What is CRM? CRM Software Explained

A CRM system gives everyone — from sales, customer service, business development, recruiting, marketing, or any other line of business — a better way to manage the external interactions and relationships that drive success. CRM software lets you store customer and prospect contact information, identify sales opportunities, record service issues, and manage marketing campaigns, all in one central location — and make information about every customer interaction available to anyone at your company who might need it.

With visibility and easy access to data, it's easier to collaborate and increase productivity. Everyone in your company can see how customers have been communicated with, what they’ve bought, when they last purchased, what they paid, and so much more. CRM solutions can help companies of all sizes drive business growth, and it can be especially beneficial to a small business, where teams often need to find ways to do more with less. Our CRM Handbook explains how and why small to medium-sized businesses should consider utilising CRM software, plus advice and the first steps for getting started.

CRM software is increasing in importance as it is the largest and fastest-growing enterprise application software category. Worldwide spending on CRM is expected to reach USD $114.4 billion by 2027. If your business is going to last, you need a strategy for the future that’s centred around your customers and enabled by the right technology. You have targets for sales, business objectives, and profitability. But getting up-to-date, reliable information on your progress can be tricky. How do you translate the many streams of data coming in from sales, customer service, marketing, and social media monitoring into useful business information?

A CRM system can give you a clear overview of your customers. You can see everything in one place — a simple, customisable dashboard that can tell you a customer’s previous history with you, the status of their orders, any outstanding customer service issues, and more. You can even choose to include information from their public social media activity — their likes and dislikes, what they are saying and sharing about you or your competitors. Marketers can use a CRM solution to manage and optimise campaigns and lead journeys with a data-driven approach, and better understand the pipeline of sales or prospects coming in, making forecasting simpler and more accurate. You’ll have clear visibility of every opportunity or lead, showing you a clear path from inquiries to sales. Some of the biggest gains in productivity and in making a whole-company shift to customer-centricity can come from moving beyond CRM as just a sales and marketing tool and embedding it in your business — from finance to customer services and supply chain management. This helps to ensure that customer needs are at the forefront of business processes and innovation cycles.

More administration means less time for everything else. An active sales team can generate a flood of data. Reps are out on the road talking to customers, meeting prospects, and finding out valuable information – but all too often this information gets stored in handwritten notes, laptops, or inside the heads of your salespeople. 

Details can get lost, meetings are not followed up on promptly, and prioritising customers can be a matter of guesswork rather than a rigorous exercise based on fact. And it can all be compounded if a key salesperson moves on. But it's not just sales that suffers without CRM.

Your customers may be contacting you on a range of different platforms including phone, email, or social media — asking questions, following up on orders, or contacting you about an issue. Without a common platform for customer interactions, communications can be missed or lost in the flood of information — leading to a slow or unsatisfactory response.

Even if you do successfully collect all this data, you’re faced with the challenge of making sense of it. It can be difficult to extract intelligence. Reports can be hard to create and they can waste valuable selling time. Managers can lose sight of what their teams are up to, which means that they can’t offer the right support at the right time – while a lack of oversight can also result in a lack of accountability from the team.

A customer relationship management (CRM) solution helps you find new customers, win their business, and keep them happy by organising customer and prospect information in a way that helps you build stronger relationships with them and grow your business faster. CRM systems start by collecting a customer's website, email, telephone, social media data, and more, across multiple sources and channels. It may also automatically pull in other information, such as recent news about the company's activity, and it can store personal details, such as a client's personal preferences on communications. The CRM tool organises this information to give you a complete record of individuals and companies overall, so you can better understand your relationship over time.

And a new generation of CRM goes one step further: Built-in intelligence automates administrative tasks, like data entry and lead or service case routing, so you can free up time for more valuable activities. Automatically generated insights help you understand your customers better, even predicting how they will feel and act so that you can prepare the right outreach.

Introducing a CRM platform has been shown to produce real results – including direct improvements to the bottom line. CRM applications have a proven track record of increasing:

A CRM system can help you identify and add new leads easily and quickly, and categorise them accurately. By focusing on the right leads, sales can prioritise the opportunities that will close deals, and marketing can identify leads that need more nurturing and prime them to become quality leads.

With complete, accurate, centrally held information about clients and prospects, sales and marketing can focus their attention and energy on the right clients.

By understanding your customers better, cross-selling and upselling opportunities become clear — giving you the chance to win new business from existing customers.

With better visibility, you’ll also be able to keep your customers happy with better service. Happy customers are likely to become repeat customers, and repeat customers spend more — up to 33% more according to some studies.

Today's customers expect fast, personalised support, at any time of day or night. A CRM system can help you provide the high-quality service that customers are looking for. Your agents can quickly see what products customers have ordered, and they can get a record of every interaction so they can give customers the answers they need, fast. 

A good CRM system will gather information from a huge variety of sources across your business and beyond. This gives you unprecedented insights into how your customers feel and what they are saying about your organisation — so you can improve what you offer, spot problems early, and identify gaps.

As the COVID-19 pandemic has proven, a business’ ability to be responsive to external changes can be make or break. With devastating impact, some businesses have fallen. Many have pivoted and been able to adapt their products or services to reach customers in a different way, garnering a whole new customer base. A few have grown – think ecommerce, logistics, and pharmaceuticals. But for all these businesses, it’s the customer who is at the centre.

So how can a CRM help your business? We look at how a robust system can ensure your business is ready for the age of the connected consumer, who expects a consistently excellent experience across the customer journey.

A unified customer relationship management system can connect sales, marketing, and customer service to create a holistic view of a business’ customers. With 62% of customers prepared to share a bad experience with others, the benefits of ensuring the customer journey is optimal can’t be overstated. 66% of millennial consumers expect real-time responses and interactions, and 40% of all customers won’t do business with a company if they can’t use their preferred modes of communication. A CRM that stores all these interactions, across devices and times, can improve the customer experience.

The recent shift to online will outlast the pandemic. Two in five consumers in Singapore (37%) have increased their online shopping activities, and 3 in 4 (76%) indicated that they will not return to the same (lower) levels of online shopping before the outbreak.

Quickly responding to customer requirements is key to their experience. BINUS University collaborated with Salesforce to achieve its goal of digital transformation. This partnership resulted in a 360 degree view of each student, where data can be used to guide the student journey. When the university had to close its campus during the pandemic,, its already advanced digital transformation allowed for the transition to a remote learning setting, while maintaining educational standards and student engagement.

In order to truly personalise the customer experience, businesses need to ensure that each interaction is defined by the customer themselves. 61% of millennials are happy to share personal data that leads to a more personalised shopping experience, and it’s this cohort that is embracing the benefits of hyper-personalisation.

Hyper-personalisation can refer to actually customising products; offering particular products in particular locations based on what’s trending; leveraging omnichannel data to personalise communications; or real-time engagement.

Businesses can make smarter and faster decisions with help from Artificial Intelligence (AI). With 64% of customers expecting tailored engagement based on past interactions, marketing AI can collate data from interactions to predict the messaging your customers will most likely respond to. 71% of customers have used multiple channels to start and complete a single transaction, which is why using AI to track customers across mediums and devices is vital for sales. And at the operational end, 68% of customers would rather use self-service channels – like knowledge bases or customer portals – for simple questions or issues.

Marketers in Singapore expect 5G wireless networks, an expanded online population, and new regulations to have the greatest impact on their work over the next 10 years. A recent survey found that 72% of consumers and 83% of business buyers expect companies to use new technologies to create better experiences. For 5G, this means rich and dynamic personalisation for offers, products, and processes; self-service for zero-touch automation; engaging with customers on their preferred channels; and streamlining quote and purchasing processes.

With connected devices all around us, a constant stream of data can flow into the CRM platform. The Internet of Things is predicted to increase global corporate profits by about 21% over the next decade. At a business-level, IoT can gather real-time analytics on information like how and where customers are using products they have purchased; what they’re using them with; and whether the products are working properly. And it has buy-in from the customer – 77% of users say connected devices (such as smart speakers, fitness trackers, and security systems) make their lives easier. This all powers an opportunity to improve customer engagement, as well as boosting research and product development.

84% of customers say the experience that a company provides is as important to them as its products and services. It’s this experience that often drives retention. One out of three digital consumers in Southeast Asia will switch brands when they can’t find their preferred brands - however, 42% said they had bought more from established brands in recent months.

Zenyum has built one of the fastest growing smile cosmetic brands in Asia. During the pandemic, dental clinics had to close for some time. Zenyum pivoted to focusing on clients who were at the research phase of their “smile journey”. Zenyum also created a COVID-19 tag in their CRM, so they could identify customers who needed extra support.

A CRM can future-proof your business by connecting you with your customer – providing hyper-personalised engagement that is viewable across business teams, powered by data from connected devices and informed by AI, all designed to improve retention by focusing on your customer’s unique needs.

CRM and the cloud computing revolution have changed everything. Perhaps the most significant recent development in CRM systems has been the move into the cloud from on-premises CRM software. Freed from the need to install software on hundreds or thousands of desktop computers and mobile devices, organisations worldwide are discovering the benefits of moving data, software, and services into a secure online environment.

Cloud-based CRM systems such as Salesforce (Learn more: What is Salesforce?) mean every user has the same information, all the time. Your sales teams out on the road can check data, update it instantly after a meeting, or work from anywhere. The same information is available to anyone who needs it, from the sales team to the customer service representatives.

CRM can be quick and easy to implement. A cloud-based system doesn’t need special installation, and there’s no hardware to set up, keeping IT costs low and removing the headache of version control and update schedules.

Generally, cloud-based CRM systems are priced on the number of users who access the system and the kinds of features you need. This can be very cost-effective in terms of capital outlay, and is also extremely flexible — enabling you to scale up and add more people as your business grows. Salesforce is flexible in terms of functionality, too — you’re not paying for any features that are not useful to you.