The benefits of CRM are manifold and interwoven in numerous ways. They affect all relationships, not only with customers but also with suppliers, partners and employees. The basis for everything is the comprehensive and targeted collection of data.
With a CRM system, you can manage all company and personal contact data in a structured and clear manner. You record interactions and collect all important information about your customers along the customer journey, from lead to purchase. You also collect data on suppliers, partners and employees. All data is stored centrally in one place. Seamless documentation means that information is neither forgotten nor lost due to staff changes.
The data and its systematic storage and use is extremely valuable for your company. Among other things, you can use it to visualize trends in your customers' behaviour, as you can correlate the data you have collected.
If all customer data is stored in a central location, all employees can access the same information from any location, from any device and at any time. This is a great advantage when employees are not available and information is needed urgently. When your employees call, they can quickly access all information, provide information or answer questions via the central data storage. The standardized database also brings advantages for cross-departmental collaboration, as it facilitates the exchange of data across departments and locations - worldwide.
Numerous automations in CRM make daily business easier for your employees. This saves time. Your employees gain more freedom to deal with your customers and their needs and thus provide them with more targeted support.
With cloud CRM solutions, this is possible from any location where an Internet connection is available. In cases where there is no network availability, you need an offline client. This allows you to use data offline, for example with a mobile CRM on a tablet.
By collecting a lot of customer information, your company quickly has enormous amounts of data at its disposal. In the age of the Internet of Things, this may also include data from objects, such as your machines, which automatically report when maintenance is required.
Modern analysis tools in CRM make it easy to evaluate your data. From this, you can derive insights that enable you to better meet the needs of your customers (or partners, suppliers and employees) by adapting your products, services or benefits to meet their needs. With the help of dashboards, you can identify the business areas that need to be optimized.
A completely new area of key figures opens up when you rely on artificial intelligence (AI in CRM), which, with the right instructions, can carry out the steps for evaluation and gaining knowledge largely independently. This gives you more time to develop the right measures.
All of the benefits mentioned are ultimately aimed at strengthening your customer loyalty and improving the acquisition of new customers. The better you look after your customers, the more loyal they become, which increases the customer lifetime value, i.e. the long-term value of a customer for your company.
The benefits for your relationships with business partners and employees are also undeniable. Young, tech-savvy generations work with professional software support as a matter of course. You will only put them off with paperwork.
Where there is a shortage of skilled workers, a CRM system becomes an advantage in the battle for young talent. The keyword here is: New Work. CRM makes working from home and hybrid working models much easier. You can communicate with your employees and business partners via numerous communication tools in the CRM, such as email, video call or chat, and document all messages in the CRM.
Whether NPS surveys (NPS: Net Promoter Score) with customers, service tickets, company and product evaluations or suggestions from your employees - everything flows together in the CRM. And this enables you to gain insights to optimize your customer processes. This then takes the form of, for example
The CRM system therefore offers you a huge wealth of data that can be used for targeted analyses. You can use the data to determine whether your KPIs have been met, identify reasons for success and failure and recognize further potential for improvement. In short: thanks to the CRM system, you know which adjustments you need to make in order to sustainably increase your success.
Contrary to the doubters who still exist, data analysis opens up previously unimagined possibilities in many areas (keyword: big data). The best proof of the resulting benefits are successful companies such as Facebook, Google and Amazon, which are based almost entirely on insights gained from big data.
The analyses of CRM data in combination with other sources, such as analyses of other company data or public statistics, reveal new correlations, probabilities and decision-making options. Let this support you in your economic decisions. This will increase your turnover and profits and put you ahead of your competitors in the long term.