A CRM is a software solution to complete and improve customer management. Currently, there are many companies that already have this type of software because it is a technological advance that can help us. As for our communication strategy, a CRM can help us to send email marketing campaigns among many other things. If you want to take advantage of all its benefits and know the best way to do it, this article is for you.
The development of technologies in recent years has been of great help and has shortened many of the production and work processes of companies in many areas.
One of them, and perhaps the heaviest of all, is the automation of data collection and management processes, which in the past could take months, is now done autonomously. And we owe this to a great extent to CRM.
A CRM is a solution that, through software, helps and complements the management of customer relationships. It is normally oriented to work on three basic areas: commercial management, marketing and after-sales service or customer service.
The use of a CRM is part of a customer-oriented strategy in which all actions are aimed at improving both customer service and relationships with customers and potential customers, so that we can achieve added value.
The implementation of a CRM tool provides us with demonstrable results when it comes to boosting sales productivity and also provides us with a deep knowledge of the customer, thus allowing us the possibility of planning more effective and customer-oriented marketing campaigns.
It is a fact that the implementation of any tool will give you many more possibilities and more benefits than not doing it, this will provide us with a series of data and will allow us to incorporate a series of skills.
Specifically, a CRM will provide your company with many benefits:
When creating a marketing strategy, a CRM is very useful because it allows us to have an agenda to interact with in case we want to carry out an email marketing strategy as well as automate certain services such as programming a digital marketing strategy or carrying out a campaign in RRSS.
There are several types of CRM that have different functionality and therefore provide a substantial improvement in the area for which they are designed.
Precisely because of this, it is important to know what you are looking to implement with your CRM and based on that carefully choose the CRM you are going to use.
There are three main types of CRM. The most common classification differentiates between operational, analytical and collaborative CRMs.
Also called front office CRM, this is the simplest CRM and is focused on sales, marketing and customer service.
Operational CRMs are responsible for:
- Interacting with customers
- Centralize information
- Manage email marketing campaigns
- Perform after-sales service processes
- Perform customer service
The main objective of operational CRM is to increase sales and improve internal communication. Quite easy to use, they are the most common in companies with small sales teams.
An example of Operational CRM is HubSpot.
The Analytical CRM (through the so-called Business Intelligence) focuses on decision making regarding products and services of the company through the collection and subsequent evaluation of the company's data as well as its relationship with customers.
The functions of Analytical CRM are:
- Analysis of customer behavior
- Design of segmented commercial actions
- Measurement and evaluation of marketing campaigns
- Construction of complex databases with customer information.
Analytical CRM exploits and analyzes the data it collects and, based on this, offers solutions through all the information in the databases.
An example of analytical CRM is Zoho.
Collaborative CRM is the CRM specialized in the link formed with the customer and, therefore, more focused on the communication aspect. Its main function is to interact through different channels such as online chat, telephone or email.
Collaborative CRMs are focused on:
- Establishing multichannel communication with customers.
- Maintaining this communication between departments and company sites.
- Improving the relationship between customers and departments
It is a perfect CRM for call centers and other similar companies as it basically centralizes all communications in one place. Regarding the sales aspect, it is much less complete than the other two options.
An example of a cooperative CRM is Cooper.