Custom CRM: A Game Changer for Business Efficiency

Managing customer relations is difficult, especially when new offers and promises pop up every other day. It can become overwhelming to constantly work on reinventing what your brand has to offer without losing out on the true essence you want your customers to feel whenever they think of your brand. 

In times like today, when a brand has several ways to reach out to its customers, keeping in constant touch with your existing customers and ensuring they know what your brand is up to can be a game changer. Thankfully, ample strategies and tools can keep your existing customers engaged while your marketing campaigns attract new customers. These strategies are often wide and can cover customer service, web design, and even SEO. 

While the nature of the efforts may differ, the ultimate goal remains the same—to offer an unbeatable customer relationship experience. In light of this, customer relationship management (CRM) software is becoming more prominent and effective in ensuring your customers feel valued at all times. 

Wondering why your business is unable to establish an unshakable relationship with your customers? Read our article and discover how CRM software can help weave deeper and more meaningful connections with your customers through something as basic as web design. Let’s get started! 

What is a CRM Software?

CRM, or ‘customer relationship management’ software, is a tool that makes it seamless for business owners to keep track of all communications, regardless of the platform. The tool also helps nurture relationships with the leads your ad campaigns have generated and convert them into paying loyal customers. 

CRM software for small businesses can take away the stress of planning every stage of reaching out to your customers as the tool makes it easier to manage databases and other vital information pieces. 

Aside from this, the automation feature of the tool takes away the burden of managing recurring tasks. When your organization starts using CRM software, it eliminates the chaos and embraces efficiency and improved time management while creating a workplace your employees enjoy. 

The CRM software connects seamlessly with all your existing tools, making running campaigns, analyzing results, and reaching out to customers a process that can be executed in a few clicks. These tools can be ready-made, or your organization can choose to build them by working with your web design and app development team. The possibilities are truly endless with CRM software. 

What Does Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software Do?

CRM software brings all actions that need to be executed to nurture a flourishing customer relationship under one roof. From managing prospect contact information, keeping track of service issues, identifying sales opportunities, and even managing marketing campaigns. 

The software’s diverse actions make it possible for businesses to grow without getting bogged down with too many things to do, such as spending hours deciding on a convenient web design.

By strategically using the CRM tool, your business will know exactly where to position itself in the lives of your target customers. It also makes conversations seamlessly easy. 

For instance, if you are a tea business that focuses on bringing authentic flavors from around the world to your customers, focus on highlighting factors like:

• What makes your range of tea different from the rest? 
• What to expect when someone brews your tea?
• How will your tea change your existing customer’s tea-time experience?
• Where are you sourcing your tea leaves?
• What is the unique factor about your tea? 

Highlighting these factors will make it easier for your customers to decide to give your brand’s offer a try. Such an approach also makes your customers feel valued. It makes your customers feel that your brand cares about the experience they have with your product. 

This approach strengthens loyalty while driving sales. By integrating CRM software into your sales funnel and web design strategy, you can capture every data point that should be leveraged. Some popular touch points include:

• Search engines
• Contact form
• Social media 
• Emails
• Phone calls

As most CRM software comes with unbeatable integration capabilities, the tool’s features can be used to monitor and analyze the performance of nearly everything about your marketing campaign. CRM in combination with marketing automation can be the key to encouraging repeat customers while simultaneously attracting new customers. 

Why is a Custom CRM Essential for Your Business?

CRM tools come with a host of features that are convenient and guaranteed to add more meaning to your marketing campaigns. They also play a crucial role in call center management, helping businesses streamline customer interactions and improve service efficiency. Without a CRM, your business can struggle to keep its growing customer base in check while offering unique brand experiences. If you are a growing business, using a CRM is essential as:

• It tailors the nature of brand exposure and the experience you want your loyal customers to have. The tool allows your business to focus on nurturing existing customers while attracting new ones without compromising on quality of service or core factors like web design. This aspect brings operational efficiency, allowing your business to save resources and offer top-notch services. 
• The tool works extensively with data, ensuring your business is always making data-driven decisions. This aspect is beneficial if your business operates in an industry with strict privacy regulations. 
• The scalability of a CRM system is unmatched. As your business grows, the tool can adapt and grow, making sure you are consistently offering the same set of benefits and services to your customers at all times. Such uniformity in service quality makes your business be perceived as true to its values, 
• CRM software makes it possible for businesses to permit access to data on a hieracial order. This can either be role-based or simply on project-based basis. By doing so, your business can maintain privacy alongwith data security. 
• The tool can be integrated with existing eco-systems to streamline communication, improve collaboration between teammates and reduces repetitive tasks. It eventually saves hours that are otherwise spent on going around the same task. 

The versatility of a CRM tool can be customized. So if you want to integrate it with your web design to track number of times the contact form is filled or want to regularly send nurturing emails to your customers, reminding them of an upcoming sale, CRM tools reduce stress while increasing efficiency. 

8 Key Features to Look for in a CRM

For a CRM to be your ideal match, looking at the features it offers is of critical importance. Opting for an insufficient tool will result in loose ends that need to be manually tied, eventually defeating the purpose of acquiring the tool. On the other hand, an overly equipped tool will have underutilized features.

To avoid such situations, key features to look for include:

• Interaction tracking: It tracks every interaction your business has with your customers. Be it clicking the CTA on your web design or adding items to the cart. 

• Task management: CRM software allows teams across the organization to manage their project deadlines by practicing efficient task management. 

• Contact management: Store all the contact information about your customers in a centralized database, which comes with the feasibility of easy access and expansion. 

• Social media integration: The tool seamlessly integrates with social media platforms, making it possible to track leads from your social media presence. 

• Email integrations: CMS allows businesses to maintain a regular and consistent communication cycle with their customers via email marketing. Within the CRM system, businesses can send, receive, and track emails.

• Reporting and analytics: The interactive dashboard makes it easier for businesses to keep track of how target metrics are performing for different campaigns. It gives clarity on improvements to make in campaigns, web design, and even SEO strategies. 

• Customer segmentation: For effective targeting, your business can use CRM to segment your customers based on their unique needs, demographics, interests, and behavior. It ensures your customers are targeted with elements that are guaranteed to draw attention. 

• Pipeline management: CRM tools offer a visual approach to managing projects, tasks, and client expectations, ensuring your business is not onboarding new clients without having the capacity for it. 

What are the Types of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software

The diverse nature of CRM makes it ideal for every industry. However, as not every organization functions the same way, opting for a CRM that helps with your specific needs is the best way to ensure performance and scalability. 

Here are some popular types of customer relationship management software to know about:

Operational CRM

Operational CRM focuses extensively on automating and streamlining the workflow for enhanced customer relationship. This kind of CRM optimizes sales, web design functionality, marketing and customer service by allowing team of all capacities to visualize data at all points. The tool significantly increases efficiency, boosting brand presence and reputation. 

The CRM tool simplifies all types of operations, so that your business can spend more time creating business plans, products and services that increases customer trust as well as satisfaction. 

Operational CRM is ideal for:

• Small to medium businesses that are looking to optimize their operations and management tasks. 
• Businesses that need a strategic way to approach customer lifecycle management, primarily focusing on enhancing customer experience.
• Businesses looking to maximize the contact information they already have to attract higher customer retention and engagement. 

Analytical CRM

If your business is looking to make data-driven decisions, then an analytical CRM is the best choice. This type of CRM ensures efficient management of customer data collection and analysis. The tool’s ability to streamline analysis guarantees efficient data mining as well as data warehousing. With this, a business can have a surplus of data they can leverage to maximize the impact of their marketing efforts. 

Analytical CRM is ideal for:

• Businesses that are looking to leverage data for customer segmentation and targeting.
• Organizations that have an array of unused and unorganized customer data that has value but hasn’t found its place to be used yet. 

Collaborative CRM

If your sales and service teams are required to work together but have entirely different work requirements on a regular basis, then a collaborative CRM can be the way to go. The tool makes it possible to bring together different teams on the same page, allowing them to collaborate, no matter how different their work requirements are. As the CRM improves communication between departments, getting work done becomes easier and hassle-free. 

Collaborative CRM is ideal for:

• Ideal for organizations where cross-departmental communication is necessary to go about everyday activities. 
• Businesses with multiple teams are working together and looking for ways to bring everyone together to eliminate miscommunication, confusion, and delays in project deliverables. 

Strategic CRM

A Strategic CRM helps businsesses identify high-value customers and create personalized CRM strategies to keep them engaged with your business, such as making upgrades to your web design and attract more custimers. The tool helps achieve this by careful customer segmentation, engagement and data management. It allows businesses to align their resources and priorities. With this, organizations can improve sales and drive company growth.

Strategic CRM is ideal for:

• Enterprise-level businesses that are looking to form a deep and meaningful relationship with their customers.
• Businesses looking to automate tasks and sales efficiency by implementing strategies that are carefully crafted to approach their customers based on where they are in buyers journey. 

A Custom-Designed CRM or Pre-Made Solution: What is the Better Option for Your Business?

Ready-made CRM tools are easy to implement and are speedy to work with. Customized CRM systems are curated specifically for what you are looking for and offer incredible convenience and efficiency. However, this customization makes custom CRMs expensive. As a result, it can become difficult for growing businesses to get them. 

But what really is different in the case of pre-made solutions and custom-designed CRMs? Here’s everything you need to know:

Custom CRM systems

The CRM system is built either by an in-house team of developers or by an organization that specializes in making custom CRM software development. Such CRM systems are beneficial for businesses that are looking for a tool that is made exclusively from scratch so that it’s compatible with the unique workflows, goals and processes of your organization. 

A custom CRM is best for your business if:

• Your organization has a unique working methodology along with marketing or sales needs that are otherwise difficult to track using regular CRM tools. 
• Your business wants to have complete control of how the CRM tool operates. It includes features, integrations, data management as well as the system’s capabilities. 
• There are plenty of sensitive customer and marketing data that you want to protect against hacking or theft. This is also valid if your business works in a highly controlled sector.
• If your business has a host of software applications like HRA, project management, and accounting software & is looking for a tool that can easily integrate without losing data. 
• Your business wants to explore growth potential in other industries and is planning to expand your business in the future.
• Have the resources to train your staff to get accustomed to the CRM software solution. 

Ready-made CRM systems

The thing about ready-made CRM systems is the incredible convenience they offer. These applications are full of pre-defined functions, features, and capabilities that can be utilized with minimal effort for applications as significant as web design. These tools are designed to ensure they can easily meet the everyday needs of your business operations. There aren’t many customization options available for these tools, and the flexibility is limited in certain cases.

A ready-made CRM is best for your business if:

• It needs an effective, simple, and quick installation process across teams without requiring extensive development and customization needs. 
• Are looking for a budget-friendly CRM solution that meets all your everyday requirements without compromising on the quality of services. 
• The implementation of a software solution is urgent, and there is not enough room for costly procedures or development cycles. 
• Are looking to find a reliable and stable solution alongside having the convenience of reaching out to customer service providers in case of emergencies. 
• Have tools with limited integration capabilities and want to keep all your procedures separate. 

How to Choose a CRM Tool

Choosing the right CRM tool is crucial to ensure all your SEO, web design, and marketing efforts are effective in attracting your customers. To ensure you are choosing the right CRM tool, here are the major considerations to have:

1. How the tool will align with your business needs. To ensure this happens, spend time understanding your business requirements, your growing business needs, and if there are any industry-specific requirements. 
2. Determine the type of features you want your CRM tool to exhibit. Given the versatility of these tools, without identifying your needs, you will end up with features that are not used, even if you are paying for them. 
3. The rate at which your team is able to adapt to the new tool. This includes teams from the HR department, web design and development departments, and even the accounting teams. 
4. Based on the budget you have. If your business is rapidly expanding, giving thorough thought to how the CRM tool also expands is vital to ensuring consistency and avoid setbacks. 
5. Determine how well the CRM tool is able to cover your customer’s growing needs, wants, and desires. With this aspect taken care of, your business can continue directing its marketing efforts to build a robust brand reputation and become a customer preference. 

The Bottom Line

A CRM tool is indeed the best investment your business can make for its team and customers alike. The tool is diverse in application, offers incredible convenience when it comes to streamlining projects, and guarantees customer satisfaction at all times. However, to make sure your CRM software aligns with your goals, consider identifying how your business will grow alongside its current requirements. The right CRM will ensure that whether it's a web design expert or a marketing professional, they can easily find what they are looking for with just a few clicks.