CRM – Customer Relationship Management

CRM is the abbreviation for customer relationship management. It is the strongest and the most efficient approach in maintaining and creating relationships with customers. Customer relationship management is not only pure business but also edit strong personal bonding within people. Development of this type of bonding drives the business to new levels of success. CRM is often thought of as a business strategy that enables businesses to :
• Lower acquisition cost – It costs 5-7 times as much to acquire a new customer as to retain a current one.
• Increased base profit – Customers are willing to pay higher prices for products and services when complemented by superior service.
• Reduced price premiums – Loss leaders make up a smaller percentage of long-term customer purchase when customers are less attracted to price sensitive offers by competitors.
• Increased referrals – People tend to associate with people like themselves. Referred customers fit well with the goods and services offered.
• Decreased employee churn – Retained customers tend to be pleased with the value they receive and their satisfaction becomes a source of pride, energy, and allegiance for employees.
Why a CRM System is always important for an organization
• A CRM system consists of a historical view and analysis of all the acquired or to be acquired customers. This helps in reduced searching and correlating customers and to foresee customer needs effectively and increase business.
• CRM contains each and every bit of details of a customer, hence it is very easy to track a customer accordingly and can be used to determine which customer can be effectual and which not.
• CRM system, customers is grouped according to different aspects according to the type of business they do or according to physical location and are allocated to different customer managers often called as account managers. This helps in focusing and concentrating on each and every customer separately.
• A CRM system is not only used to deal with the existing customers but is also useful in acquiring new customers. The process first starts with identifying a customer and maintaining all the corresponding details into the CRM system which is also called an ‘Opportunity of Business’. The Sales and Field representatives then try getting business out of these customers by sophistically following up with them and converting them into a winning deal. All this is very easily and efficiently done by an integrated CRM system.
• The strongest aspect of Customer Relationship Management is that it is very cost-effective. The advantage of the decently implemented CRM system is that there is a very less need of paper and manual work which requires lesser staff to manage and lesser resources to deal with. The technologies used in implementing a CRM system are also very cheap and smooth as compared to the traditional way of business.
• All the details in CRM system are kept centralized which is available anytime on the fingertips. This reduces the process time and increases productivity.
• Efficiently dealing with all the customers and providing them what they actually need increases the customer satisfaction. This increases the chance of getting more business which ultimately enhances turnover and profit.
• If the customer is satisfied they will always be loyal to you and will remain in business forever resulting in increasing customer base and ultimately enhancing net growth of the business.
In today’s commercial world, practice of dealing with existing customers and a thriving business by getting more customers into the loop is predominant and is mere a dilemma. Installing a CRM system can definitely improve the situation and help in challenging the new ways of marketing and business in an efficient manner. Hence in the era of business every organization should be recommended to have a full-fledged CRM system to cope up with all the business needs.

Today’s CRM software is highly scalable and customizable, allowing businesses to gain actionable customer insights with a back-end explanatory engine, view business opportunities with predictive analytics, streamline operations and personalize customer service based on the customer’s known history and prior interactions with your business.