Why is customer relationship management critical for growth?

By, Samantha Spiro, Cognite, The Wordsmith.


Johannesburg, 28 Mar 2018

At its core, customer relationship management (CRM) is all of the activities, strategies, and technologies that companies use to manage their interactions with their current and potential customers. As the saying in business goes "the customer is king".

CRM ultimately helps businesses grow by building a relationship with their customers that, in turn, creates loyalty and customer retention. CRM is a management strategy that results in increased profits for a business. A CRM tool like Sage CRM creates a simple user interface for a collection of data that helps businesses recognise and communicate with customers in a scalable way.

Since customer loyalty and revenue are both qualities that affect a company's revenue and growth, it is important to know just how essential CRM is for your business growth.

Simplify and integrate communication lines

Customer relationship management is simple. However, it can be implemented in a variety of methods including Web sites, social media, telephone calls, mail, e-mail, and various marketing materials can all be integrated into a CRM solution. Beyond contact information, CRMs log your business touchpoints with their prospects. A tool such as Sage CRM even offers the ability to create campaigns and messages specifically targeting customer and prospect bases.

Due to CRM's diversity, using a CRM-like Sage CRM doesn't only benefit larger businesses. Using and maintaining it as a tool is the basis for a scalable sales and marketing system. Any company will benefit from maintaining a record of which conversations, purchases, and marketing material can be associated with leads and customers.

Become more strategic

At Lorge, we advise companies to implement Sage CRM as a strategy as it increases their customer retention and, as a result, their profits. Some of the major ways in which Sage CRM allows a business to be more strategic when reaching out to their customers can be summarised as follows:

* Businesses are able to cater to their customers allowing them to better anticipate their customers' needs and, as a result, fulfil them. Effectively using Sage CRM can also provide a strategic advantage. Well organised customer data helps companies select the correct recipients for promotions and new products.
* Become more efficient by organising and automating certain aspects of the business. From sales processes to marketing campaigns and business analytics, as well as customer data, Sage CRM automates and streamlines these processes for businesses. This allows businesses to organise these processes into simpler, easier to understand data.
* You can optimise your customer interactions by simplifying and streamlining many of the more complex customer interaction processes, which increases customer satisfaction.

Increase your lead generation

CRM, like Sage CRM, focuses on marketing, sales, and service. It is an important tool for lead generation because it deals with customer data such as previous marketing campaigns, purchases, and service satisfaction. You can then acquire leads from your Web site and e-mail campaigns and send the leads directly to your salespeople. You should then assign leads immediately in order to catch the customer while your business is still top-of-mind.

Sage CRM also aims to automate these processes to create a better experience for both businesses and their customers. Because of its concentration on efficiency, Sage CRM is a great fit for companies that require reports in real time and automated case logging.

Analytical findings

A function of CRM tools such as Sage CRM is to analyse customer data so that management can better understand market trends and customers' wants and needs. The goal is to ultimately improve customer satisfaction. You can then perform data mining and pattern recognition in order to accomplish your business goals, especially when it comes to companies in higher priced markets with a lot of competition.

Customer experience

By pooling data from CRM, businesses are able to create an even greater experience for their customers by obtaining data which they otherwise would not have had access to. Sage CRM is an excellent fit for markets where innovation and new product development is paramount to success because the additional data creates a very detailed picture of what consumers are currently responding to.

Customer profiling

Sage CRM helps businesses gain an insight into who their customers are so that they can modify their business operations to ensure that customers are served in the best possible way. In essence, businesses are able to recognise the value of its customers and capitalise on improved customer relations. Essentially, the better you understand your customers, the more responsive you can be to their needs.

Benefiting from Sage CRM is not just a question of investing in the software, you must also adapt your business to the needs of your customers. This can be achieved by:

* Finding out about your customers' purchasing habits, opinions, and preferences.
* Profiling individuals and groups to market more effectively and increase sales.
* Change the way you operate to improve customer service and marketing.

Sales orientated

Sage CRM can be used to direct salespeople to cross-selling or up-selling activities. You can then identify new product or market opportunities. This can improve the calling efficiency of your sales organisation so that they can increase opportunity creation. Increasingly, successful companies have turned to Sage CRM as it allows them to nurture customers from possible potentials to qualified prospects.

Start growing

Sage CRM is an excellent tool that will allow you to increase and grow your levels of customer satisfaction, efficiency, and profits. Almost every business can benefit from Sage CRM. As a business owner, not exploring a tool like Sage CRM could be a huge oversight for your company.

Increase your productivity and gain visibility for better business decision making with Sage CRM.

Implement Sage CRM today - http://www.lorge.co.za/sage-crm/

Further reading:
https://managementstudyguide.com/importance-of-crm.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_relationship_management

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