After all, business isn’t just about products and services. It’s about clients.
Customer relations are essential to the success of any business. Without them, most companies would struggle or never get off the ground. In today’s globalized markets, customers extend beyond a single neighborhood.
How can businesses remain responsive to their customers and be receptive? CRM software is the answer.
Our short guide will cover everything from automated surveys to turnover for any business that deals with customers.
What is CRM
Let’s explore what CRM means before we answer the question, “What is CRM software?”
CRM Management is a collection, organization, and study of the customer interactions in a business. This includes a wide range of information across the many departments in a company, such as:
Marketers
Customer service
Accounting
Performance Analysis or Consulting
Sales
Social media
Each department has vital information about your customers, from advertising responses and click-through rates to final sales.
The data can be analyzed to create a comprehensive picture of the customer’s perception of your business, which will help you identify areas where your company is succeeding and struggling. You can better shape your business strategies to grow and maintain your customer base if you have more information about your customers.
How can we connect these dots? Modern CRM software can help you with this.
CRM Systems 101
In 1960, Rolodexes, or paper spreadsheets, dominated CRM. We now have digital systems to help businesses and marketing professionals use customer data more effectively and productively.
What is a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system?
Cloud-based platforms are used by modern customer relationship management software to combine data from customer relations into a single system. This allows a business to learn about its customers’ needs, expectations, and behaviors. These CRM features can be used to improve customer experience and grow the company.
These days, CRM systems can pull data from various within a business, and not one address book or newsletter. These data points include:
Customers accounts
Customer location & demographics
Customer interaction records (emails, phone calls, etc.)
Social media engagement
Website analytics (traffic volume, click-through rate, etc.).
Marketing campaign responses
Total sales
CRM software offers a variety of tools to help you organize, process, and project all this data. These digital tools can give your business the analytical insight it needs to succeed.
Metrics for CRM Software
CRM systems collect data and information from multiple departments. But what does it measure?
Specific metrics are the most important when it comes to CRM. You want to be able to monitor changes in customer behavior, interest, and cost over time. We’ll explore the most valuable and standard metrics you can track in your CRM system.
Customer Churn
Customer churn is the percentage of clients you lose in a period, usually a month, a quarter, or a year. It is essential to track the total number of customers from the beginning to the end.
Net Promoter Score and Customer Effort Score
The customer effort score measures how satisfied customers feel when interacting with and purchasing from a business. The net promoter score measures whether a customer would refer the company to a friend.
Companies typically send digital forms or polls to collect this information immediately after interacting with a client. You don’t have to wait until the final sale before asking for feedback. CES polls can track a variety of interactions.
Customer support
Subscription signups
Website Visits
Returns and exchanges
Customer retention cost
Customer retention cost is a measure of the cost to retain a client. It is calculated by combining multiple data points. Your profits will increase the lower your customer retention costs are.
This metric compares customer payments to the costs of your business, including:
Costs of staffing
Manufacturing Costs
Overhead costs (space, maintenance, technology, etc.)
Marketing campaigns
Discounts or programs for customer loyalty
Length Of The Sales Cycle
The sales cycle is the time it takes a customer to buy your product or service. It starts with the first click on your website and ends with the final confirmation of sale.
CRM systems can also be used to analyze the length of each stage in the sales pipeline, from prospecting customers to closing the deal. CRM systems also allow for a more detailed sales cycle analysis, including the time it takes to move from the prospecting stage to the closing phase. 1
Close rate
Close rate is a measure of lead generation that eventually becomes closed deals (or successfully purchased). The majority of companies define what “leads” are. This can range from how many people have saved products in their digital cart to how many followers your business has on social media.
First Contact Resolution Rate
The last thing you want in customer service is to play a game called pass-the-phone. The first contact resolution rate measures how many customer complaints are resolved within the first contact. It is usually a good indicator of customer service efficiency.
Common CRM Software Types
CRM is not an easy subject. There are many CRM data channels, computations, and procedures. Many CRM systems are specialized in one function or set of information. Many businesses combine techniques to get a complete view of CRM progress.
Here are three types of CRM systems that can be used to manage contacts, project customer growth, and more: