Why CRM is the leading customer-relevant technology?

Organizations today are experimenting with a wide range of technologies to deliver the most relevant customer experience (CX). While there is no clear-cut formula to achieve this across all channels, the Harvard Business Review Analytic Services has found CRM to be the leading technology for delivering a relevant customer experience. Among 17 technologies analyzed, the study has found that Customer Relationship Management achieves 50% success when it comes to delivering the ideal customer experience. Websites are next with 41% score, and CX/Behavior Analytics comes at distance third with 22% score.

Being at the core of the advanced initiatives to drive customer experience, best-in-class organizations have realized the distinctive role of CRM in delivering a highly personalized and streamlined customer experience. By being able to maximize the capability of the enterprises in delivering first-call-resolutions through highly credible service commitments, CRM can be the game changer for these firms by helping them achieve enhanced satisfaction-score and per-client profitability.

Integrated Platform

An advanced CRM represents a unified platform of cutting-edge solutions comprising of strategies and technologies that can increase the agility of core business processes such as Customer service, Marketing, Sales and even Operations. The flexibility aids in better collaboration, transforming business initiatives into better outcomes. In addition to these advantages, discussed below are various other features and benefits that amplify the CRM’s efficacy.

Innovative Technology

Most CRM solutions today are increasingly being built through cloud computing, which makes it easy to oscillate them across the cloud and on-premise environments with ease. The improved flexibility allows the solutions to cater to the exact needs of the enterprises, allowing them to either demand an end-to-end solution or just optimize their marketing, sales or service technology. The on-demand solutions can apparently minimize the upfront cost, complexity, and risk of organizations irrespective of their size and priority.

The resourceful features of CRM accentuate its capability to generate enterprise-wide relevance. Some of the benefits are clearly visible in the improved functionality of the following business processes.

Customer Service

CRMs help the management to streamline processes through swift service strategies that enable the front-line staff to provide highly personalized interactions. By integrating CRM with various other channels representing specialized customer touch-points, businesses can maximize first-contact resolutions. Leveraging the technology to extract critical insights about customer- preferences can ensure seamless handshakes along the entire duration of the customer journey. The consistent flow of information on the consumers’ behavior can also reduce the training while improving the satisfaction level by offering more relevant experience.

Sales

Combining the capabilities of sales automation and real-time activities, CRM enables better adaptability of the business processes to utilize each sales opportunity. The software also ensures better conversion of leads by solving intricate inquiries and simplifying the process of on-boarding and can manage the sales cycle from start to finish. This can significantly boost customer retention and satisfaction, which can, in turn, maximize profitability.

Marketing

CRM enables collaboration of marketing initiatives across every inbound and outbound channel. The combination of advanced analytics with a persistent inflow of data can be quite useful in evaluating every minute detail of customer activity. The real-time analytics can then be used to derive reliable predictions about consumer behavior, which can help the marketing heads align the business objectives with customer expectations.

In addition, the CRM also offers huge scope to ensure conformance to best practices by enforcing industry regulations. By connecting the silos of marketing, on-boarding, sales and customer services together, an advanced CRM solution blends the overall organizational effort towards customer orientation and can help deliver a relevant, customer-centric experience.

Key Takeaways

• As per the study conducted by Harvard Business Review Analytic Services, CRM is at the top of the list of critical technologies delivering the relevant customer experience.
• Leading organizations are acknowledging the importance of CRM technology and are making significant efforts to take advantage of its capability in order to drive customer experience.