Today, companies around the world are being confronted with the same issues related to data: information must be reliable, updated, personalized, and secure. It is important to establish this to adapt to consumers’ new expectations and requirements. It will also enable companies to adapt and respond in real-time.
With this in mind, what are the different ways you can differentiate yourself from the competition and stand out while creating a strong and lasting relationship with your customers? To achieve this goal, you need a CRM tool to help you maintain a privileged relationship with your customers and interact with them in a personalized and automated manner.
In this article, our digital experts explain the benefits of having a CRM and share their top tips on how to improve your ROI by integrating it into your business strategy.
What is a CRM?
A CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software refers to the management of a company’s interactions with its prospects and current customers, to retain existing customers and improve the company’s sales.
A CRM software is therefore a digital solution that not only allows a company to meet customer relationship management needs, but also to automate many time-consuming tasks, especially for team members in charge of sales, marketing, and after-sales service.
A CRM is an entirely customer-oriented system with the key objective of ensuring personalized communication to current and prospective customers more efficiently and in a simplified way.
Another advantage of using a CRM software is that it allows you to gather all the data available on your customers and to follow in real-time the evolution of your relationship with each of them. By being better informed about your customers and their needs, you can adapt your activity to meet their expectations. The improvement of your customer relationship will allow you to optimize your production and propose the best-suited offers to each audience, which will help to improve your ROI.
The key benefits of a CRM:
- Contact management
In addition to gathering information and sales data on your prospects and customers, a CRM system allows you to collect behavioral data and centralize everything in one place. For example, when it comes to marketing, a CRM can include data on the content viewed or downloaded by a lead as well as their interactions with an email campaign. The sales representative can add a call report for a lead generation campaign by phone.
In short, using CRM software will allow you to centralize your data which will facilitate the manipulation and segmentation of your contact base according to different criteria. Thus, it will be easier to launch contextualized and personalized prospecting actions. This tool will allow your different departments to collaborate more efficiently and use this data to achieve your business objectives.
- Task automation
A CRM system will allow you to automate repetitive tasks such as reminders, order updates, etc. This will in turn allow your teams to focus their efforts on other strategic tasks that contribute to the company’s growth and success.
- Marketing campaign management
With a CRM database, marketing teams can easily access information about leads. This information will be very useful when planning, monitoring, and analyzing the performance of campaigns.
- Reporting and optimization of commercial activities
CRM software allows you to edit customizable reports and create dashboards to analyze and monitor your key performance indicators. This in turn will allow you to optimize your customer approach.
- Claims management
A CRM covers the entire life cycle of a customer, from the first contact to the after-sales service. It is for this reason that a CRM system is very helpful in terms of ensuring customer service and also managing the requests that may arise after a sale.
→ CRM Strategy: Why you need it and how to develop it
How to Create a CRM Strategy
1 – Analyze what already exists
Before you select your CRM system, it is important to take a moment to reflect on your strategic approach to business. You need to analyze your current situation and identify any problems encountered by the marketing and sales teams with the existing processes and tools. To do this, it is essential to identify your target audiences, your preferred methods of communication, and what ways you use to reach out to prospects. By analyzing this information, you will be able to pinpoint what needs to be optimized.
2 – Define your objectives
When implementing a CRM strategy, ideally the end objective is to improve your business performance and remove the obstacles that prevent your company from achieving its objectives. It is therefore necessary to understand the challenges you are facing and identify which tools will be better based on the strategic direction of your company. This is an essential step because it will influence the type of CRM tool you select.
3 – Establish scenarios to help your team members to master the new tool
Often, the most difficult phase in the integration of a CRM tool is the team’s adaption to the new system.
Indeed, one of the main causes of failure in CRM projects is a lack of knowledge and understanding of the CRM tool by the team members who are involved. If the team is not fully integrated from the start, there is a risk of them not using the CRM at all or not using it optimally. This will decrease the profitability of the company if the tool is not fully and efficiently being used.
To avoid this problem, it is best to work in collaboration with the marketing, sales, and service team members on fictive scenarios with the CRM system. The project manager will then be able to identify the operational needs of everyone and make recommendations on the best approach to be implemented and the possible solutions so that everyone can use it according to their needs.
→ Banking sector: how to manage your CRM database efficiently?
How to optimize your ROI?
Customer Relationship Management performance is measured using key performance indicators (KPIs), which are themselves integrated with a solid reporting system. KPIs, which can be broad or specific, must always be linked to the company’s marketing and sales objectives.
Building a CRM scoring system, maintaining good file hygiene, and using CRM testing methods are all part of an efficient CRM performance approach.
Reporting: This allows you to visualize the results of your CRM strategy and to follow the evolution of your key performance indicators. The implementation of an efficient CRM reporting system requires to choose wisely the tools and indicators to ensure coherent and optimized data flow for your business.
KPIs: Key Performance Indicators allow you to measure the performance of your CRM strategy and to better understand the link between your customers and your company. The KPIs used must be adapted to your company. They are only of interest if they are specific, measurable, actionable, and can be optimized. The choice of KPIs is the key to a permanent progression of your practice. Eminence can help you make the right choices in terms of what KPIs to track.
→ The best CRM for Marketing Automation
The customer file is the foundation of all CRM systems: Lead scoring allows you to qualify the customer file by assigning a score to each customer based on their demographic and behavioral criteria. CRM scoring makes it possible to adapt your strategy to different customer profiles and to personalize messages to each customer. Lead scoring, segmenting, and selecting are the key steps in ensuring CRM performance.
From the customer’s point of view, it is important to find the right balance of content, information, and promotions. From the company’s point of view, managing sales pressure effectively is often synonymous with return on investment. Optimizing sales pressure is about finding the right balance between short-term performance and building customer loyalty.
A customer file evolves. To maintain CRM performance, there is a crucial aspect to consider: ensuring that each customer file is up to date within the CRM system. This work consists of organizing the registration of new contacts and deleting inactive contacts.
A CRM allows you to tailor your messages and improve your customer relations as well as to regularly monitor your performance. To improve the ROI of your CRM, you can perform different tests on the CRM. To do this, you need to be able to go into “test and learn” mode. This implies detecting the right platforms to communicate on and adopting the best methods to use.
Finally, it is essential to listen, understand, and anticipate your customer’s needs. Listening and exploiting the voice of the customer must be organized to optimize performance. This is why a CRM strategy is crucial to drive performance.