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What is CRM?

What Is CRM Today?

 

What are the five biggest benefits of CRM?

There are countless ways a CRM system can help you get the most out of customer interactions. The smallest refinement can increase customer retention and send profits through the roof. Imagine what the five biggest CRM benefits can do for you.

  1.  Improved customer experience: Give contact center reps and field service technicians a 360° view of customers – so they can deliver personalized customer experiences and resolve issues quickly.  
  2.  Increased customer retention: Wow your customers with personalized service that wins loyalty. Run real-time analytics to identify the best offers, the right timing, and the optimal channel.
  3.  Higher sales revenue: Boost pipeline visibility and sell more – with integrated tools for sales force automation, lead management, forecasting, cross-selling, e-commerce, and more.  
  4.  Greater process efficiency: Help your sales, marketing, and service teams accomplish more with less effort – by taking advantage of automated processes and scheduled follow-up prompts.
  5.  Work smarter – better collaboration: Share information across teams, departments, and internal and external stakeholders with collaborative CRM – to better serve customers at every touchpoint. 
 

What are the key features of CRM?

Today’s customer relationship management systems include basic CRM functions as well as advanced CRM capabilities that go far beyond the contact sorting and filing functions of the past. Now you can streamline all your customer-facing processes – and strengthen relationships by putting the customer at the center of your sales, marketing, commerce, and service activities. You expect a CRM system to have contact, lead, and customer interaction management. You also expect analytics, and you’d love automation, but really, you want it all. And of course, you want it to be fully integrated. The good news? It’s all here.  

  • Contact management: Securely store your customer information – including names, contact details, social media accounts, and communications preferences – in a central database that your entire team can access in real-time, 24×7. 
  • Interaction management: Track all of your customer interactions – including emails, phone conversations, social media posts, and chat sessions – to gain a 360° view of each customer and deliver a consistent cross-channel experience.  
  • Lead management: Identify, score, and track leads through your pipeline – to convert more prospective customers into buyers. With CRM, you can integrate your lead generation, pipeline management, and lead nurturing activities. 
  • Workflow automation: Automate repetitive, manual tasks such as contact record data entry – and harness the power of embedded AI and machine learning to provide chatbot-based interactions on social media and in messaging apps.  
  • Customer analytics: Surface the right insights at the right time with on-demand CRM reporting and interactive dashboards. Predict what customers want, personalize their experiences, and take the right action in the moment. 
  • CRM integrations: Integrate your CRM system with your website, email and calendar platforms, accounting and billing software, customer surveys, document management, and e-signatures – so that you can do everything in one place.
  • Secure, mobile CRM: All of your CRM features should be available to you anytime, anywhere, from any device. In addition, your cloud CRM should help you streamline security, data privacy, and GDPR compliance requirements. 
 

CRM for sales, marketing, service, and e-commerce

With one database and unified processes, CRM connects all of your customer-facing activities. But it also offers specific benefits to each of your teams.

What is sales CRM?

Sales CRM puts opportunity in the palm of your hand. Your reps can make successful connections, automate lead generation, personalize pitches, give accurate quotes, tap into pipeline CRM, collaborate, create reports … everything.

What is marketing CRM?

Marketing CRM makes the unpredictable – predictable. It helps you learn each customer’s likes and needs so you can surprise them with unique experiences. And while you shine, marketing automation is behind the scenes, completing tasks for you.

What is service CRM?

Customers expect more – and service CRM delivers more. Create perfect service moments that build loyalty. Automate manual processes to reduce field service errors and save time. Use service chatbots to answer common customer questions – and more.

What is e-commerce CRM?

E-commerce CRM is a set of CRM tools that provide an omnichannel commerce experience – across mobile, online, and brick-and-mortar buying and selling. Recognize customers across channels and give special love to high-value customers.

Explore CRM solutions

Go beyond traditional CRM software. See how you can you drive contextual, personalized customer engagement in real time – across any channel or line of business. 

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