Customer relationship management (CRM) software is a contact list with a brain. It not only records your customers' contact information, but it remembers the details of your relationship and every interaction—whether by phone or email, and nowadays across other channels such as social media or even your customer helpdesk.
That information is a gold mine of opportunity, allowing you to identify prospects for up- or cross-sell, convert existing customers to new products or services, target new marketing, or even track invoices. Choosing the right CRM software for your business can dramatically improve your team's collaboration and productivity, increase sales, and heighten customer satisfaction.
The best CRM software can deliver those benefits because it organizes and records the institutional knowledge all businesses maintain about their customers.
Employees might use a spreadsheet to pass on information about past sales or share email threads that show a customer has been a loyal patron. But such information is often left to casual word of mouth, which means it's often missing when needed or entirely forgotten.
CRM software keeps this information in one place, efficiently organizes it, and makes it possible to take immediate action with it, such as sending a loyal customer a gift card on their birthday or offering an up-sell opportunity to a platform from which you know their business can benefit (based on previous conversations).It's also a great way to woo back inactive customers. The key is to select the software that's right for the way your team works. The last thing you want is to see employees fighting new software instead of interacting with the customer. CRM software isn't just about tracking and maintaining contact information. While most look to CRM software as primarily a sales tool, it's moved beyond that space.