When dealing with a lot of clients on a regular basis, learning how does CRM work can become crucial in helping the business succeed. CRM software is basically a tool that helps you connect the business goals and customer satisfaction so that you can enjoy an outcome that will benefit both.

It’s no secret that focusing on customer satisfaction is the best way to be profitable in the long run.

Today I will inform you of the main reasons why and how does CRM works for business success. In fact there are vital benefits of using a CRM that can boost your business revenue.

How Do You Know You Need A CRM?

Some businesses often become very successful even without CRM. Does that mean they shouldn’t get a CRM?

Not really.

Rather, there’s is a big possibility that CRM could increase their revenue even more.

Basically, even if you are doing well with your business, you should consider starting using a CRM when you see some of the following signs:

What problems does a CRM solve ?

1. You hired dedicated people just to update spreadsheets manually when maintaining customer data.
2. It takes more than 30 secs to find a customer’s data when required.
3. You often face issues such as duplicate data, wrong data saved, or data lost due to human errors.
4. The business’ KPI analysis and reports are manually created, resulting in taking late decisions in vital situations.
5. Keeping records of past interactions with a customer is complicated.
6. You are manually setting up email marketing campaigns for different types of customers.
7. Getting fewer results from marketing campaigns since you imply no personalization and use generic email copies for every customer.
8. Your business is not well organized in tracking customer dis-satisfactions and planning corrective actions. Plus, you are getting fewer referrals from customers.
9. Your marketing team is more excited about getting new customers, than trying to make the existing customers upgrade their package.
10. There are at least 3 times more current customers than the number of people assigned to provide customer support.

There can be many more signs, but these are the most critical ones to look at if you want business success in the long run.

At today’s technical prowess, manual handling of data is always a bad idea. It’s really more convenient to maintain a system that is self-organized and automates a lot of the functions required to maintain a good customer relationship

What does a CRM do ?

Now, let us look at how does CRM work and top benefits of using a CRM for Business from a business perspective.

Efficient Data Management

A CRM will help you maintain customer data in an organized manner and with greater efficiency.

Most CRM software has duplicate checker which ensures that there can’t be duplicate customers added to the database.

Plus the whole process is pretty much automated. When a customer signs up, his data will be linked with all the processes such as customer service hub, marketing email campaigns, payment handling department, customer history, and many more.

This means you will no longer need to maintain different spreadsheets to handle tasks of different departments. The CRM will distribute customer data will automatically to the right department database in an organized structure.

For example – for a customer, the marketing team will get information such as customer preferences, past expenses on your products, past conversations with the support team, etc. The accounts department will get the data such as transaction dates and amounts, mode of transaction, etc.

Eventually, you won’t need to hire separate people to update spreadsheets. Thus saving huge time and money.

Increased Marketing Productivity

The CRM will give the marketing team, access to all the past activities of the customer. Plus, most CRMs include an analytics section to monitor the KPI on each marketing campaign run in the business.

This will give the marketing team an edge to understand what campaigns to run next for better results, which tactics were not working properly, and which KPI (if you have multiple KPIs) to focus on to increase revenue.

You should also pay attention to increase customer engagement to increase your conversion. You can see how medical fields are doing effective lead nurturing

The best part is that you will get analytics data in real-time. You won’t have to wait till the end of the day or week, and then take time to create a report.

CRMs usually allow you to integrate with email marketing tools so that you can run automated marketing campaigns. For example an email drip campaign with discount offers. So, you can stop wasting time manually by sending emails from external tools. Rather integrate your email service once, then manage and execute your campaigns through the CRM.

All in all, the marketing team no longer has to consider each customer as a new customer. With the past records available, the marketing can easily personalize with the customers when running any marketing campaigns.

All these will contribute to a more polished marketing effort and increase the number of positive outcomes.

Execute Problem Handling Effectively

You must be wondering how does CRM works for customers? Along with customer details, CRM for business can also keep records of product issues faced or customer complaints.

So there will be no chance of forgetting what’s missing. You will have the list of complaints which the development team can observe and add tasks to their schedules accordingly. After fixing the issue, they can set up email replies to customers from within the CRM.

Now, the best part about this is that you can make the update on this case visible for other departments who might find it useful. For example, the marketing team can create marketing campaigns, promoting the next fix in your products. This is an important aspect of learning how does CRM work.

Get Accurate Reports

Now other than reports of the marketing team, the business has tons of other reports to look at.

For example,

• Lead Status Reports
• Total Sales Reports
• Call Log Reports
• Employee Performance Reports
• Goals Progress Reports

You may require many more reports to take important business decisions, depending on the business niche. On top of that, a business usually tends to retrospect by comparing old reports with new ones.

For example – the Goals Progress Report is vital to understand how successfully the business is executing its business growth plan.

A Revenue Report can give insights on where the business stands compared to its expenses. A business may also compare the revenues earned on multiple months, or even go for a yearly comparison to understand if any vital business decisions maybe are required to take.

It is possible to create all these reports either manually on spreadsheets or by using multiple tools for each report.. But that just adds to more expenses, and more manual efforts required.

If you have mobile apps build specially for your business then you can take advantage for coming up with better reports

CRM software usually has the option to generate reports for any purpose. Yes, initially you have to decide and set up what reports you require. But once you set it up, you won’t have to touch it again unless you want to change any reports. The CRM will be able to auto-calculate accurate data and provide you with reports in real-time to take important decisions.

Take Important Business Decisions Confidently

Now, throughout the article, I kept on mentioning, “important/vital business decisions.”

Now let me give you a few instances how does CRM work, where you might need to make those decisions.

After looking at the reports, if you see that any work progress is slower than planned, even if the employees put in their best efforts, then you might want to decide on increasing the number of employees in that department.

Again, after looking at the company expenses compared to the revenue, you might wish to make decisions such as laying off employees or stop using less important services to cut down cost. If you notice excess revenue, you might wish to invest in the next planned activity early, such as putting together another team for a new product for your customers.

With a CRM, being the owner or the Head Manager, you will have a full overview of your business activities, customer satisfaction range, employee performance, and overall business performance.

So you will have everything you need, in front of you, when taking any decision. You will pretty much be relieved off manual calculations and won’t have to waste time and money to conduct research on your own company. Since everything will be updated in real-time, you will be able to take quick decisions, confidently.

What are top 5 CRM systems

• Salesforce
• Zoho CRM
• Pipedrive CRM
• Freshsales

Final Thoughts on how does CRM work ?

After understanding how does CRM works for business it becomes one of the keys to success for most large businesses out there. It is usable in almost every business such as Medical Centers, Private Banks, Digital Marketing Agencies, Software Development Firms, eCommerce stores, etc.

Having a portal where you can develop your business to connect with customers and improve your business at the same time is a great advantage and will solve a lot of business problems.

So if you are planning to grow your business and achieve success with your goals, then it’s best to start using a CRM.