As consumers rely on flawless digital experiences, companies are increasingly focused towards
elevating customer experience across every touchpoint today. The modern organization has
multiple touchpoints thanks to a highly digitized world, with avenues such as social media and
self-service kiosks continuing to gain popularity in a contactless world.
With interactions dispersed across so many platforms and consumers remaining connected
round-the-clock, ensuring that your consumers are satisfied goes beyond simply offering great
service. With competition fierce among companies irrespective of size or industry, reaching your
customers with the right recommendations at the right time ensures your business isn’t just
sustaining, but thriving.
This is where Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software comes into the picture. By
centralizing all operations pertaining to your customer, your team will be well on its way to offer
customer experience at its finest.
But what constitutes a suitable CRM? Here are some key starting points
While CRMs are conventionally known for maintaining customer records, today’s solutions go
well beyond maintaining databases alone. Unifying all communication channels into a central
dashboard will give your sales team a bird’s eye perspective of what each customer’s
behavioural patterns are. Add AI and machine learning to this mix, and you have a powerpacked solution that can provide useful recommendations for understanding your customers
even better.
All in all, this means that your sales team need not toggle between multiple applications to use
different communication channels; simply rely on your CRM software to interact with your
customers, and attend to all their needs.
As companies continue to work remotely (with many teams also scattered around the world),
your CRM software needs to be able to scale in order to accommodate multiple users in varying
environments. Mobile apps are highly integral to serve this purpose, as staying connected to
work on smart devices will enable your team to work while away from their desks.
In a highly on-demand consumer landscape where inquiries need to be addressed with little to
no downtime, being able to stay connected to your customers via a mobile-based CRM can be
highly beneficial for your business
Where your CRM software is hosted, deployed and maintained is as important as the customer
and employee facing aspects of your CRM. While cloud-based resources will offer easy access
and event-driven scalability, on-premise resources will be proprietary to your business. As many
businesses that have relied on on-premise resources gradually transition to a cloud-based
model, hybrid infrastructures are necessary to maintain business continuity in the wake of
unexpected changes.
The CRM software of today goes beyond simply maintaining a database of customer
information. It’s a powerhouse for establishing customer experience, as your team relies on a
central source of truth for everything pertaining to your customer. However, building the right
CRM for your business should also involve round-the-clock connectivity, while also being
mindful of where your software will be hosted (on-premise, or on the cloud).