Glossary What is Customer Relationship Management (CRM)?
By / 2 Jan 2023 / Topics: Customer experience Digital transformation
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) involves the strategies, practices and technology platforms to analyze and guide customers through the sales pipeline and funnel. By tracking customer interactions, a business or organization can analyze data to manage customer and potential customer interactions and relationships.
A digital CRM platform is a critical component of CRM. Business specialists use these tools to manage each stage of the sales pipeline and host important client data. These tools are also able to automate various stages of the sales process, guiding buyer interactions from the awareness stage to the decision stage and ultimately driving business goals forward.
A CRM platform also integrates with various sales and marketing tools — such as digital advertising tools that manage emails and paid media. Combined with an organization’s marketing tools, a CRM platform can support many parts of the sales pipeline, including:
- Lead generation: Digital marketing tools aimed at creating awareness can automatically route lead information to the CRM platform. The lead and their data can then be analyzed through the tool for the next stages of the pipeline.
- Lead qualification: Using customer data that has already been added to the CRM platform, or that is being provided after customer interactions with sales specialists and digital media, a CRM platform can qualify a lead’s willingness to purchase through an evaluation of pre-defined parameters. CRM platforms have many different data analysis capabilities that can help a sales team determine the likeliness of a customer purchase — which in turn informs sales and marketing strategies.
- Creating an opportunity: Once a customer has meet pre-defined parameters within the CRM platform — such as engaging with certain pieces of digital media or through conversations with the organization’s representatives — they are then turned into an opportunity. That lead can then be assigned to a sales teammate.
- Consideration and nurturing: After a customer is assigned to a sales representative, they may make a purchase. The sales data is then recorded in the system for future use. If they don’t make a purchase, the data is still retained so that the organization can use it to help them make a sale in the future. The CRM may provide instruction on how to nurture the lead or automate that process by sending emails about the product.
Adopting a CRM platform
Many businesses have adopted a CRM platform over the years to help support their sales processes. But as time moves on and capabilities and business priorities change, adopting a different platform has become necessary. This can be complicated due to the need to migrate massive amounts of data and train employees on a new tool — all without disrupting day-to-day business processes.
A Solutions Integrator is primed to help businesses effectively adopt a CRM platform by helping the organization find the right CRM, manage the migration, adopt any necessary data center or cloud platforms, and support organizational change management.
