What is CRM?

Definitions of CRM

CRM is the abbreviation of customer relationship management, which means the process of managing the interaction and relationship between businesses and customers with the help of technology. In fact, it’s a concept in management and indicates a business strategy that companies take advantage of technical means to choose and manage customers or potential customers. Nowadays, it often refers to a kind of systems or tools used by companies to track and analyze data on customer, helping companies to improve the quality of their products and service and meet customers’ needs better. CRM software collect data from various communication channels, including the website of companies, telephone, email, marketing materials and social media that customers use frequently (Robert, 1991). They help companies get a lot of information on target customers and form clear ideas about customers’ preferences and needs, thus retaining old customers, winning more new customers and driving sales growth. In the past, companies need diverse apps and databases to analyze and note target or potential customers as accurately as possible, CRM tools make it easier and all data stored in one database is available to any members within an organization. A CRM system or tool motivate firms to develop a customer-centric strategy or culture, supporting the marketing, sales and service effectively.

What are CRM tools

Types of CRM Tools

According to the role or function of CRM tools, CRM tools are divided into operational, analytical, and collaborative. Each kind of CRM software emphasizes different functions and have disparate primary goals. The key feature of CRM software is to realize the integration and automation of sales, marketing and customer support. Consequently, these tools often present the three functions targeting at one customer through one webpage and each page targeting at a single customer can be seen by members of company. The webpage probably supplies customers’ information, past sales and so on, making a summery about the relationship between the clients and the company.
Customer Service Tools
CRM SOFTWARE
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Operational CRM

Sales force automation, marketing automation and service automation are three essential parts of operational CRM. Sales force automation plays an important role in the whole process of sales, including storing contact information and finish the conversion from a potential customer to a real customer. It analyzes sales promotion, traces customers’ accounts for purchase history automatically and coordinates participants involving in all stages of sales. It tracks and updates interaction information of salespersons and clients. Marketing automation simplifies the whole marketing process in order to improve efficiency. With the support of marketing automation, CRM tools can execute repetitive works, such as sending e-mails for marketing to clients and updating posts for advertising through social media. Marketing automation of CRM tools convert leads to clients and orders. Service automation of CRM tools aims at offering high-quality service for customers through technology.

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Analytical CRM

Analytical CRM tools focus on collection and analysis of data from various channels and display it to mangers who need to make wise decisions. Data mining, correlation and pattern recognition are the method that analytical CRM tools use frequently to analyze the data. Analysis of data help businesses find problems timely to improve their service and identify target customers accurately. For example, it’s found that certain old customers have not bought products recently based on data about customers’ behaviors. In such a situation, companies will summarize the reason further from collected data and change marketing strategy to show the advantages of their products from a new perspective.

Collaborative CRM

Collaborative CRM tools help external parties, such as suppliers and distributors, to get clients’ information easier. For example, evaluations and suggestions from customers collected by some channels guide companies to optimize their products and service further.

The significance of CRM to Companies

CRM becomes one of the strongest boosters to promote companies’ development and its market size is expected to reach USD 163.16 billion by 2030 with a significant CAGR of 13.9% from 2023 to 2030, according to the new report by Grand View Research, Inc. To maintain competitiveness of your business, you need a customer-oriented strategy and to depend on technology to implement the strategy effectively. Directed by the target of sales, business and making profit, you need the support of technology to get valuable information. How do you transfer the flood of data from sales, customer service and marketing into your business advantages?

CRM marketing software provide you with more detailed information on you customers. A customized webpage showing a customer’s history on the platform, order status, service evaluation helps you know more about your customers. You can also choose platforms where your customers share their preferences and evaluations of service or product from you and your competitors to collect feedback and adjust your strategy. Marketers can manage and optimize campaigns and leads with the reference to data through CRM tools or systems for a better understanding of sales channels and making more accurate prediction. You will have opportunities to witness the process of customers placing orders. Companies benefit the most from the application of CRM in business from finance to supply chain besides taking it as sales and marketing tools. It helps ensure the priority of clients’ needs no matter in the business process or innovation of a firm.

CRM software are often used as sales or marketing tools, but customer service and support, as important parts of CRM, play significant roles in management of customer relationship. Sometimes, customers probably put forward a question on a platform and choose a private app to solve problems after. CRM tools help you manage the inquiries across various channels and supply a single lead of sales, service and marketing to present a customer’s activities. It’s significant to connect these three functions on one platform from the prospective of a customer.

CRM SOFTWARE

Why should you choose iParllay?

As a marketing technology company funded by a group of experts in product and marketing, excellent data scientists and former Microsoft executives in 2013, iParllay has won trust from fortune 500 companies around the world and established close partnership with some of them through outstanding service of WeChat CRM and marketing automation. Up until now, iParllay has assisted lots of renowned brands to promote business growth and conversion, including FORD, Microsoft and so on. Besides that, it’s the only WeChat integration partner of HubSpot, helping firms to get more customers’ recognition and trust in the Chinese market through CRM systems. The cooperation between iParllay and HubSpot enlarges the market of companies, helps companies that want to enter the Chinese market adapt to the situation faster. iParllay combines the WeChat and the CRM of HubSpot to capture China’s customers preferences more accurately and offers effective leads for companies eventually. WeChat is one of the most popular apps in China, therefore, this function of iParllay is essential for companies to make a marketing strategy that is more suitable for Chinese customer. If a company wants to develop its business in China and hopes that its service or product can be popular among customers from China, iParllay must be an ideal option for a large market share in China.