How to Choose a CRM That's Good for Your Business

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It's important to know how to choose a CRM. When asked how they attract new customers, many business leaders can quickly point to their latest products and services, social media campaigns, and busy sales teams. But what about the customers they already have? How are they ensuring they stay customers and become loyal brand ambassadors?

How to Choose a CRM

Consider these three well-established truths for existing customers:

  • It costs more to acquire new customers than it does to retain current ones.
  • Loyal customers spend up to 70% more than new ones.
  • Over 90% of customers are likely to make repeat purchases with businesses that offer excellent customer service.

A majority of consumers say they’ve stopped doing business with brands that neglect them. If you want to see to it that customers never fall through the cracks, a good, cost-effective customer relationship management (CRM) system can help.

Choosing a CRM - Why Your Business Needs One

Customer loyalty is critical to your organization’s long-term success. Therefore, it's important to know how to choose a CRM because a good CRM system is imperative to successful marketing campaigns, sales cycles, and brand identity, no matter what size your business.

According to Gartner, CRM is the fastest-growing enterprise application software category, with global spending on it expected to reach nearly $115 billion by 2027. Though CRMs have historically been used as sales and marketing tools, there’s recently been an increase in using them for customer service and support, as brands look to provide the holistic relationships today’s customers demand.

What is CRM for your Business?

So, what’s in a CRM for you?

  1. Today, some customers begin their interactions on a social media platform like Twitter but then switch to email or live chat to resolve them. A CRM lets you manage interactions across all channels without losing track. It also helps you acquire leads from multiple channels, such as emails, SMS, and automated phone calling.
  2. Instead of relying on historical revenue data, a CRM provides a future view of sales trends that are leading indicators of your revenue and profit metrics.
  3. You can use CRM to replicate best sales and customer service practices. Sales teams can use workflow automation to automate activities and ensure best practices are consistently followed.
  4. Establishing customer connections helps you tailor products and services to fit individual needs, an extremely effective way to compete in a highly competitive marketplace.

Not Having a CRM Can Cost You

A CRM is not merely a database of your customers and leads. It’s a valuable resource for building and maintaining relationships. A centralized platform for interactions and communications, CRM eliminates data silos and ensures you never miss an opportunity to connect with your customers.

Inside your business, a CRM:

  • Boosts employee productivity by freeing your teams from repetitive tasks and giving them more time to connect with customers.
  • Helps convert more marketing leads into sales.
  • Reduces the cost of sales by offering greater visibility into upsell, cross-sell, and renewal opportunities.

Previous studies have shown that a mere 5% increase in customer retention can increase your brand’s profits by up to 95%. A CRM offers transparency into customer histories, open cases, and active campaigns. Leveraging this information to provide satisfying customer experiences can pay big dividends for years to come.

How to Know a Good CRM When You See One

Customer relationship management is a business strategy focused on:

  • Improving customer service.
  • Increasing customer satisfaction.
  • Managing existing customers.
  • Gaining new quality customers.

A good CRM helps increase customer loyalty and profitability. It gathers information on your existing customers and then analyzes the data to give you an accurate idea of how to best create and deliver value to them.

The most effective CRM platforms are simple to use but rich in features like marketing, analytics, workflow automation, pipeline management, and customer care. They integrate easily with your existing software and offer multiple ways for you to communicate with prospects.

What to Look for in a Good CRM

Here are some of the top qualities to consider when selecting a CRM for your business.

  • A customizable dashboard that’s tailored to your specific needs even when they change. You should be able to easily track things like inbound leads, number of service call resolves, etc., and get a quick view of marketing, sales, and customer service performance.
  • Real-time reporting with actionable insights and opportunities.
  • Powerful automation that eliminates repetitive tasks, supports sales campaigns, and enhances your sales team’s productivity.
  • Scalability that allows you to expand your capabilities and connect seamlessly to other applications in your network.
  • A secure infrastructure to keep your data and communications protected.

To compete in today’s multi-channel customer environment, you need a CRM that captures your customers’ interest so you can better market and sell to them. With its robust task management, multi-layer reporting, game-changing SMS, and more, OnCourse is an integrated suite of tools that includes a CRM designed to manage all your business’s relationships with existing and potential customers. To learn more about how a CRM can help your business drive growth and profitability, request a sales demo today.