Customer satisfaction has always been a subject in the stalking of commercial goals and targets. Customer relationship management (CRM) first gained prominence in the early 1990s.Customer Relationship Management is a software tech that helps a business or other organizations to easily track communications and nurture relationships with their leads and potential customers, usually by using data analysis to study large amounts of information. According to Philip Kotler and Gary Armstrong, ‘CRM is concerned with managing detailed information about individual customers and all customer “touch points” to maximize customer loyalty.
Customer Relationship Management unites all the data across various channels, or points of contact, between the client and the company, which could include the company’s website, telephone, live chat, direct mail, marketing materials and social networks. Anyhow the goal of CRM is to upgrade customer service relationships and assist in customer retention and drive sales growth. Through using the system, an organization can attain better operational efficiency, good time management and could impress customers.
How does a CRM System Work?
The purpose of a Customer Relationship Management is to store and manage all data for every kind of contact, from leads to business partners. At its basic level, CRM software allows marketers and salespeople to manage and analyze relationships with the organization’s real and potential customers. It collects information about the customer by tracking every interaction with the company. Also, a marketer always knows the history of a customer with the company while speaking with them. This makes the interaction more personalized, increases the chances of conversion, and encourages customer trust and loyalty.
Above all, CRMs include those functions which allow to track a customer/company interactions through various available touchpoints, including those from:
1. Contact forms
2.Search engines
3.Emails
4.Phone calls
5.Social media
The software handles certain tasks—it can offer automation of marketers’ monotonous tasks, sets reminders for important events, and displays alerts if things really need attention. Some CRMs also offer analytics capabilities, allowing you to track the efficiency of various marketing efforts to generate leads and conversions.
CLOUD CRM v/s ON- PREMISE CRM
A cloud CRM or Cloud-based CRM is customer relationship management software hosted in the cloud, which allowcrs accessing data from anywhere through the internet. This kind of software is also called software as a service (SaaS).It differentiates the system from traditional ‘in-house’ applications, which would be installed and run on servers within an organization. Moving to the advantages, there are no up-front maintenance costs or expenses associated with hardware or installation expenditures, or resources to track and perform software maintenance. And also, there is effortless maintenance.
On the other hand, the ‘on-premise CRM’ refers to the CRM system being hosted on the company’s server. The CRM system database is installed on the company’s server and managed on-site by an internal IT-team. The main benefit of this software is that it eliminates data theft as the entire business data is available on your own organization’s server.
TYPES OF CRM
The ‘on-premise CRM’ refers to the CRM system being hosted on the company’s server. The CRM system database is installed on the company’s server and managed on-site by an internal IT-team. The main benefit of this software is that it eliminates data theft as the entire business data is available on your own organization’s server.
We have various types of Customer Relationship Management as per the changes in customer portfolios, speed of business operations, requirement of handling large data, and the need of sharing information, resources, and efforts jointly.
Based on the prominent characteristics, Customer Relationship Management systems can be separated into 3:
- Operational CRM
- Analytical CRM
- Collaborative CRM
Operational CRM
Operational CRM is more customer-centric business processes such as marketing, selling, and services. It provides tools for better visualization and handling the full customer journey more efficiently—even when it includes a high number of touchpoints. Operational CRM systems typically provide automation features like Marketing automation, sales automation, and service automation.
Marketing Automation
Marketing automation is the process using software to automate marketing campaigns and activities throughout the entire buyer’s journey — from initial customer interactions through to post-sales support. Market Automation includes Market segmentation, campaigns management, event-based marketing, and promotions. Marketing automation saves time. It automates repetitive tasks, reduces human error, and helps to achieve better results. Instead of doing things manually, you can focus on more strategic tasks, such as campaign planning and design, goal development, research, brand consistency, KPI measurement, and more.
Sales Automation
Sales automation refers to the software, tools, and strategies that helps sales teams to eliminate repetitive, manual, time-consuming tasks by allowing them to focus on what they do best: closing deals. It makes it easier for the sales team to focus more on important tasks such as building relationships and nurturing leads. Further, Sales automation benefits your business by improving the accuracy and accelerates your sales process and keeps sales data consistent across your sales organization.
Service Automation
Customer service automation is a customer support software that minimizes human involvement in solving customer inquiries. Businesses achieve automated customer service using self-service resources, proactive messaging, or simulated chat conversations. Key examples of companies who became very successful with Service Automation are Uber and Netflix. Accelerate Service Delivery, Increase Efficiency and Productivity, Increase Customer Satisfaction, Reduce IT Costs, Reduce Risk of Error are the main pros of service automation.
Analytical CRM
Analytical CRM is a software which helps a company to collect data about its customer interactions, to increase customer satisfaction and customer retention rates. Analytical CRM is an essential part of managing customer relations. It accumulates and analyses consumer data of various kinds, including: Sales Data, Financial Data, Marketing Data. Base CRM is an example of analytical CRM. It offers detailed analytics and customised reports. Analytical CRM sets different selling approaches to different customer segments. Additionally, variety content and styling can be offered to different customer segments. For the customers, analytical CRM gives customised and timely solutions to the problems. For the business, it gives more prospects for sales, and customer acquisition and retention.
Collaborative CRM
Collaborative CRM deals with synchronisation and integration of customer interaction and channels of communications like phone, email, fax, web etc. in a consistent and systematic way. Collaborative CRM helps improve inter-team communication in businesses. Effective communication and coordination between employees leads to increased efficiency in performing common tasks, assigned workloads, and scheduled events. Also, Collaborative CRM allows easy communication and transactions among businesses.
Synopsis
Unlike many other software, Customer Relationship Management mainly focuses on the customer relationship and interactions rather than returns. It brings various activities carried out in different departments together, in order to bring a systematic approach which at last leads to the company’s success. As a matter of fact, this approach is widespread in the B2B area, where it is frequently challenging for companies to attract fresh customers. But, it also used in B2C area because CRM for business customers is usually based on processes and solutions that are specifically tailored to individual customers. However, this notion would be of particular interest to companies operating in highly competitive markets where it is crucial to captivate new customers.
