Can CRM be an All-in-One Customer Engagement Platform?

Customer satisfaction is the only key to survival in this cutthroat competitive world. A business can survive only when its customers are satisfied with its products/services.

Customer engagement is pivotal in any industry, including customer service. Highly engaged customers always buy more, promote more, and demonstrate more loyalty.

You can ensure a high-quality customer experience and customer engagement by ideally using customer relationship management software.

The CRM (Customer Relationship Management software) Industry & Some Trending Stats

In the past few years, the CRM industry has seen staggering growth. The ecosystems of CRM software solution providers worldwide are surging high, and trust us, it won't slow down anytime soon.

The reason behind the unparalleled growth of CRM is the accessibility that this platform provides. With the help of CRM, companies can access their customers' data in real-time with mobile and cloud solutions.

According to the Grand View Search survey, the CRM software market in the US alone was USD 40.2 billion in 2019. The report also indicated that growth can reach around 14.2% from 2020 to 2027.

Seeing the surging numbers, it is not wrong to say that CRM has become the heart of every growing business.

The reality is that nearly 90% of companies use Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software.

The Importance of Customer Relationship Management Software

CRM is a technical system that helps in optimizing customer relationship management. Understanding the importance of CRM is essential, and it can be done by understanding the trends and personalizing the system according to the existing and potential customer's requirements.

With the help of CRM software, companies can streamline their multiple works such as assigning different tasks, handling the leads on time, maintaining healthy relationships with customers, and ensuring customers timely services. 

Some of the main advantages of CRM systems are as follows:

Sales/Marketing Opportunities: Companies can connect with CRM software solution providers for a reliable solution for better customer engagement. CRM software works as a sales and marketing tool. It enables businesses to manage current customers, review their purchase history, and even analyze their customers' buying habits.

Cost Reduction: Earlier, businesses handled every process manually. With the advent of CRM software, companies can save ample time and effort, ultimately reducing time, effort, and expenses. CRM collects data for easy analysis and lets enterprises predict the market situation and sales strategies. It leads to revenue upliftment.

Quick Customer Data Access: CRM acts as a centralized database with profiles containing information of multiple customers and delivers this information to businesses as and when required.

Enhanced Efficiency: As now the CRM agents do not have to explore the profiles of customers manually, their efficiency, as well as productivity, get enhanced. 

Better Communication: The CRM system's centralization of data makes it easier for businesses to share information between departments. Different departments' easy accessibility to data improves communication flow.

Reviews and Retention: CRM solutions help businesses collect feedback, reviews, surveys, etc., to improve customer relationships with the brand and earn customer loyalty.

Better Customer Experience: CRM software's collected data enables you to personalize your customer services, which can contribute to a long-term relationship with customers. As a customer engagement platform, CRM helps you meet your customers' demands and requirements timely and effective.

Service-Ready Business: Customer relationship management software allows you to classify your customers on different attributes, such as preference, price preferred, etc. Based on this information, you can allocate a team to other areas and empower them with the required essentials.

Is CRM Vital to Augment Customer Engagement?

CRM software is an all-in-one customer engagement platform. Its features enable businesses to generate, improve, and retain customers with timely service and exceptional experiences. It helps businesses streamline their day-to-day operations, gain insights, and prepare better sales and marketing strategies.

The aspects which are significantly impacted by Customer Relationship Management Software are as follows:

  • Improved customer retention
  • Enhanced customer satisfaction
  • Improved sales revenue
  • Up-selling and cross-selling of products
  • Overall business growth

Hubspot CRM, SuiteCRM, NetSuite CRM, Agile CRM, Zoho CRM, SalesForce CRM are some of the top-performing CRM software systems.

Still confused about CRM? Then you should read the sections below:

Stay in Touch: CRM systems are quite powerful platforms. They can store all vital information about your customers, such as their past activities, conversations with businesses, and their purchases. In short, CRM records how customers interact with your business.

Use this data wisely and connect with your customers through the company's new offers, news, sale campaigns, or any other initiative. Renowned author Kevin Stirtz said in his book, "Every contact we have with a customer influences their decision as to whether they'll come back. We have to be great every time, or we'll lose them."

Learn Your Customers' Needs: Modern customers are quite progressive in sharing their opinions and reviews about a particular product or service. Through CRM, you can monitor all communication channels and learn what's new about your brand among the customer community.

Provide Client-Centric Solutions: Once you know what your customers need, it's time to take action. Remember, customer 2.0 has multiple other options, so always offer them relevant services or products.

Through Customer Relationship Management software, you can learn about their preferences, concerns, and reactions to a particular service and then offer them the required solution.

Keeping Up with The Clients: Once you are through with the product delivery, the real challenge starts. It is ideal to know your customer experience with your solution. You can do this with the help of CRM software.

Cloud CRM and mobile CRM are two remarkable technologies that will empower you to keep up with customer needs according to their experience.

Personalize Your Relationship: The most critical letter in CRM is "R," which stands for Relationship. Through CRM, you can start developing unique and personalized relationships with your customers. The CRM system lets you personalize your emails by simply adding your customer's first name.

Your customers will love this way of addressing, and it shows that you care about them.

Dutiful Customer Support: The centralized CRM system ensures that you don't lose a single customer inquiry. It can log all the requests into its central system, and an automated process updates the customers.

Rapid Response Rate: The modern customer is very advanced, and he or she requires a company to reply to their queries super-fast. A CRM solution empowers you to boost your response time by sending ready-made email templates. Customers always appreciate such quick and personal responses, and they lead to greater customer engagement.

CRM Integration with Other Tools

Customer Relationship Management Software is itself a compelling platform, but when it is integrated with other tools across your sales stack, it makes users' jobs much easier.

Integration mitigates tedious and repetitive tasks, expands functionalities, and makes customer engagement easy.

Below are mentioned a few examples of integrations of CRM with other tools:

CRM Integration with Email Marketing: 

The most popular CRM integration in the business world is CRM and email integration. Integrating CRM with multiple email marketing tools offers direct and personalized connections with prospects. The integration fetches all details related to your consumers in one place. You can analyze this information and prepare personalized email templates, customized messages, and personalized forms to send to your customers. CRM integration with email marketing is an excellent facility that notifies you when receivers read your mail.

CRM Integration with Social Media:  

Social media is the most powerful platform, and if used strategically, a business can grow exponentially. Integrating social media platforms with CRM is mandatory for companies. With the integration, you can get valuable insight into your social audience. The integration of CRM with social accounts will also help you streamline and automate posting, which will easily let you reach your potential customers.

Other facilities that users get on CRM and social media integration are as follows:

  • It fosters a relationship with the existing customers.
  • It lets you connect with potential customers through keywords and hashtags.
  • It helps you in tracking industry-centric keywords & new and trending hashtags.
  • You can connect & respond to your customers on their choice of platforms.
  • It empowers you to deliver the targeted content.CRM Integration with Messaging:

CRM Integration with Messaging:

By integrating CRM with messaging, your connection with your audience comes to the next level. Users can send automatic reminders about upcoming offers, events, etc. It will reduce operational costs, help you gain relevant data for marketing and customer retention, reduce operating costs, etc.

CRM Integration with Telephony:

Contact centers and companies that depend on telephony operations will find CRM integration a boon. This integration helps users make more accurate outbound calls efficiently and effectively, improving their reach to prospective audiences.

CRM Integration with Live Chat:

It can be daunting to handle a large number of chats and keep records of all of them. By integrating CRM with Live Chat, you can retrieve information from the chatbox.

This integration can help businesses in the following ways:

  • It will capture the information from the name, email address, phone number, IP location, time of chat, and other necessary details.
  • It helps in keeping, managing, and revealing the data of frequent visitors.
  • Users can check the chat history and serve their clients more effectively.

CRM Integration with Video

Many companies use videos as part of their marketing strategies. Businesses that use video platforms like YouTube can integrate CRM software with it and get valuable insights about the leads. 

Some other significant CRM Integrations that improve customer engagement platforms are as follows:

  • Calendar Integration
  • Lead management Integrations
  • Team Communication Integrations
  • Forms and Data Collection Integrations
  • Communication Software Integrations
  • Customer care Integrations
  • Proposal and Document Integrations
  • Ecommerce platform Integrations
  • Web Form Integrations
  • Event Integrations

Industries That Mostly Use CRM

Multiple CRM software solution providers deliver the best quality of customer engagement platforms. No matter what industry you function, customer engagement and customer satisfaction are the keys to running your business successfully.

Here are the different industries that use Customer Relationship Management Software:

CRM in the Hospitality Industry: Catering guests valuable services. 

CRM in the Travel Industry: Converting leads from multiple platforms.

CRM in the eCommerce Industry: Auto-assign tickets & real-time tracking of each ticket.

CRM in Healthcare Industry: Access patient info, appointment schedule, diagnosis records, etc.

CRM in the Education Industry: Access students' profiles, live chat with parents & students, enhanced educational experience, etc.

CRM in Real Estate Industry: Consolidate inquiries and leads and auto-assign to the sales team.

CRM in the airline industry: Customized and advanced booking systems improve conversion.

Conclusion

Different industry verticals globally adopt customer Relationship Management software. As mentioned above, it benefits businesses at the next level and has also emerged as an all-in-one customer engagement platform. However, each user has different use cases of CRM and different purposes. Refer to the buyer’s guide to CRM software for better clarity. The CRM software comes in different ranges. If you are yet to have a clear budget, then try using the free and open source CRM software. Otherwise, there are several different types of CRM based on their functionalities, rates, and services. You can check the entire list of some of the best CRM software and pick the one that suits you. Once you start using CRM software, you are sure to witness positive results in sales and revenue generation.