Customer Relationship Management- A Guide For Marketers

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) should be one of the most important parts of any business. This is due to the fact that customers are the fuel that keeps the business running.

Therefore, you need to put in place everything that will ensure utmost customer satisfaction.

Customer Relationship Management system has to do with all the processes involved in managing customer relationship that is communication, data management, interaction, marketing, and customer service.

CRM solutions help you throughout the sales funnel processes by coordinating and automating the whole sales funnel process.

What is Customer Relationship Management

Customer Relationship management software can significantly help your business by providing an all in one platform. Having a CRM helps you understand customer behavior, needs, etc through various parameters in the CRM program.

The CRM can handle other processes such as data management, analytics, customer support, communication, forecasting, management, etc.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM Software) is a program that helps in the management and automation of the customer life cycle. Which involves managing customer relationship, communication, interaction all in one place.

In simple term, Customer Relationship management software helps in managing customers, building relationship with customers, increase engagements, leads, sales and income.

Why You Need a Good CRM

Quality customer service is an integral part of every business operation this is because customers are king. And, therefore, must be treated as such in order to build a long-lasting business.

For a business to continue to foster you must ensure an increase in generating new customers, increase customer retention, increase client satisfaction, great customer service and most importantly great customer experience.

A good Customer relationship management system will help you find new prospective customer, retain existing ones, help you recover former clients, etc. Apart from the fact that they help facilitate good relationship a great CRM will also help in collecting, processing, organizing, managing and executing customer data and delivering it in a more effective way.

Benefits of Using a CRM

Helps to streamline and Increase Sales

With the right Customer Relationship Management strategy, you are able to streamline and adopt the best quality leads, which leads to an increase in sales, increase and profitability of the business.

With CRM you can divide customers into segments and focus on customers that are doing great and also identify customers that are not doing so well.

Helps in Better Decision Making

With access to customer data and other information and report on the Customer Relationship Management system, the report gives you accurate insights into every detail of the customer journey and customer behavior, thereby making it easier to make a better and faster decision

Increased Customers Satisfaction

Improved customer services mean increased customers satisfaction. CRM does not only help the managers, but it also offers the customers maximum satisfaction.

Enhances Customers Retention

When customers are satisfied with the level of services they are getting, they tend to stay thereby. Customer Relationship management system will help to increase customers retention.

Improves Company Communication

One of the greatest pitfalls for an organization is inefficient and ineffective communication or communication gap. This is largely due to the fact that information sharing can be an issue within some department. But with CRM, it’s easier to manage and share information within and outside the organization without any form of information gap.

Gives a valuable insight about your business

A CRM gives an insight into the overall activities of the business at a glance. You can easily track the number of new customers, returning customers, old customers, and new leads.

Increased profitability

An increase in customer satisfaction will lead to more sales and leads which eventually leads to more income and on the long run profitability of the business.

Centralized customer information database:

If you are looking for a better way to manage all customer individual records on one system, the CRM is your best option. It can save personal information like Name, email, phone number, address, and other information in a single place which will make it easy for other members of the organization to access it.

That is other team members can view, edit, update and access this information based on their level of admin access which makes it easy for every member of the team to access this information at any time. It does not just provide central customer information, It also provides a secured means of storing information.

Inter-department integration:

It encourages inter-departmental cooperation thereby making work relationship more effective and efficient since all the files are centrally stored. Different departments can access the file and update the information giving a more coordinated approach. It makes information sharing easy with and outside the organization.

Efficient and Productivity:

One of the importance of a Customer relationship management program is it fosters and improves efficiency and productivity since all the files are centralized, the individual team member has access to the files. Content sharing is easy therefore this improves the overall workflow of the organization.

Data Availability:

Since the files are cloud-based, therefore, availability is guaranteed every time the files are needed.

Reports Generation

Organizations can use CRM to generate reports, track performance, sales, progress and generate information that will help in better decisions making.

CRM solutions’ current market growth

Customer Relationship Management system has grown over the years with the projection of the industry to hit over 48 billion by the year 2020. The market has witnessed new products from both the new and old players.

Features a marketer should look for in a Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Before settling for a Customer Relationship Management software. There are unique features you should watch out for, these features will ensure you have a smooth customer management experience. These are some of the top features to watch out for when choosing a CRM.

Contact Management: This functionality in Customer Relationship Management that allows managers or users to streamline and organize contacts based on different parameters.

Sales/Marketing Automation and Sales Tracking

The CRM provides sales automation by providing quality leads, reaching out to other prospects, tracking of sales and managing sales processes.

Reports Generation

Every CRM must have a reporting system which must provide an overview of all the activities, processes and engagement within the CRM.

Analytics

A CRM provides in-depth analytics on sales, customer experience, marketing, promotions, leads, etc

Sales Forecasting: With your CRM, you can successfully forecast sales based on previous information at your disposal.

Admin levels and approval

A CRM must also provide a different level of administration in other to ensure everyone does not have equal access to the same level of information. This only allows each user to have access to the level of information within their job roles.

Sales performance management

Since the CRM has the capacity to detect good leads, it also provides managers with sales performance which can be filtered based on time, amount, location, etc

Message/Chat Integration

Chat and message features come pre-integrated which allows users to send direct messages or live chats. This feature allows you to chat with employees, clients, customers, managers, etc all from the CRM.

Featured for future Customer Relationship Management System

• Full Mobile Compatible CRM
• Artificial Intelligence
• Data Security and encryption
• Third Party Integration
• Access Business information
• Automate Sales
• Training, Support, and contracts
• Customer Support
• Marketing
• Storage of resources

Best WordPress CRM Solutions for Marketers

WP ERP

WP ERP is one of the best CRM in the market. it is a great resource offering a three in one multi-system which includes an accounting solution, Human Resouce Management, and Customer Relationship Management. It offers support for 44 currencies, easy customization, great communication, and notification system and the ability to group contacts.

The WP ERP CRM gives you the flexibility to recruit, manage your account and customer from one single system.

WP-CRM

WP-CRM is another great WordPress CRM systems that allow you to either add contacts manually or capture them automatically through your website. It gives you a lot of flexibility in terms of the fields you can capture into your CRM. It comes with a powerful filter option that allows you to sort customers based on several attributes.

UpiCRM

This is one of the best free CRM, It is a powerful user management systems it can easily be integrated with other WordPress contact forms like Gravity Forms, Contact Form 7, Ninja Forms, etc to capture and manage leads. UPiCRM allows you to send emails to contact, assign leads and group contacts into categories.

It can also be integrated with google analytics providing insights of user activities. With UPI CRM you can easily import contacts, track leads, assign leads to members of the team, track leads, etc.

UkuuPeople

UkuuPeople is one of the most popular and easy to use WordPress CRM systems. Unlike other sophisticated CRM, UkuuPeople is simple and easy to use. With UkuuPeople you can segment your contact list into subgroups known as tribes based on different criteria. UkuuPeople lets you add new users and update existing ones, assign tasks to team members, Plan, schedule, assign meetings, track and share relationship activities, etc

WP-CRM System

This is another powerful and robust CRM that allows you to manage customers, task, projects, etc. It comes in multiple language options. It allows to manage projects, track marketing campaigns, and assign individual tasks, create forms, Zendesk integration, custom fields, generates receipts and invoices, etc

Conclusion

If your business still operates without a customer relationship management system, now is the time to adopt this game-changing application to help boost your business.

The CRM Industry has experienced tremendous growth in recent years as more organization are adopting the system.