Let's define CRM
CRM stands for customer relationship management. It’s a system for managing all your company’s interactions with current and future customers. The main goal is simple: improve relationships to help your business grow. CRM technology helps companies stay connected with customers, make processes smoother, and increase profits.
When people talk about CRM, they usually mean a CRM system: software that helps track every interaction you have with a potential or current customer. This can include sales calls, customer service help, marketing emails, and more.
CRM tools can bring together customer and company data from many different places. They can even use AI (artificial intelligence) to help better manage relationships throughout the entire customer journey, across departments like marketing, sales, online shopping, and customer service.
That’s the basic CRM definition. So, why is CRM important, and who can benefit from it? Let’s find out.
What we’ll cover
- Who is CRM for?
- Why is a CRM system important for your business?
- What are the benefits of CRM?
- What does a CRM system do?
- How much does a CRM cost?
- What is AI CRM? An AI-powered system that makes it easier to manage customer relationships, streamline processes, and improve productivity across your teams.
Who is CRM for?
CRM software is used by businesses of all sizes, in all kinds of industries. It’s helpful for:
- Large companies: They need to easily track customer activity in one place and share it across different departments.
- Small businesses: They often need to achieve more with limited resources.
- Startups: They want to be flexible and efficient.
No matter your industry, or even if you’re a non-profit, if you communicate with customers – and your employees use information about those customers – a CRM system can help.
CRM software can benefit almost every department in your company, from sales and service to IT and marketing. Whether you want to start with a full system or begin small, getting started is easier than you might think.
Why is a CRM system important for your business?
Doing business today is complex. The average company uses nearly 1,000 different applications — but only 28% of these apps work together.
To stay ahead, your company needs to focus on your customers and use the right technology. But getting current, reliable, and useful information can be difficult. How do you turn the many streams of data coming from sales, customer service, marketing, and social media into valuable business information?
With a CRM solution, of course. Here are some reasons why using a CRM database is important for your business.
A single source of truth
CRM software can give you a clear, unified view of each customer — a single, simple, secure, and customizable dashboard with a customer’s purchase history, order status, any customer service issues, and more. This information is very valuable, especially since most customers expect every representative they talk to know their purchase and issue history.
Whether they’ve contacted you before by phone, chat, email, or social media, a single source of truth makes sure everyone at your company can provide the service they expect.
Cost savings
Having a single source of truth not only helps customers: It keeps companies organized and focused on activities that generate revenue. Sales teams create a lot of data while talking to potential customers, meeting existing customers, and gathering valuable information.
If all that information is stored in handwritten notes, on laptops, or only in the minds of your salespeople, it can be costly. Details can be lost, important tasks might not be done on time, and customers might be prioritized based on guesses rather than data. And if someone leaves the company, that information — and business — might disappear with them unless it’s saved in a CRM.
Using CRM software means less time spent on administrative work…and more time to focus on sales.
Connecting all your teams
A CRM brings your teams together, sharing information that makes everyone’s job easier.
For example, marketers can use CRM tools to manage campaigns and guide customer journeys using data. CRM software shows every opportunity or lead, showing a clear path from inquiries to sales. Then, online sales teams can offer personalized deals on your website, while customer service already knows a customer’s history if they contact them with questions.
Increasing productivity with AI
Some of the biggest benefits come from using CRM with AI. This lets you quickly gather everything you know about a customer — and even things you didn’t know — which can be used to personalize every interaction. This level of knowledge makes every employee more effective and productive, especially when you use AI agents that can automatically take action based on your instructions.
AI agents can help speed up tasks for teams across your business. Time-consuming tasks like writing sales emails, creating marketing messages, and writing or translating product descriptions can now be done in seconds.
CRMs with AI help employees make more accurate predictions about things like quarterly sales goals, online sales, or the best time to send a marketing email.
What are the benefits of CRM?
There are many benefits to using CRM software — especially when your business combines CRM with AI and reliable data. Here are some of them:
Connecting your business departments: Easily sharing data across your teams is a huge benefit for both your customers and your business. A CRM provides everyone at your company with a simple, customizable interface with real-time updates they can use to serve customers. So, when a customer calls with a question, the service agent can see their entire history, past marketing offers, and previous purchases. The CRM can even suggest new products the customer might like, based on trends and insights found by AI.
Improving your profits: Using a CRM platform has been shown to produce real results. It helps employees save time, work more efficiently, find opportunities, and serve customers better.
Using AI to find trends and efficiencies: An AI CRM will help your business grow. It can make your employees more efficient, serve your customers better, and find new opportunities you might not see on your own. AI agents can help employees be more productive and serve customers better, with the ability to automatically provide 24/7 customer service, connect with potential customers, provide personalized product recommendations, and more.
Speeding up work with automation: CRM software helps employees get more done, faster. With CRM automation, you can turn complex processes into simple workflows.
Increasing customer lifetime value: By understanding your customers better, opportunities to sell more to them become clear — giving you the chance to win more business from your current customers and build lasting, more profitable relationships.
Offering better customer support: Today’s customers expect fast, personalized support at any time. A CRM system can help you provide the high-quality service that customers want. Your service representatives can quickly access a customer’s record of all past interactions so they can provide quick, informed answers and service.
Improving products and services: A good CRM system will gather information from many different places across your business and beyond. So, in addition to providing information about individual customers, it can act as a listening tool. Using AI can give you valuable insights into how people feel and what they are saying about your company. This helps you improve your offerings, spot problems early, and find gaps.
What does a CRM system do?
CRM lets you store customer and potential customer contact information, find sales opportunities, record service issues, and manage marketing campaigns, all in one central location that’s available to everyone at your company who needs it. It does this by organizing customer and potential customer information in a secure, easy-to-use digital record with information like a contact’s email, phone number, social media accounts, all previous interactions with your company, and more.
CRM helps you find new customers, win their business, and keep them happy. With automation, CRM can help you collect even more information faster, like news about your accounts, so that everyone stays up to date.
Key features of a CRM
CRM software provides businesses with tools that help them communicate better — both within the company and with customers. Here’s how:
Flexibility, security, and lower costs with a cloud CRM
Unlike older systems, today’s CRM software is in the cloud, giving you the ability to safely save and access all of your customer data from anywhere at any time. That means every employee has the same information in real time and can make updates wherever they are.
Switching to a cloud CRM also means that a CRM system is easy to set up. There’s no hardware, which greatly reduces costs. Setup and ongoing management is easy for IT teams, since there are no version control issues or updates to schedule. And, with cloud-based CRM, you only pay for what you use. As your business grows, you can add more features and users, allowing your CRM to grow with you.
Unified view of the customer
With a complete view of every potential and current customer, CRM software can manage day-to-day customer activities and interactions. For marketing, this means connecting with potential customers with the right message, at the right time, through targeted digital marketing campaigns. Sales reps can work faster and smarter with a clear view of their sales pipeline and make more accurate sales forecasts.
Connects with your other apps
A CRM platform can connect with other business apps that help you develop customer relationships. CRMs integrate with your favorite
