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How Can Small Businesses Use Customer Relationship Management Solutions?

The CRM market was valued at $120 billion in 2020, and that number will continue to grow. More and more businesses are turning to CRM solutions to help them improve their customer relations and experiences.

But what exactly is this popular and sought-after CRM system, and how can businesses benefit from using such tools?

What is CRM?

CRM, or Customer Relationship Management, refers to the processes and principles businesses use when interacting with customers, guiding customer experiences and relationships.

CRM software is the technological tool used to manage these processes while collecting and analyzing customer data to increase sales and improve customer interactions. These solutions help businesses engage with consumers and promote positive experiences to build trustworthiness and brand loyalty.

Who Uses Customer Relationship Management Solutions?

Any company throughout all industries can use customer relationships management to organize and improve customer-based processes, procedures, and sales teams’ performance. Recruiting, IT, sales, marketing, customer services, retailers, and restaurants all rely on successfully managing customer relations and interactions to drive their business.

These organizations that deal with customers- whether that’s business to business (B2B) or business to consumer (B2C)- can benefit from the use of CRM solutions. Either selling products or services, your company needs to keep a steady stream of new and existing consumers flowing into the business.

What Does a CRM System Do?

Building strong customer relationships is the foremost objective of CRM tools for small businesses. According to Hubspot research, 82% of the companies that use CRMs say customer retention is one of the most crucial tasks for the system.

Peter Drucker, a well-known writer and management consultant, sums up the use of customer relationship management CRM tools for businesses when he once wrote;

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“The true business of every company is to make and keep customers.”

The use of CRM software directly affects a business’ ability to make and keep customers. This tool can help improve metrics like the net promoter score, an important HR key performance indicator that gauges how likely customers would recommend the company to others. A positive customer experience leads to brand loyalty and a higher likelihood of recommending such products to family and friends.

Client intake and CRM software also focuses on promoting a positive buyer experience to improve customer retention and engagement while offering insight into customer buying habits and experiences. Such solutions gather historical customer and sales data to forecast for the future. Pattern recognition and metric analysis create lead generations and can improve customer processes and sales and marketing performance overall.

What Benefits Does a CRM Provide Businesses?

CRM software for small businesses does more than resolve customer issues and streamline internal processes. Such customer relationship management solutions also offer companies the ability to:

  • Enhance customer retention and loyalty
  • Improve customer experience and satisfaction overall
  • Increase sales performance and revenue
  • Provide better customer support
  • Target audiences and customer segmentation
  • Increase sales leads
  • Identify strengths and weaknesses in the sales funnel
  • Track metrics like customer lifetime value
  • Boost access to customer information and data
  • Offers customer service insights
  • Follows consumers through the sales pipeline
  • Improve efficiency by streamlining administrative tasks
  • Manage all platforms in one place for easier interaction and outreach

What are the Key Features of a CRM Platform?

Customer relationship management solutions offer many tools for small and large businesses alike. The most sought-after features for small business CRM software include:

  • Contact management: Allows businesses to maintain customer information, including contact details and their past interactions with your services.
  • Lead engagement and management: Uses consumer data to determine leads, track pipeline activities, and maintain contact throughout the sales process.
  • CRM analytics: Consumer data collecting and analysis to determine key metrics to forecast consumer behaviour, target audiences, and build relationships.
  • App integration: CRM systems should synchronize and integrate with the business’ current software and tools.
  • Social media monitoring tool: Customer relationships need to be managed on all social platforms in order to build customer loyalty and brand awareness. A sales CRM can help with social media integration to further outreach.
  • Email marketing service: Allows users to send, track, and schedule customer emails to create a strong email marketing strategy for the company and improve the sales team performance.
  • Customization: Tailor the software’s tools to your needs, including dashboard and sales reporting features, and syncs data between multiple platforms.

What are the Top CRM solutions?

There are a few options available when it comes to choosing agile CRM systems for small businesses. Companies can choose to outsource their CRM needs to a third-party provider or buy off-the-shelf software attached to their other internal systems. The most expensive CRM solutions businesses can use custom solutions that offer hand-picked features and tools that integrate seamlessly with their existing software.

Depending on your small business’ current financial and management software, you will want to look for a CRM solution that seamlessly integrates with such products. If your company uses accounting software to manage its finances, you can benefit from using a CRM alongside QuickBooks Online.

With that in mind, many CRM apps sync with QuickBooks Online. These are the best CRMs for small businesses that would work well for you:

Method

Method offers businesses client intake and CRM software that automates lead capture and simplifies lead tracking and sales processes for improved lead management. The software can also track customer history through the sales pipelines and schedule timely follow-up emails to keep your customers engaged and conscious of your products.

Method and QuickBooks work well together, with cloud-based, two-way real-time syncing of customer information, invoices, payments, and more. This CRM solution offers a free 30-day trial with full access to tools and an unlimited number of users!

Insightly

The Insightly CRM tool for small businesses improves the lead process and sales activities to build a personalized customer experience. This solution tracks and captures relevant lead data and sends it to the right person, who can use the information to tailor customer experiences appropriately.

Insightly can be accessed from anywhere as it offers desktop features as well as award-winning mobile applications for Android and iOS. It can even sync with QuickBooks to streamline internal processes and gather all relevant information in one place.

Capsule

Capsule is a leading customer relationship management solution for small businesses as it tracks conversions and customer history to customize the sales process with the consumer in mind. Keep all your customer information safe as Capsule utilizes security features, including two-factor authentication, with user permissions to ensure a secure experience.

With the small business CRM advanced reporting features and sales analytics tools, companies can determine their customer services’ strengths and weaknesses to improve performance overall. Capsule works with QuickBooks to help track revenue and sales activity for greater insights.

CRM Software for Small Businesses

Determining the best CRM software for your small organization will take time and effort as you must ensure it possesses the right features for your processes and can integrate with your current software. To ensure only the best tools for your small business, consider implementing QuickBooks Online software to manage your finances and sync with your chosen CRM software tools.

Try it free today and see what a difference it makes for your business.

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