If you’ve heard of customer relationship management (CRM) and wondered why it’s so important, it’s simple. No matter what business you’re in, unless your customers are happy you won’t succeed and this is why CRM is so important - more important than sales or marketing or any other part of the company that wouldn’t survive without customers.

Yet, CRM is still low on the priority list of so many companies today. Most of the companies try to manage a CRM base through an excel sheet.

Why CRM?

To know how to maximize your businesses potential, you need to know what your customers think. After all, if you feel that your customers must be happy because your profits are up, it may have more to do with a recent price rise as opposed to them actually buying any more products from you. Additionally, if you have a change in personnel, is this going to affect a relationship with an existing customer?

This is where good CRM comes into its own. If the result of a salesperson leaving means your company is going to lose business from a particular client, you can stay one step ahead of this by smoothing the waters with that particular client, assuring them their service won’t suffer accordingly.

What priority should be given to CRM?

Depending on the size of your company, you will obviously have different priorities and goals. A small company, for instance, may be focused on building its existing client base, whereas a larger company may have its priorities in expanding globally.

Without a strong existing and loyal customer base, these plans and ideas would simply be that – plans and ideas, difficult to implement within the current climate.

However, by using CRM, you can ensure that you have a strong customer base to build from. After all, the best form of advertising is still word-of-mouth; keep your customers happy and you’ll soon see your business grow.

How can you use CRM?

Since CRM is all about customer relationship management, the good thing is that it can be used in so many ways – it isn’t limited to just the service side of your company. No matter what department you use CRM in, the options are endless: Sales teams can see what sales opportunities weren’t closed and determine the reason for that to improve upon the next time. Accounting can see what accounts were closed and use the feedback from customers to try and win them back and ensure that whatever the problem was is not repeated. Customer services can make better use of their time by identifying why a certain problem customer is continuously having difficulties and come up with a solution to that problem. These are just some of the benefits that good customer relationship management can bring to your company. It works both ways as well.

If your customers are really happy, they’ll use your company more and have fewer complaints for customer service. If they’re using your company more, they’re buying more. If they’re buying more, the sales team are making extra and they’re happy.

When both your customers and staff are happy, that’s when you’ll see why customer relationship management is so important for you and your company.

Selecting a good CRM

Selecting a good CRM is critical for any organisation’s success. As the initial setup can be costly is essential to select a CRM which can deliver the organisation’s requirement. Any CRM which choose by the organisation should be user-friendly. Most of the time the CRM will be used by the sales and marketing team and they will like an easy to use setup.

CRM like Vtiger can be a good option for any organisation that is looking for a cost-effective solution. Vtiger is an open source CRM which can be tailor made base on the client requirement. It’s easy to use as the interface is simple and can be customize base on the requirements. The greatest advantage of the solution is it’s online, so the sales team or the management team can access the data from anywhere they want.

Technology is currently change the way we do business and CRM will play a huge role in the success of organisation in the future.