Five important CRM features that you can’t live without
Are you starting a new company? Maybe you’re in the process of digital transformation. One technology your company absolutely cannot ignore when you’re upgrading your technological prowess is the CRM system.
What is a CRM System?
A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System is a technology that supports and supercharges all company-customer interactions. The various features in the CRM system help improve communications and enable you to stay better connected with your prospects, enabling you to convert them into paying customers.
When might your business require a CRM System?
Every company, notwithstanding the industry, can benefit from a CRM system at their workplace. CRM can bring you numerous advantages. Take for example the ROI it offers. For every dollar spent, CRM enables you to earn around $8.71 in returns.
But ROI generation aside, there are a few more reasons why you may need a robust CRM system:
Poor data management
Your data isn’t organized and is all over the place. Or worse, it is inaccurate, resulting in inconclusive results/reports.
Inefficient leads management
The business is getting too many leads – so much so that it can’t keep up with them. Your team may be unable to successfully capture and follow up on leads, losing out on sales opportunities.
Lack of communication & collaboration between teams
Your marketing and sales teams are not working in sync. The CEO and departmental heads have no idea what your team is doing. This lack of coordination, collaboration, and clarity is creating problems in strategizing, resource allocation, and implementation. Additionally, because of the lack of direction, your team may be wasting time and underperforming.
Underperforming customer service and experience
You receive feedback from customers about poor customer service & experience. Or you notice a steady drop in the number of customers.
Performance measurement issues
You don’t have great insight into how your different campaigns are performing and what changes you need to make to improve them.
5 key features to look for in a CRM System
Now you know why you absolutely need a CRM system for your company. When buying a CRM system, be sure to check if it has these 5 essential features:
Contact management
A smartly designed CRM system will be able to harvest contact details from across platforms and collate them in a single space for easy access. First name, last name, phone number, email ID, address, etc. can be stored easily and you can use this to personalize your interactions. The contact management feature will also help you categorize your contacts into first-time visitors, qualified leads, and conversions.
Interaction tracking
Prospects and customers interact with a company across various touchpoints. Each interaction is different based on their intention. The CRM system’s interaction tracking feature will help you monitor and collect data about visitor interaction across the website and social media platforms. From page clicks to reading time to likes & shares, you’ll be able to know who is interested in your product and has the highest chances of conversion.
Lead management
Lead management is a must in any CRM system because that underpins your company’s sales success. Features like automatic lead capturing, assignment of leads to different departments, scoring leads for conversion likelihood, lead prioritization, engagement tracking & reporting – can help you know how to modify your campaigns for successful sales.
Email integration
Email marketing is one of the most powerful tools for companies. If your CRM system has email integration, it’ll be able to help you collect and map lead contact information to emails, personalizing them. Studies show that a personalized email can increase CTR by 53%.
In addition to personalization by name, email integration will allow you to seamlessly send across welcome emails, cart reminder emails, and shipping emails to customers too.
Workflow automation and quotes & proposal management
Another set of key features your CRM system should have is quotes & proposal management and workflow automation.
Your CRM system will help you collate all quotes by suppliers, compare prices, share proposals with other decision-makers in the company and amend/accept/reject quotes on the system.
With workflow automation, you’ll be able to automate various tasks, from sales meetings to service reminders to promotional messages. Since the communication flows effortlessly, it will help you serve your customers better and give them a better experience.
How do these 5 features help your company?
With the help of the 5 above features, you will be able to:
- Anticipate the needs of customers before they express them, by tracking their online engagement with your platforms and campaigns.
- Develop more detailed customer avatars and create focused prospect groups.
- Understand what your customers want and engage them accordingly. This type of bespoke service will encourage them to return to you often.
- Improve the speed and efficiency of communication with prospects, helping them get the information they’re looking for in a timely manner.
- Reduce rates of customer attrition and increase retention by offering timely customer support and compelling engagement in tune with the buying stage they are in.
- Protect the data privacy of customers and ensure their sensitive information remains safe.
At iMovo, we are a reputed CRM system provider. We can help you integrate various CRM systems into your existing architecture in a seamless manner. Our integration specialists can train your team to use the CRM software and empower you to achieve your business goals. Contact us today to schedule a meeting, meanwhile, have a look at our Customer Success Stories here.