HubSpot’s 2021 State of Marketing report suggests that as much as a quarter of salespeople have never heard of or know anything about a customer relationship management system concept.
Many of those that do understand the concept of CRM itself, use manual methods, such as spreadsheets and email tools, for managing customer data. It is thought, that CRM applications can positively influence sales revenue by increasing business performance by almost a third, so you would think that picking and adopting a CRM solution would be a no-brainer as something your business might want to do.
Of course, that uplift in revenue makes many assumptions about the quality of the customer data you have in that CRM. CRM itself is a collection of practices and a holistic strategy for managing prospective and current customer relationships. The actual implementation of a CRM system or solution involves collecting and utilizing a number of critical pieces of data related to prospects and customers.
CRM solutions are designed to help with ensuring that the management of the customer data is efficient and effective in helping with the improvement of customer relationships, but a large part of this practice focuses on managing the relationship itself and not on the foundational piece of the customer digital entity itself.
You can consider the whole of a CRM solution as a kind of intelligent database built around relationship management but heavily focused on the transactional pieces of that relationship, the calls, emails, conversations etc. These in turn translate into leads, opportunities and actual sales or transactional events that bring the organization revenue, funding or revenue.
Why we care about the customer relationship
By reducing friction in customer interaction and personalizing the engagement the CRM tool helps businesses build stronger relationships between an organization and its external contacts and customers. Reduced engagement friction increases the likelihood of customer retention and long term customer lifetime value.
The brass ring of the engagement is one wherein the contact becomes a customer and a net promoter. A net promoter is someone who on the whole, will recommend your organization, its products, its services, to others.
When potential and current customers feel value and contentment with respect to your organization they will most probably not only buy your products and services but also refer your brand and details to their friends and family and others that they may meet in their own daily lives.
Who are the main users?
The content of a customer relationship management system is often used by many different interest groups in the business. Often the most interested party is sales but the content is of equal interest to those in marketing, support, service and accounting. For this reason, they all converge on needing to have the same basic understanding of the customer and the customer’s nuanced relationship with them and their role and function. This means that the customer master is often itself a hub with many spokes that lead to the systems and tools used by these other groups. Having the best possible master data that these groups can refer to in a unified way, is therefore foundational for having good customer relations.
To learn more about how the Pretectum C-MDM can help your business build the best possible customer master, reach out to us today, to learn more!