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CRM

The Growing Business Guide - What is CRM?

Your business is growing fast. You’re possibly thinking ‘What does CRM mean?’ and ‘How is it going to help me grow my business?’

Well, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a strategy for managing all of your company’s interactions with prospective and existing customers. CRM software is a tool that helps you achieve this. It’s a business solution that helps you improve marketing, sales, and service engagement with customers to drive organisational efficiency. It all helps to improve the customer experience.

Improving business processes

Ever struggled to find specific information about a customer? CRM software centralises and digitises data. Because data is recorded centrally and everyone is using the same system, it’s easier to collaborate more effectively between departments and respond quicker to customer enquiries. Less time is spent navigating a myriad of systems, leaving more time to focus on customers.

Gaining insight into your customers

CRM systems collect a vast amount of information. Data such as spending habits, contact details and preferred methods of communication. This data can be fed into sophisticated analytics, allowing for data to be interrogated and represented in a variety of ways.

This treasure trove of information gives you a detailed understanding of how your customers think. The more you understand, the more you’ll be able to use this insight to increase sales and retain your customers.

Personalising the customer experience

You can use the knowledge gained from customer insight to craft a personalised customer experience. Through CRM, you can ensure all of your customers feel unique and engage with them through email, telephone and social media. You’ll be able to plan a strategy – And most importantly listen to what they have to say!

Marketing and selling and more effectively

From data capture to email campaigns and intelligent lead management, CRM really makes your marketing simple. From hot prospects to happy customers, CRM streamlines your sales process. Account management is easier as the system ensures your attention is on the leads that are hottest whilst automation improves efficiency. CRM enables you to engage, nurture and build strong relationships with your customers.

Delivering great customer service

According to research conducted by American Express, 78% of consumers have abandoned a transaction or did not make an intended purchase because of poor service. CRM helps you deliver great service. It manages and records all customer interactions, whether by telephone, email or social media.

Putting all of this data in one place will help your customers. So, no more writing down contact details on a Post-it note! If a customer has received bad service, you can use your CRM to pinpoint exactly where they’ve been let down – All the information is there in black and white!

Ultimately this means happier customers. And happier customers mean more business and more profit.

Why not take a look at the Advantage’s Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Quick Start Dynamics 365 for growing businesses? Call our experts on 020 3004 4600 or click here.

Welcome to the first edition of our Growing Business Guide – a series of posts designed to help you make the most out of your business. Throughout the series we will be looking at how software can help your business to grow and thrive, as well as some general tips for taking your business to the next level. Here, we take a look at just what CRM is…