Customer relationship management (CRM) and its Benefits

Customer relationship management (CRM) is refers to practices, strategies and technologies that companies use to manage and analyze customer interactions and data throughout the customer lifecycle, with the goal of improving business relationships with customers, assisting in customer retention and driving.

Better Customer Service

CRM systems give businesses the ability to personalize and customize relationships with their customers regardless of which employee deals directly with them at any given time. CRM systems maintain a repository of customer profiles, giving employees the ability to treat each client individually. As a result, each employee is better informed about each customer's specific needs. CRM helps the organization easily and quickly modify its level of service in order to match each customer's profile. This improved customer service leads to increased customer loyalty and correspondingly decreases customer dissatisfaction. CRM systems also help the company receive feedback from customers regarding products they have purchased.

Collaboration

 

CRM systems give companies the ability to move away from tools, like spreadsheets, that appear to be entirely functional but fall short in a variety of areas. In even small organizations, the entire customer lifecycle is typically too complex to be managed effectively by one person. Therefore, the use of cloud-based CRM platforms allows for employees in multiple departments to more effectively manage their customer relationships and to see the big picture at any time.

Increased accountability

 

When companies lack the tools to manage their customer relationships, customers are bound to fall through the cracks. CRM systems can help ensure that this doesn't happen by adding a layer of accountability to the customer relationship management process.

A well-implemented CRM system helps employees across departments understand their responsibilities to customers throughout the customer lifecycle and when those responsibilities aren't met, it's easy to identify what went wrong, where, who fell short and how to make sure it doesn't happen again.