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What is CRM and should you invest in it?

Written by: Greg Pipe

Article Overview: With business getting tougher this year, investing a little time and money into improving your CRM systems could pay huge dividends.

What is CRM and should you invest in it?

CRM stands for Customer Relations management and put simply are the techniques and tools needed for keeping in touch with your customers and ensuring they have a smooth relationship with your organisation.

We all know that it’s important to keep track of our existing clients in the hopes they will continue to keep buying our products or using our services. After all, that’s how you maintain your revenue stream. But often this can seem easier to say than to do, so how do you ensure you do it the right way.

Service is key
Maintaining high levels of service throughout the company is the key to maintaining customers. We’ve all experienced purchasing something from a store only to find a problem. It’s when you then try and resolve this problem that a poor customer service experience can put you off using that business again.

Having the right systems in place can ensure all departments within a company know what has happened to a customer and means they can more effectively help them. CRM is really about communication. Ensuring everyone is kept well informed and that your customers get the right information when it’s needed. This means that even if a member of staff suddenly decides to leave, the next person will know exactly where to pick up from, with no more guessing.

CRM and marketing
This communication can pay dividends when it’s linked to your marketing. Not everybody pays attention to upgrades or new releases. You can send new information to clients and keep them updated of your most recent releases or activities. CRM systems help you do this by integrating email communications with call log tracking, so you know what’s been said or sent to your customers and when. They can also classify incoming emails and put them into the corresponding customers profile, helping you to group customers by previous purchases, or areas of interest for potential new sales.

I’ve mentioned in previous newsletters how grouping your database of customers and clients is crucial to improving your effectiveness with email marketing. So if your existing methods of storing customer records aren’t user friendly, perhaps you should look at a new CRM package and importing your existing data into it.

Through our own research we’ve sourced a company that has a huge track record in this industry, with over 51% market share. However, that doesn’t mean they’re also incredibly expensive. They offer a range of packages to suit all companies and can start from as little as £5 a month. We’ve included a link here to our website, where you can find out more about them.

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Article Tags: crm systems, customer relations management, dividends, time and money



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