Advantages Of CRM

There are several benefits attached with a properly managed and maintained CRM system, which has made it the buzzword in the business community.

In any business, it helps the organisation in lots of ways, both in terms of delivery more to the customers and also in terms of gaining more from them.

Using CRM, a business can:

Provide Better Customer Service
CRM systems give businesses many strategic advantages such as the ability to personalize relationships with customers regardless of which employee is service them.

Using CRM, a repository can be maintained on customer profiles, thereby treating each client as an individual and not as a group. This way, every employee can be better informed about each customer's specific needs and transaction profile.

CRM also helps the organisation to easily adjust the level of service to reflect the customer's importance or status.

Better customer service through improved responsiveness and understanding helps in building customer loyalty and decreases customer agitation. It also helps the company in getting continuous feedbacks from the customers on the product they have bought.

A good electronic company would always like to follow-up with its customers on the items they have bought, so as to rectify the problem (if any) even before it gets logged as a complaint.

Increase Customer Revenues
Using CRM data, marketing campaigns can be co-ordinated more effectively by ensuring that promotions do not target customers who have already purchased that particular products.

It also ensures higher customer retention by introducing loyalty programs. A business would never like to see a product to a customer who has just bought it recently.

Discover New Customers
CRM systems help the organisation in identifying potential customers. By keeping a track of the profiles of their existing clientele, the business can easily come up with a strategy to determine the kind of people they should target such that it returns them maximum clientage.

For example, if several students in a university sign up for a particular mobile service provider, the business can come up with a strategy to target rest of the community in the university.

"Cross Sell" and "Up Sell" Products More Effectively
CRM systems facilitate cross-selling (offering customers complimentary products based on their previous purchases) and up-selling (offering customers premium products in the same category).

It helps them to gain a better understanding of customers and anticipate their purchases (e.g. someone who purchases grass seed in the spring will need fertilizer later in the season).

Help Sales Staff Close Deals Faster
CRM helps the businesses in closing deals faster, through quicker and more efficient responses to customer leads and customer information. The turnaround time has decreased drastically for organisations that have been able to implement CRM systems effectively.

Make Call Centers More Efficient
With each employee having access to customer details and order histories, targeting clients becomes easier.

CRM helps the organisation's workforce in knowing how to deal with each individual customer depending upon the customer's archives available through CRM. The information can be accessed instantly from anywhere within the company.

Simplify Marketing And Sales Processes
CRM helps in developing better communication channels. Interactive Voice Response System, web sites, etc. have made life easy both for the organisation and also for its sales representatives.

It allows the business to give its customers the option of choosing how they want to communication with the business.