7 advantages of using a CRM solution

Martin Perez -

You’ve heard about CRMs non-stop.

You’ve heard that they can help your business and that you should be using one.

Is the hype real? How can a CRM solution help your business?

Today, we’ll break down the main advantages that CRM solutions bring to your business.

What is a CRM?

Let’s start with a review of the basics. After all, you might not be fully sure as to what a CRM is in the first place?

CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. However, when most people talk about a CRM, they are referring to CRM solutions or platforms such as cloud-based software.

CRMs help you to collect, store, access and use all of your customers’ data. From their contact information to purchasing history to sales notes and more.

Want to learn more? Read our guide on what a CRM is and what it can do.

Advantages of a CRM

With the refresher out of the way, let’s now review the main advantages that CRMs can bring to your business.

1. Centralizes Customer Data

The main reason why companies start using CRMs is to centralize their customer data in a single place.

This brings numerous benefits to your business.

  • Your customer data can now be accessed by multiple people across your business.
  • Your customer data can be accessed by employees from anywhere. Be it from the office, from home or on-the-go.
  • When an employee updates a customer record, it updates it across the entire organization.
  • Customer data is not lost in personal inboxes, notepads or misplaced call transcripts.

Fragmentation of data can be the cause of many inefficiencies in your business. A CRM will allow you to centralized all the information about your customers, making sure your data is always safe and accessible.

2. Automates Data Collection

Let’s be blunt. Collecting and transcribing data manually SUCKS.

It’s mind-numbingly boring and its a huge waste of time and money.

Thank god for CRMs.

A modern CRM can automate the process of creating customer files and collecting all of their information. When integrated correctly, a CRM will automatically collect your customers’ contact information, purchase history, support requests, sales notes and more.

All this information is then neatly displayed in a dashboard ready for you to access at any time. This allows you to make important daily decisions about your customers.

Imagine one of your support reps sees that there are 3 customers on hold waiting for support. A CRM could let them know that one of them has made 6 large purchases in the last 3 months and is probably of higher priority due to their repeat business.

3. Improves communication between departments

Communication within the departments in your company can always be improved.

A CRM can easily improve them without the need of team-building exercises or slack channels.

Here’s an example. Imagine that a customer calls your support line to solve a product issue. During the call, they let your support rep know that they have changed their email address. Your support rep then updates the customer’s email address in the CRM.

The next morning, Marketing pulls a list of customers’ email addresses for their next email marketing campaign. Without the need for any emails or chats, your support team has updated the email address from your customer for your marketing team to use.

4. Improves the quality of your customer data

You might see now how some of these benefits mix and merge with each other.

Thanks to their centralization of data and improved communications between departments, CRMs improve the quality of your customer data by keeping it up-to-date across the entire company.

Higher quality data, in turn, lets you make better decisions about your business and your strategies.

5. Reduces operational costs

With the automation of tasks and better data, a CRM allows you to drastically reduce your operational costs.

If you’re not currently using a CRM, think about how much time your team spends collecting and searching for customer data.

How many emails have been sent back and forth between departments just to update customer files?

Remember, time is money and if your business is stuck in repetitive and inefficient tasks, then it is also bleeding money.

6. Allows you to actually USE your customer data

We all know that customer data is incredibly valuable. There’s a reason why most companies want to know more and more about their customers.

While collecting and storing customer data is a big step towards unlocking this value, you won’t get anything out of it if you don’t actually use the data.

A CRM can use this data to draw valuable insights about your customer base.

  • Do you know how many of your customers have bought from you multiple times?
  • How many of them live outside of the US?
  • Which state has the largest average order size?

If you’re collecting customer data and not using it to draw valuable insights from your business, you’re unknowingly sitting on a pile of gold.

7. Increases your business efficiency and revenue

All of these advantages boil down to one conclusion.

A CRM can improve the efficiency of your business, reduce costs and increase your revenue.

Best of all, it can do these across multiple departments in your company.Not convinced yet about CRMs yet? Read our guide on the 7 signs that you might need a CRM solution.