By now, you may have heard of a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) application and how it can help you win customers. Winning customers will obviously grow your business but, be careful not to forget about the next part of the well-known acronym, Relationships. A CRM application will help you manage contact and account information streamlining the processes that improve the relationships with your customers. In fact, according to Software Advice, the number one feature that is requested by 88% of CRM users is contact management.
While many CRM enthusiasts preach how a CRM will benefit your revenues, pipeline management, and lead nurturing, all equally important, they tend to leave out the benefits a CRM has on contact management. An article by SuperOffice defines six CRM benefits to improve your customer relationships.
1. Better Knowledge of Customers
Think of your CRM application like a cheat-sheet with access to all your customers information giving you a competitive advantage. With all of this useful information including a contact’s full name, email, phone number, website, social accounts, title, role, and more, you can personalize all outreach to an individual. A personal touch in your outreach and support efforts makes the customer feel valued. By having up-to-date information about an individual, you can tailor the conversation to be relevant and fit their needs. It helps let the customer know they are more than just a sale.
Additionally, the CRM will automatically capture every activity you have held with a contact. From the first cold call, to all your follow-ups, to the documents you have sent back and forth. These important pieces of information are all readily available to you at a moment’s notice.
2. Better Segmentation
Stemming from the above information you have gathered about your contacts; a CRM will help you easily segment your target audiences. You can create custom lists or segments based off certain criteria about your records. Being able to target your audience and personalize your content will greatly improve your marketing efforts. Segmenting your audience will help you understand who is really interested in your offerings and who may need to get ran through your prospecting cycle again. This allows you to focus more time pursuing the right customers to grow your business.
3. Better Customer Retention
Not only can your CRM help you find and nurture potential customers, it is a great tool for keeping your existing customers happy. This is where some of the powerful automation features found in CRM applications come into play. You can schedule reminders for yourself to reach out to a customer who has not been contacted in some time. You can automatically schedule follow up activities after a contact makes a purchase or after they have reached out to your support team. According to a report, retaining an existing customer is six to seven times cheaper than getting a new one. CRM applications make it much simpler to keep your customers and more importantly, keep them happy.
4. Better Anticipation of Needs
Understanding the entire customer journey will help salespeople sell more and sell faster by anticipating customer needs. A CRM tracks every piece of the journey allows you to better understand the buying habits of your customers. By knowing the what, when, why, and how a customer bought a product the first time, you will be able to proactively reach out to a customer. You can make better offers when a contract is soon to expire or if a business typically makes their purchases at a specific time of the year. Being able to anticipate when customers want to buy will exponentially improve your sales and open the door to cross-selling and up-selling opportunities.
5. Better and Speedier Communication
When it comes to replying to customer service requests, speed is everything. CRM’s help save both you and your customers’ time. With features like custom auto-responses to support inquiries and email templates, you can quickly reply to any request comes into your CRM. You may resolve the issue before you even know there is one!
Not only does CRM improve your customer support response time, it can improve your customer relationships by allowing you to converse with your contacts in the channel that they prefer. Whether it be email, phone, or SMS, a CRM provides you with multiple avenues to communicate with and keep your customers happy.
To make matters even better, CRM will automatically capture all your communication touch points with a prospect or customer making it easier to follow up and understand their buying behaviors.
6. Better Protection of Data Privacy
A CRM system will help you be GDPR compliant. Your contacts can unsubscribe from your email newsletter and that information will automatically update in your CRM. This helps keep you compliant and your customers satisfied. You can use this opt-out field in your segmented lists we discussed earlier. CRM’s make it simple to filter out anybody who has opted out of your service, so you never bother your clients or break any protocols.
All-in-all there an abundant amount of benefits a CRM application provides, too many to list in this blog. The point is to not overlook the simple benefits a complex application like a CRM offers. Improving customer relationships and keeping customers happy are possible with the right CRM in place.
AMPED is a Customer Relationship Management application designed with a sleek layout and easy-to-use contact management features. AMPED provides automatic activity capture and custom segment capabilities to give you a better understanding of your customers buying behaviors and allow you to outreach according to your audiences. Anticipate your next sale with AMPED! Try it out for free today at https://amped.ai/free-trial.