“Greetings from XYZ Bank. Happiest Birthday Mr Ramesh! We wish you a very amazing and great year ahead!” You all must have received such message at least from one company on your birthday! If not this, at least once in life, you would have answered to a feedback call for any product or service you bought or worst “Sir our company is providing you a pre-approved personal loan” yeh toh suna hi hoga?!
These all are exactly what we call examples of Customer Relationship Management (CRM).
What is Customer Relationship Management?
Customer Relationship management has evolved from just evaluating customer satisfaction through surveys to automatically generate customer data for the organisation through a cloud-based service- A Software as a Service (SaaS). SaaS means the use of technology or software programs that can be used on pay per use basis. The software provides a service of automating operations of the organization based on the subscription model. It helps in improving the efficiency of the operation and also optimizes cost.
Artificial intelligence (for large organisations especially) has helped to develop business CRM tools but in the current times, one of the best tools has been social media. Small scale organisation can make the use of social media which is considered the ground-based CRM. Social media applications like WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook have helped many businesses grow themselves and serve their customers better and efficiently. Well, this works for a smaller organisation, but for large corporations to track and analyse customer patterns ‘CRM software’ helps the best!
Understanding CRM:
The main purpose of CRM is to create a ‘positive impact’ on the customer throughout the process of discovering the company in purchasing the product and after-sale services or providing feedback. This helps the organisation in increasing the number of returning customers (recurring revenue).
CRM covers all elements involved in an interaction with the customer, but more often it is referred to relationships managed through ‘technologies’.
Elements and Types of CRM:
Elements of CRM are various means of communicating to customers. It can be through e-mails, text messages, calls, personal relationship management or use of Bots on websites.Social media CRM also helps in improving bottom line of the organization.
Loyalty cards, Credit points and Membership benefits are also various modes of CRM.
CRM can be used for various strategical, analytical and operational processes like product decision, marketing strategies, customer retention techniques and Brand recall.
Types of CRM technology include cloud-based solutions, in house CRM software and AI based CRM applications. Companies like Salesforce, ZOHO develop such technology-based software.
Why is CRM important for any organization?
As per a report by Gartner, CRM will be the single largest revenue area of spending, by 2021, in enterprise software. The reason is very clear- CRM for an organization is what Modiji is for BJP- Everything! To keep a track of business which one wants to run through different countries is impossible without effective use of CRM.
Traditionally, a business would maintain customer relationship post-sales but today with artificial intelligence, database and data analytics a CRM software can help in building a relationship right from lead generation to sales orders to post-sales. It can also integrate payments and collection cycles.
Apart from that, the technology can give you a clear bird’s eye view of all the customer on one single dashboard or say a single screen. Customer’s inquiries, sales orders, the status of those orders and their post-sales analysis as well. Social media has gained much importance on improving the bottom line of the organisation. Hence, technology companies have started developing advanced CRM software that can analyse social media behaviour of the customer as well!
CRM has helped businesses grow through automation, reduced cost on marketing and improving efficiency.
As per a survey by Salesforce, use of CRM increases-
Sales by- 30%
sales productivity by- 35%
Revenue by- 25%
customer satisfaction by- 35%
It also boosts decision making by 38%.
Our final take and the pandemic effect:
Statistical surveys and research have found that a 5% increase in customer retention, can help in increasing customer profits by 50% throughout the lifecycle. Customer relationship management has grown from just managing the relationship to complete automation of the customer handling process. Firms have invested heavily on various CRM tools to help them get an edge over others!
CRM developing companies have been constantly improving their platforms by using various analytical and AI tools. In terms of numbers, the CRM software industry can grow from $36.5 billion in 2017 to over $80 Billion in 2025, as per a report by Grand View research. This figure seems to be reaching earlier than 2025, with the spread of the Coronavirus.
Companies have shifted from offline customer management tools to complete automation. Companies have found that cloud-based CRM (CRM based in the cloud framework which can be accessed by anyone) is cost-effective, saves time and increases sales. In my opinion, going forward, it’s going to be a customer-centric market rather than a supplier led market. In such cases, business with good CRM technology can sail through, while the others get lost in the DARK!
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