The Benefits of CRM Solutions to organization, customers and market

The Benefits of CRM Solutions to organization, customers and market

Excellent customer service is about being aware of customer needs and reacting to them effectively. CRM can:
• Develop better communication channels.
• Collect vital data, like customer details and order histories.
• Create detailed profiles such as customer preferences.
• Deliver instant, company-wide access to customer histories.
• Identify new selling opportunities.

Following are some of the benefits of CRM:

  1. Centralisation and Sharing of Data: With Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, data is stored in one centralised location, making it readily accessible to all members of a business or organisation. This enables the company’s staff to more easily communicate with and market  to their customers. If one sales person is on vacation, for instance, the information about his customers is available tothe entire sales team, and they are able to pick up where he left off without jeopardising a customer relationship.
  1. Better Customer Service: Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems are capable of storing detailed information about each customer, such as their history of orders, correspondence, survey responses, and marketing emails. Having such information easily accessible can significantly improve the speed and quality of customer service. This in turn gives employees more time to focus on sales, marketing, and other priorities.
  1. Higher Customer Satisfaction: Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems make customers feel more like they are part of a team than merely a sales statistic. This sense of partnership often makes for a happier customer who is more likely to do repeat business and refer a potential new customer.
  1. Improved Marketing Efforts: Records contained within a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system may be analysed in order to more effectively market to each individual in a company’s database. Customer demographics, order histories, and survey results may be studied in order to determine which group(s) are best to target in each specific marketing campaign. Also, details about a customer’s previous orders can be used to predict when he is likely to place his next order, and what type of products he is interested in ordering. Cross-selling and up-selling can also be more effective when companies are equipped with this information.
  1. More Profit: The combination of more efficient customer service, more effective marketing, happier customers, and more sales translates to a more profitable business. 
  1. Save Time: A CRM automates a lot of the usual timedevouring tasks, giving salespeople more time to do what they are actually paid to do: namely, sell to prospects. More time spent in front of potential customers (instead of shuffling paper) means more sales, which makes everyone happy.
  1. Look Professional: Which do you think looks better to a prospect: a salesperson who keeps all their information in a computer database and can pull up vital details immediately, or one who keeps their information on Post-It notes and has to scramble for ten minutes just to find the scheduled appointment time?
  1. Save Money: Sure, the more impressively arrayed CRMs can cost a lot of money. But if you don’t need quite that much technology working for you, it’s easy to find less expensive or even free alternatives. And just think how much you’ll save on Post-It notes if you’re putting all that information into the computer instead.
  1. Convenient: If the whole sales team is using the same CRM, then it’s easy to share that information as needed. Most CRMs allow you to develop templates for phone scripts or frequently used emails, and the team can share these templates. Many CRMs even support mobile devices, so you can access all that information from your iPhone or enter a few quick notes right from the prospect’s office.
  1. Secure: What happens when the nightly cleaning crew accidentally throws out someone’s Post-It archive? With a CRM, information is usually stored either in a central database or in the CRM provider’s system. At the very least each salesperson can back up copies of their individual databases to another computer.
  1. Faster Lead Generation: A good CRM can help immensely with lead generation. For instance, many CRMs can integrate with website and social media campaigns, sending leads from these sources directly to the appropriate salesperson. That means the sales team is spending less time cold calling and more time working warm leads, which tend to be far more fruitful. And by tracking each salesperson’s activities, it can keep lead lists up to date - so that you don’t have five different sales people calling the same lead. 
  1. Simplified Goal-Setting: By pulling all the data together into one place, CRMs make it easy to track performance both within and across the team. CRMs can also bring all this information together into reports that help with forecasting.Having this level of analysis available makes setting the next period’s goals much easier... and makes it more likely that these goals will align with reality.

CRM Benefits for Customers and Firms

In the customer-firm relationship, the benefits are symbolical in nature. This means it is not only the organisation that will benefit from retaining a committed customer. The customer also have a long term benefit derived from the association.

CRM Benefits for Customers

  1. Confidence benefits: This is described as total trust the customers have developed in the service provider. It minimises the tension level in customers that could result from uncertainty in the quality service or satisfaction in terms of other values attributed with the service. This helps customers to reduce coast and invest that time on other matter of concern.
  2. Social benefits: It is very easy for someone to do business with service provider one is used to. This is as a result of the level of personal intimacy the service provider has developed with the customer. It is very important for service provider to knit together in emotion with the customer giving them social support as additional value. It makes customers to have a sense of belonging with the firm that the service provider not only has interest in their money but also in their well being.When this benefit is constant, there is likelihood for customers not to change service provider even if competitors are offering same with better quality or at reduced price.
  3. Special treatment benefit: This is some level of preferential treatment that loyal and committed customers get from their service provider as incentives for their loyalty to the firm. This could be in form of first hand information or service, special package, moderate price and flexibility in service terms.

 

CRM Benefits for Firms:

(a) Economic benefits:

  1. It has been observed through various studies that the overall return on investment of traditional transaction oriented firms are far less than that of the relationship oriented firms. These benefits are deeply rooted in the;
  2. Increase in revenue generated over time. The more loyal a customer is to a firm, the tendencies are that the customer will increase purchases over time. With the level of trust and commitment they have built on a firm over time, the longer for the services or firm offering will increase which will in turn increase revenue generated by the firm.
  3. Lower cost of marketing: studies have also revealed that repeated purchases by loyal customers require about 90% less marketing expenditure. Attracting new customers require much start-up cost such as advertisement and promotion cost, operation cost and time cost. All of these at initial level have huge impact on the economic status of the firm but as time goes on, there is sharp reduction of cost which in the long run gives the firm much economic benefit.
  4. Highly satisfied customers are willing to pay more for the services rendered to them.

(b) Customer behaviour benefits:

The impact of customer behaviour goes beyond the physical value that could be accounted for. This includes:

  1. Word of mouth marketing: Any satisfied loyal customers do more of this type of advertisement to their friends, families or total strangers especially when the product looks so complex to them at first. The loyal customers give others endorsement about the firm’s product and even convince others to see benefits attached to using the product. This reduces firm’s marketing cost and as a matter of fact, makes more impact than the paid advert.
  2. Customer voluntary performance: This is a voluntary act of service that comes from the loyal customers to the firm so that other customers do not see the firm’s shortcomings. It could be a little information supplied to the firm to erase failure or mistake or a total act of service.

(c) Human resource management benefit:

  1. (i) Satisfied and committed customer assist in service delivery through their experiences over time on the service they could also contribute to improving the service and cocreate new service with the firm.
  2. (ii) They also foster employee retention when customers are well satisfied; employees are also happy and stable. People tend to continue working more for organisation whose customers are happy and loyal because there is not going to be much complaining which could affect them emotionally.