CRM lets you do more than track contacts. It’s about nurturing relationships and fostering greater synergy between your company and your customers. These top, tested CRM services let you capture those all-important interactions.
Between salesforces adopting hybrid work models and many customers still limiting their in-person interactions, the need to modernize how your staff communicates with patrons (and vice versa) is greater than ever. Digital communications channels have replaced traditional ones. and there’s no going back. However, keeping track of these new interactions is challenging. The complexities of the modern environment mean businesses must rely on customer relationship management (CRM) systems to manage their contacts, now more than ever. Even if you already have a CRM in place, it may be time to upgrade to one that is better suited to the modern business style. A proper CRM goes beyond simple contact tracking by keeping a complete audit trail of every interaction your staff has with each customer. This can include everything from the customer’s initial purchase, to support calls and what they were about, to a regional sales rep’s notes from a meeting or call. A CRM system lets you track, analyze, and surface this data when it’s needed, often including integrations with other software systems. What Is CRM Software? CRM software helps you track contacts and nurture them to build customer loyalty and repeat sales. A good CRM makes the information it gathers accessible to other business platforms via smart software integration. In this way, CRM becomes the epicenter of how you manage your customer’s journey, from the first marketing touch, to a closed sale, and on to the next engagement. Some very small businesses might try to use a spreadsheet to mimic what a CRM can do. However, this type of homebrewed solution delivers but a tiny subset of the features you’ll get with a CRM, and it’s cumbersome enough that you’ll be frustrated once your customer list grows beyond 100 entries. The best CRM solutions are not only easier to use than spreadsheets, but they also do more than just retain user and contact information. They also automate processes, such as dynamically creating calendar events, setting appointment reminders, prioritizing the sales pipeline, and automatically identifying new sales opportunities. They can even rank opportunities by likelihood of success. What makes that possible is integrating your other customer data so the CRM can access it, such as interactions with your help desk. This information is a goldmine of opportunity. It lets you identify prospects for up-sell or cross-sell, convert existing customers to new products or services, target new marketing, or track invoices. The software is also a fail-safe because it prevents multiple salespeople from chasing the same prospect. Choosing the right CRM software dramatically improves your team’s collaboration and productivity at the same time that it’s increasing sales. The Revenue Impact of AI Adoption in CRM (Image courtesy of Statista) A key area for CRM growth in recent years has been the addition of artificial intelligence (AI) to leading CRM platforms. Vendors including Salesforce and Microsoft are building their own AI engines to enhance their CRM capabilities. Others are partnering with the likes of IBM’s Watson to integrate AI’s benefits into their offerings. These capabilities will significantly improve any CRM’s ability to parse data and draw new insights from all kinds of customer interactions. Know What You’re Buying Choosing a CRM is a significant investment. Knowing how your salespeople operate and having some idea of the features that can help them is where your pricing decision needs to start. Only by knowing what you need and then matching that up against the appropriate pricing tier are you going to get yourself the best deal. But there are gotchas beyond that, too. For example, initial setup and training can eat up a chunk of the budget. So can upgrades and ongoing support. Integrating the software with existing systems might call for additional equipment. Does the CRM workflow mean the sales or customer service teams will need new PCs, smartphones, or tablets? These costs can quickly add up. What’s more, many CRM vendors are expanding their products into a variety of areas beyond customer relationships. They’re moving towards managing the sales lifecycle end-to-end, with CRM representing the customer journey. The more expansive the tool, the more customization you’ll need to make it work for you. That’s why carefully evaluating these products is so important. As with any piece of software, it’s critical to take advantage of free trials when available. No matter how many reviews you read or demos you watch, you can’t fully understand how CRM software works until you use it yourself. Be sure to have colleagues from different departments try out the software, too, so you can understand how successful it is in different situations. Most vendors offer at least a 14-day trial (which is relatively short; 30 days is better). Some, including Apptivo CRM, Insightly CRM, and Zoho CRM offer free plans, albeit with limited features or users. These can either serve as a full-time solution for small companies or a long-term trial for larger companies. Where CRM Fits Into Your Arsenal One of the continuing trends we see with CRM solutions is consolidation into larger product ecosystems. Some products, like the venerable Zoho CRM, aren’t just the flagship suite of solutions in their ecosystem, they set the template for the rest of the solutions the vendor offers. For example, Base CRM, once a notable standalone solution, was acquired by Zendesk and converted into Zendesk Sell, a more integrated solution that can feed into Zendesk’s impressive array of customer support-driven SMB solutions. Freshsales CRM similarly provides a lightweight and simple SMB-focused CRM solution while offering expanded functionality. This includes providing integrations, workflow automation, and sales intelligence features. Freshsales CRM also syncs nicely with Freshcaller and Freshdesk solutions, a distinct convenience for businesses using those solutions. Other CRM solutions like Sales Creatio have refined their user interfaces to enable users to switch on specific business processes. Sales Creatio makes it possible to toggle between Marketing, Sales, and Service functioning as a more dynamic control center for running various facets of CRM. SMBs need to play the long game with their choice of CRM solutions. Growth-stage companies or businesses looking at expansion should start analyzing which integrations will make sense in the future. Give Your Salespeople What They Need The toughest part of making a good CRM choice is understanding what the product can do and what your salespeople actually need.
