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Features & Benefits of CRM Software

Why is customer relationship management important?

So why is customer relationship management so crucial these days? There are many answers and we will go through them one by one in this piece. But perhaps one thing that should be stated up front is: If you are not taking advantage of CRM, your competitors will and they will eventually win.

By now, you may be well aware of the importance of customer relationship management. If not, let's break down the benefits of CRM. First, here are some key CRM benefits that apply to the customer side of the business. We will then focus on the purpose of CRM software for your startup, small business, large business or enterprise.

What are the benefits of CRM software for customers?

Before we get into the business benefits of CRM for you as a CRM user, whether as a business owner or sales team leader, let's talk about how your customers will benefit from using a CRM system. Some of the key benefits of customer relationship management for customers are as follows:

They will see what they want

With a CRM system, marketing campaigns can target your prospects with only information that is relevant to them. This may be based on their previous search or purchase history or demographics. It's a great way to start the customer journey.

They get what they want

The CRM solution helps streamline the sales process so that every customer gets what they want, how they want it, and as quickly as possible. From lead generation to pipeline conversion, the right CRM connects every customer with the best agent to meet their needs.

They get the help they need

Once upon a time, customer information could be sloppily stored in Excel spreadsheets. The best CRMs collect and unify all customer data in one place for everyone in your organization to access. This is key to providing superior customer support, where each agent can instantly understand each contact's needs and issues in order to best assist them. Here is a longer article on the definition of CRM.


What are the benefits of CRM systems for business?

Now that the general benefits of CRM for customers have been outlined, it's time to talk about the benefits of customer relationship management specifically for business. CRM software is useful for many reasons, all of which ultimately make work more efficient and increase your bottom line.

Ready? Let's take a look at some of the many features and benefits of CRM:

1. Better relations with clients

With access to a unified view of contact and customer information, you'll better know who's who and provide personalized, thoughtful service and support. By receiving in-app notifications about customer inquiries across multiple channels (social media, web form, email, voice and more), your response times will be faster; automation tools to route queries to the most relevant agents and collaboration tools to engage multiple team members will also make your responses smarter and resolve issues faster.

CRM systems can significantly improve the customer experience, help you retain existing customers and convert prospects into new customers.

2. Ability to cross-sell

Increasing sales does not mean only new customers, but selling new products to regular customers. CRM software gives you detailed information about a customer's buying behaviour and their place in the customer lifecycle. By knowing what products they have purchased, you can intelligently cross-sell products and services related to their interests. With the right planning and data, you can avoid the main pitfalls of cross-selling, i.e. annoying customers with irrelevant or poorly timed offers.

When you know your customers' needs inside and out and their preferences over time, there's also the benefit of better upsell results. CRM data collection and marketing automation can identify progressively more expensive, higher-end products and services that the customer will actively consider instead of immediately rejecting.

3. Organize customer information

With CRM, all your customer data across channels is consolidated in one place. You can easily keep track of who's who, record notes about individuals, and track the history of each customer's interactions with your company. For example, when they visited your website, if/when they spoke to a salesperson, support, or service representative, and what they purchased.

This allows you to see where your customer is in the lifecycle or customer journey and segment customers based on interactions with your company. CRM contact management tools also have tools to remove duplicate customer profiles.

4. Sales Productivity

Sales productivity tools alert you to send a follow-up email, provide detailed customer purchase history, and allow you to track offers through the sales pipeline. They can also identify a new sales opportunity and track existing opportunities by stage, month, quantity and probability of success.


Sales reports provide detailed information about who your best customers are, where your leads are coming from, pain points in the sales pipeline, what motivates customers to buy from you, and more.

5. Improve customer satisfaction

When customer interactions are supported by a service CRM, you will be in a better position to raise your standard of service and support. Over time, you'll be able to create distinct customer profiles, leading to a deep understanding of group values, preferences, and demographic and geographic information. You can identify your stable customers and limit marketing activities accordingly, and determine churn risk and customer sentiment, meaning you can intervene early to strengthen relationships and save the business.

More specifically, the CRM offers survey functionality to track customer satisfaction and customer ratings for individual service and sales representatives.

6. Centralized database across your sales organization

A centralized database unifies information across departments and teams, giving you unlimited access to lead and contact information, purchase history, inventory, sales and marketing information. When your sales reps are on the beat, they'll have access to client interactions with other departments like service and support, meaning they're well-equipped to anticipate customer demand.


You can also capture cross-channel interactions with customers, such as when a customer fills out an online contact form, spends time on a specific section of the website, or leaves a comment on a blog; with a CRM platform, all this information goes into an organized database and becomes part of the useful data of your company.


What can CRM do for my business? Our things with us

Well, that about wraps it up: the full range of customer relationship management pros, cons and benefits in a nutshell.

We've covered why CRMs are useful for customers who engage with your business. And indeed, we've shown you the many ways CRMs help businesses. We hope your final step is to start shopping around for the best CRM solution for your needs if you haven't already. Don't forget to check out our other reviews and comparison texts, but also play around with CRM free trials and free versions.