As explained in the previous chapter, when studying your CRM requirements, you will need to distinguish between:
The customer-facing operations are parts of the process that are visible to or engage with the prospect, customer, or user.
The back-office operations are everything that goes on behind the scenes.
Create CRM Value for Customer-Facing and Back-Office Teams
The customer-facing CRM needs consist of:
Campaigns
Product delivery
Service production
Customer billing
FAQs and tutorials
The back-office CRM needs include:
Database management
Stock control
Revenue monitoring
Can CRM software really take care of all these tasks?
The simple answer is yes! A CRM platform, application, or software suite allows you to carry out all of these processes within a unified framework. Its benefits to the organization are considerable:
Data quality
Support for marketing, commercial, and customer support decisions
Increased productivity for data managers
Scalability
Increased efficiency
A customer-centric organization
Drive Customer-Centric Marketing With CRM
Although all of these uses of CRM are possible, one of the most common is to guide customer-centric marketing campaigns. With CRM software, you can target your marketing campaigns to the people (or groups) who are most likely to want to buy from you, and tailor the messages you send them, so they are as relevant as possible.
Your CRM software needs to track, record, and index all interactions with customers to ensure the messages they receive are the most relevant to them.
Each piece of information the company collects along the customer journey enriches customer knowledge. Customer knowledge is the fuel for creating personalized (and even tailor-made) customer experiences. The better you know them, the better you serve them - a customer-centric business vision.
Gearing your CRM software towards your marketing needs will be covered in greater detail in the final part of the course.
Store Leads in Your CRM Database
A visitor who shows interest (referred to as a lead) will have their details stored in your lead database - within the CRM software.
Your sales team will work from the lead database to secure sales. This job involves different operations:
Qualification - was it a generic or specific request? What is the prospect’s profile? For example, what is their location? Are they a business or personal customer?
Allocation - what is the most suitable sales channel to continue interaction? It could be a contact center, sales advisers, or key account managers.
Conversion - this occurs when the lead becomes a sale - the prospect becomes a customer.
Make Sure the CRM Is Adopted by Each Team
A well-designed CRM will ensure that all stakeholders in the organization who are concerned with the customer journey use it daily. To ensure all teams work with the CRM software, it should be:
A personalized day-to-day work environment for all employees in all three departments (marketing, sales, and customer support).
A real-time data-sharing tool.
Accepted as the primary customer data source from which all customer-related metrics are calculated.
Let's Recap!
Make sure your CRM meets the needs of both customer-facing and back-office teams.
CRM software drives the visitor–prospect–customer life cycle.
Effective CRM software will be used daily by all teams involved in the customer journey.
You’ve just seen that CRM is not only a place to store your data; it is a global approach to generate value for your business. In the next chapter, you’ll discover how to measure customer interest in your brand.
