What a CRM application is
A CRM application (Customer Relationship Management) keeps in one place everything the company knows about its customers: contact details, preferences, what they bought, what was discussed and what comes next. Whenever anyone on the team opens a customer's record, they see the same history. The full details are in the article what CRM means.
Types of CRM
CRM programs are grouped by what they track most:
- For contacts. Each customer's details, the history of interactions and their preferences, in one record.
- For sales. The stages of every sale (pipeline), opportunities, automatic follow-up and results by sales rep.
- For marketing. Campaigns, leads and the results of each campaign.
- For support. Tickets, complaints and response times.
- For analysis and reports. Data from sales, marketing and support, gathered into reports about customers and about the company.
- For sales automation (SFA). Scheduling meetings, quotes and order tracking, done by the program instead of the sales rep.
- Collaborative. Sales, marketing and support see the same information about customers and partners.
A CRM built to measure takes from each type only what you need. See what the CRM and marketing module built by Veziv contains.
Artificial intelligence in CRM applications
AI changes a few concrete things in a CRM:
- Repetitive tasks. Updating customer details, follow-ups and reminders sent automatically.
- Customer behaviour. From the history you can estimate who is close to buying and who is about to leave.
- Recommendations per customer. Which product or offer to suggest, based on what they bought before.
- Chatbots and assistants. They answer customers' simple questions in real time.
- Lead scores. Each lead gets a score, so sales reps call the requests with better chances first.
- Conversation analysis. Calls and messages can reveal the customer's tone and problems.
- Suggested steps. The program suggests when to send a follow-up or which offer to present.
In Veziv projects, AI already does things like these: it reads supplier invoices and estimates in PDF, answers questions from the company's data and writes batch messages for leads, with a person's approval. More on the page of the AI assistant in the ERP and in the article about artificial intelligence in CRM development.
What a CRM application gives you
Teams work from the same data
Sales, marketing and support see the same customer record. Support sees the history before answering, and the sales rep sees which campaigns the customer received. Duplicates and contradictory messages disappear.
Less repetitive work
Follow-up e-mails, reminders and data updates happen on their own. Your people have more time for conversations with customers.
Happier customers
When you know what the customer bought and what they asked for last time, you answer faster and more to the point.
Up-to-date data, from anywhere
Information updates on the spot, so everyone, in the office or in the field, works with the same data.
Sales that are easier to follow
You see every sale from the first contact to the contract. You know which leads have better chances, and you pull reports by sales rep or by period. A well-known example of a sales CRM is Pipedrive.
Marketing triggered by events
You can start automatic campaigns when someone fills in a form, opens an e-mail or looks at a product on the website.
Higher revenue
When you know what customers want, you offer them the right products, improve them or make them to measure.
How to choose the right CRM software for your business
Before you choose, write down:
- what your industry needs (for example, viewings in real estate, visits for sales agencies);
- how you want to use the system and who works in it;
- which other programs it has to connect to (invoicing, website, accounting);
- the budget to start with;
- the total cost over time, including maintenance.
Compare several providers against the same list.
CRM, ERP or mobile app
The CRM improves the relationship with customers and gives you analysis of customers and sales.
The ERP does part of the internal work on its own and connects orders, stock, production and invoices. It gives you reports on all of the company's activity, so you decide based on data. See what ERP means.
There are also hybrid programs, with functions from both. Many of the systems built by Veziv are like that.
A mobile app makes sense when your people work in the field or when the customer has to order from their phone. Veziv builds phone screens for the shop floor, the warehouse, the building site, the driver and the sales rep, customer portals, and Android and iOS apps such as UNTaxi or the shopper app for ADK. Details under field apps and portals.
Not sure which one you need? The steps we use to work that out are in building a CRM, ERP or mobile app from scratch. Delivered projects are on our projects, and for a conversation, write to us.