system to organise, manage, monitor, and enhance the quality of service and experience they provide to their customers. This is where the value of a customer relationship management (CRM) system lies for your business.

You could look at CRM both as a software that helps you manage your customer database and a business philosophy that helps you improve your relationship with your customers. In short, CRM is both a tool and a strategy that you use to keep customers satisfied and loyal to your services.

CRM applications may look like spreadsheets, where your teams fill in data in tabular form to record, analyse, and interpret customer data. A 24-hour call center that BPO companies operate is also a type of a CRM system which customer service representatives connect with and gain access to information about their customers.

What Makes Up An Effective Customer Relationship Management System

1. Process Automation

One of the ways that a CRM system lets you automate your workflow is by incorporating triggers in the system that you use for your sales and marketing tasks. These triggers include sending follow-up reminders and automated notifications to your sales agents to help them monitor their respective client accounts.

Your account managers may also use the CRM to identify customer accounts that are up for renewal. The sales reps could then contact the customers to get them to renew their contract with your company.

In terms of customer service, a CRM enables the support team to respond to customer issues through a ticketing system that simultaneously notifies the concerned CSR about the matter and sends an acknowledgment email to customers while a resolution is being worked on.

 

2. Flexible Security

When you’re handling sensitive data such as credit card numbers, medical records, and other personal information, you could use the CRM to store and secure all these types of data in such a way that only select authorised personnel will have access to them.

Your CRM infrastructure should, therefore, have the highest levels of data security controls to protect your customers, as well as your organisation from both internal and external risks.

 

3. Simple and Easy to Navigate

When choosing a CRM for your business, your primary consideration should be ease of use. Its technology should be simple enough to learn, along with features that are relevant to your needs, so that your staff will be encouraged to make full use of it.

An intuitive and easy-to-navigate user interface, automated features, and properly placed links are good indication that you have an efficient CRM system in place.

 

4. Integrated Analytics

Your CRM system should give you insights about your sales and marketing campaigns. For example, you can use your CRM to monitor orders that have been closed via social media—prompting you to beef up your interactions with customers on social more than you used to.

By integrating data analytics into your CRM, you can also better identify who your customers are and what their needs are. You could then improve your efforts toward product development to suit your customers’ needs .better.

 

5. Customisable

A worthy choice for a CRM system is one that offers solutions according to your end-to-end processes and not the vendor’s or your competitor’s. Your CRM should have proper tools and applications for your business workflow, too.

So, if your company is into selling commodities and you need to constantly monitor your sales, marketing, and customer service satisfaction performance, your CRM should have a custom dashboard that can show you the number of inbound leads or cases resolved through service calls.

 

6. Multichannel Support

Customers are always on the go these days, which means they should be able to communicate with you wherever they go and with whatever device they are using to reach you. Some will prefer to send you a chat message, while some find it more efficient to resolve an issue with an agent taking their call.

By incorporating multichannel support into your CRM, whether by call, chat, email, SMS, or social, you can connect with customers and serve them promptly.

 

7. Tracking and Scoring Leads

Gathering leads and following them through can be made easier with a CRM system. This can prove to be very beneficial in increasing your company’s sales opportunities.

The tracking feature can also improve the efficiency of your salespeople as they follow a system for scheduling follow-up calls or visits to future clients, minimising instances of missed calls or random walk-ins from potential customers.

A CRM solution for lead scoring also enables your sales team to spend their time more wisely by reaching out to hot leads first over the colder ones.

 

To wrap up, you could leverage a CRM system for streamlining your workflow, managing various areas of your business, and delivering valuable support to your customers.

With these functionalities, a CRM system can significantly contribute to how you position your company as a customer-oriented and highly efficient organisation.

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