CRM Systems: Understanding Their Capabilities, Functions, and Tasks

In this guide, our advertising agency examines the intricacies of CRM systems using simple examples. It highlights the importance of customer relationship management systems and provides advice on choosing the CRM that best suits your business needs.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems are tools designed to streamline and enhance interactions with customers. In essence, they gather and organize data about a company's customers, creating detailed profiles that facilitate better engagement.

Think of your social media profile, which includes your name, job, education, interests, and more. This profile helps others understand and engage with you effectively. Similarly, a CRM system builds comprehensive profiles of individuals based on their interactions with a company, detailing when and how they contacted the company, what they were interested in, and which employees assisted them.

CRM systems can be broadly classified into two main types: operational and marketing.
Operational CRMs: These systems are vital for sales teams. They track customer actions and visualize their journey through the sales funnel—from initial contact to final purchase. Operational CRMs assist managers by reminding them to follow up with customers and consolidating all customer information in one accessible location.

Marketing CRMs: In addition to the features of operational CRMs, these systems record marketing communications and customer reactions, track loyalty points, and monitor interactions with the company's website or app. They help marketers understand what attracts or repels customers by analyzing which pages were visited, how long they were viewed, and how users navigated through them.

Next, we will discuss the specific functionalities of various CRM services and how to choose the right one for your business. But first, let's understand why CRM systems are essential.

Customer Data Storage: CRM systems allow you to consolidate all customer information into a single profile. This ensures that when a customer contacts you again, there's no need to search for their manager or ask them to wait while you locate and review past interactions. All data about previous communications and purchases is readily available.

Interaction Recording: Customers may contact a company through various channels such as website chat, phone, social media, or email. They might use different methods at different times. The CRM system's role is to unify these interactions into one continuous history, ensuring no details are missed.
Routine Task Automation: Managing customer data in Excel often involves repetitive tasks such as manual data entry and searching through cumbersome tables. A CRM system automates these processes, allowing managers to spend more time interacting with customers.

Comprehensive Control: CRMs are useful for analyzing the activities of both customers and employees. They can track how much time employees spend on tasks, the number of interactions they have, and whether they meet deadlines.

User-Friendly Interface: A quality CRM system should be easy to use. This can be assessed through demo access or a service demonstration before purchase, opportunities typically provided by CRM developers.

Flexibility and Adaptability: A good CRM system should be flexible enough to adapt to the varying number and types of tasks your company may encounter. Key features to consider include:
Integration Capabilities: The ability to easily integrate with external marketing and communication services.

Reasonable Pricing Plans: Pricing should be affordable and within your company's budget.
Access Management: The CRM should include robust features for managing employee access and monitoring their activities within the system.

We've discussed the functionalities of CRM systems, but how do you know if a service will solve a specific problem? Let's explore two common scenarios.

Increasing Conversion at Different Stages of the Sales Funnel
Imagine your company installs interior doors. A customer goes through five stages in this process:

There are four potential points where you could lose the customer:

How can a CRM help?
An operational CRM system is ideal here: it digitizes all stages of the transaction and sets deadlines for each, assigning responsible persons. This helps identify weak points, optimize processes, and streamline operations. Managers can instantly see the current schedules of measurers and installers, allowing them to offer customers convenient times without delays or repeat calls. The CRM system also consolidates customer inquiries from all sources into one interface and can store call recordings, providing a valuable information base for marketers.

Result: By identifying and addressing weak points in customer interactions, each stage's conversion rate will improve. Without a CRM system, these issues might remain hidden.
Reducing Customer Churn and Increasing Repeat Purchases
Consider an online store selling children's clothing and shoes for ages 0 to 14. Orders come in, but you notice that customers rarely return for additional purchases, even though they could buy from you for 14 years.

How can a CRM help?
A marketing CRM is suitable here: it helps process and segment the customer base and build reactivation communication. Reactivation communication involves engaging customers who haven't made a purchase in a while. Simple messages like "Hi! You haven't bought anything recently—maybe now?" are often insufficient. Therefore, a series of communications is necessary. For example, if a mother bought a jumpsuit for a baby up to six months, the CRM should prompt you to offer more mature clothing a few months later.

Result: By anticipating customer needs and maintaining visibility, you can turn one-time purchases into regular ones and predict future customer value. The investment in a CRM system will quickly pay off.

Implementing Loyalty Programs
You can achieve the same results in an offline store by implementing a loyalty program to collect customer contacts. This approach is not limited to clothing stores—it can be applied to remind customers about car parts or creative supplies.

For a free consultation with a WGG manager to learn how a CRM system can benefit your business, please leave a request.