Usually associated with bigorganisations, a new breed of CRM systems aims at smaller and mid-sized businesses to improve their productivity with better team collaboration, project management, and business data overview. In an ever-competitive world, there is a growing need to track customers and work with cost-effective methods to increase ROI. An in-house CRM system is what you need.
CRM Features and Benefits
Here are 10 CRM features you certainly need.
1 Remote Access
The CRM should be cloud-based to allow remote access. Based on the business, it should allow all the vested stakeholders to login and input data from any location. If you are into manufacturing, you need a CRM system that will allow users to input manufacturing data, sales data, sales record, financial inflow and outflow, and more. Certainly, you can choose the level of access; the important feature is for the CRM to have remote access capability.
2 Responsive Rendering
Websites need to be responsive and render on all access devices such as desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones. Similarly, the CRM system should render on all devices allowing the users to login anytime. A CRM on a handheld device is an ideal solution for sales and marketing teams that needs to keep their work progress updated always. Other factors like accessing sales collateral, schedules, and back office data.
3 Communication Control
It is easy for a business to experience a communication bottleneck where the employees are spending a lot of productive time in answering and tracking emails. A comprehensive CRM system should offer an integrated emailing platforms for the users to launch and track campaigns. Customer service people, marketers, and sales people are the departments that need a cohesive communication control platform. The CRM system will not only enable sending and receiving of emails but also store the communications and manage projects.
4 Social Media Integration
Your team needs to monitor what is happening on the social channels. Activities like customer reviews, queries, negative feedback, and shout-outs need active monitoring and proactive response from the Support staff. Integrating the social media channels in the CRM will give a comprehensive overview of activities across all the vested social channels. The Support staff can monitor and reply to queries or respond to feedback and more. Internally, all the social media shares can be scheduled and tracked for reachability and traction.
5 Sales Pipeline
If nothing else, your business CRM should have a well-developed sales pipeline to track prospects right from lead generation to conversion, analyse the cost of acquisition, expense receipts, repeat orders, and other such categories. A sales pipeline dashboard will track each data point meticulously and display growth charts and revenue stream possibilities.
6 UI/UX Design
The UI/UX Design and navigation should depend on the complexity of the business operations. Your CRM software should simplify navigation; otherwise, time will be spent on training the users to access the in-built modules. The learning curve should not be high. A clever idea is to split the CRM into departments and give access to the users relevant in each department. However, all the departments should cohesively produce business reports to understand the health of the business.
7 Customization Possibilities and Updates
The CRM software should not be a static too. Presently, your CRM will be created keeping in mind certain features. What if the conditions change in future? What if additional features are required? Will it make sense to build a new CRM from scratch or upgrade an existing one? OM Software creates customised CRM systems that are high on quality development, and they have the manpower and experiential capacity to carry out any manner of CRM development tasks. The company offers post-development client service to update software or add new features.
8 Multi-Channel Customer Support
If yours is a full-fledged B2B or B2C business that needs to interact with customersdaily, your CRM system should have a multi-channel customer support feature, enabling Support representatives to connect with customers through push notifications, toll-free numbers, mobile numbers, emails, social media or a Live Chat support. All these options need integrations within the CRM, along with tracking, updates, and storage.
9 Security
The CRM should be protected, always. You will be storing sensitive company information and maintain a record of daily operations. AS such, the software should operate in a maximum secure environment. Om Software employs the right IT security experts to test the strength of the software against hacking attempts and gets the system rid of all bugs. The company follows all security compliances.
10 Regular Maintenance
Your CRM should be a bloat-free software. Creating and deployment of the CRM are not enough. You need to ensure timely maintenance services are employed to keep the software bloat-free, such as deleting redundant data and improving the usability. Maintenance is an essential feature. OM Software remains on the panel of all the CRM’s they create to offer timelymaintenance services.
Keep these features and benefits in mind before choosing to create a CRM software for your company needs.
