Understanding CRM and Its Benefits for B2B
These days, CRM has become an intricate part of every business strategy, be it small medium and large. In short, CRM stands for customer relationship management and is designed to help businesses streamline their sales activities. A CRM system presents businesses with an opportunity to manage and maintain external relationships and interactions that drive success. When it comes to B2B marketing, analyzing customer’s journey is not an easy task! It is here the CRM comes into the picture. CRM software allows you to store customer contact information, record service issues, identify sales opportunities, and manage marketing campaigns all in one central location.’
CRM helps businesses to build a relationship with the customers and fosters loyalty and retention. It keeps the information available to anyone in the company and thereby facilitates collaboration and increases productivity. A CRM system gathers customer information from a wide array of channels that include social media, websites, telephone, email, various marketing materials from various sources and channels, and integrates into a CRM solution. Besides the benefits mentioned above, let’s delve into detail about the significance of CRM to a business.
Why Is CRM Important for Your Business?
Investing in the best CRM software is an absolute necessity for businesses and guarantees excellent ROI (Return on Investment). It gives you a clear overview of the customers or prospects all in one place and gives a clear view of opportunity or leads from inquiries to sales. By leveraging CRM solution, marketers can better understand the sales and prospects of the customers and make informed decisions. The CRM system lets a business to keep a close watch on the inquiries captured from various channels and offers sales marketing and service teams a single view of the customer. It automates and streamlines various activities of a business such as sales process, marketing campaigns, and business analytics. It allows a business to optimize customer interactions by simplifying and streamlining many customer interaction processes. AI-based business intelligence automates administrative tasks and offers time to focus more on other valuable activities.
What is B2B CRM?
For those unaware, a B2B business sells its products or services to other businesses rather than selling it to the individuals. A B2B CRM is designed to address the business requirements and improve business effectiveness. It brings in the automation for an effortless sales cycle and drives growth as well as leads. You may even consider a b2b lead scoring system to evaluate platforms.
CRM Benefits for B2B in 2020
Growth is not only an indicator of a company’s success, but it is also an important parameter for the long-term sustenance of any business. CRM is an extremely valuable tool for B2B businesses and helps marketers to accomplish the critical task of conversion rate optimization (CRO). A CRM software personalizes and prioritizes experiences of potential customers across multiple touchpoints. It enables easy organization of data, hassle-free means of communication, and improves overall customer experience. Let’s discuss in detail about the means and benefits that CRM renders for B2B in 2020.
Video Marketing Has More to Do With CRM
The emergence of video as a popular content marketing format is undeniable! The video can be a versatile tool and has evolved from a form of entertainment medium to a powerful conversion tool. By integrating your video platform with CRM and marketing automation platform, you can easily track views on the lead. An in-depth analysis of data and analytics behind video marketing offers critical insights related to customer interaction with the video content. Video marketing offers great engagement for B2B companies and assists them with social media marketing efforts.
AI Becoming A Key Part of CRM Systems
Artificial intelligence is the hottest trend these days, and CRM is not an exception! There would be a significant rise in AI embedded CRMs in 2020 and brings automation to the fore. AI-enabled CRM automates most of the time-consuming manual tasks and improves the productivity of service agents. AI-Powered CRM chatbots are set to revolutionize customer interactions through natural language processing. They offer more insights to service agents for effective resolution of customer issues.
Voice and Conversational UI Integration With CRM
Voice technology is all set to shape the customer experience and marketing in big ways. There has been a rapid surge in the adoption of voice technology, and voice engagement is set to become a part of every company’s customer relationship strategy. The voice-enabled CRM facilitates hassle-free communication between the sales and marketing teams. The sales team can use voice to update data, track conversations, and message automation. The marketing team, on the other hand, will find ample opportunities to get creative with customer engagement.
Use of Social CRM Is on The Rise
The integration of various social media channels into CRM platforms allows customers to interact with businesses through their preferred channels. Businesses can leverage Social CRM to optimize service levels and multi-channel customer experience. They can act more quickly, respond to customers, and can even predict future customer needs. By using social CRM, marketing teams can explore new market segments and design highly personalized targeted marketing campaigns on various social media platforms.
CRM Integration with IoT Technologies
IoT integrated into CRM has positive implications on business performance. It accounts for smart resolution of customer issues and offers an automatic means for product maintenance. The technician can take swift pro-active steps and offers instant maintenance to the customer’s products/services. This pro-active approach to customer issues enhances customer satisfaction and efficiency. The enhanced customer support owing to IoT and CRM integration leads to higher sales and brings in other exciting sales opportunities to the table. Besides, the integration offers more innovative ways to connect with customers and lead to a more connected enterprise.
AR And VR Provides New Avenues for Customer Engagement
Immersive technologies like Augmented reality and VR would serve to enhance the buyer experience manifolds. The retail sector has started adopting AR and VR technologies and enables customers to try out the product virtually before using it. In the case of CRM, AR, and VR integration arms companies with advanced tools for marketing campaigns and sales. They play a critical role in transforming buying behavior and dramatically improves conversion success.
Bottom Line
The CRM industry is growing at a staggering pace every year, thanks to the increased adoption of cloud-based CRM solutions by enterprises. It is not an exaggeration to say that CRM is now at the heart of every growing business. The best CRM software handles the entire customer journey right from acquisition to sales and loyalty. The CRM serves to bridge the communication gap among sales, marketing, and service by sharing critical customer information across the departments instantly. Come 2020, CRM is all set to embrace the latest advanced technologies and is going to impact your business and sales in a big way.
