6 key questions about a CRM to choose the one that best suits your company
Posted: Thu Dec 05, 2024 10:09 am
For CIOs and other IT leaders, it's no easy task to balance maximizing the value of existing technology, minimizing costs, and investing in strategic tools for the future of the business. That's why many questions about CRM arise when choosing a customer relationship management tool.
As companies compete for brand loyalty and invest in delivering the best customer experiences , IT leaders are urged to manage customer data that is scattered across multiple applications, systems, and interaction channels.
Today, more than 2.5 trillion bytes of data are created every day , and it is predicted that by 2020 , 1.7 MB of data will be created every second for every person on the planet . That data list of zimbabwe consumer email contains valuable information about your customers: who they are, what they are like, what their goals are, and how they interact with your business.
Creating real business value from customer data puts a lot of pressure on your CRM platform. It now not only needs to connect data to gain insights into the entire customer experience, but it also needs to be tailored to the needs of your industry and your particular business.
What is a CRM? and How does a CRM work? are some of the basic questions about CRM that professionals in charge of choosing a customer relationship management tool ask themselves. However, in our article we went deeper and chose the 6 questions about CRM that IT leaders should ask themselves when they are in the process of deciding which CRM to choose .
Keep reading and find out.
1. “What is a sales CRM and how does it work?”
It sounds like a basic thing, but it isn't. Many of the IT leaders out there don't know much about customer relationship management platforms , and that's why it's normal for them to ask these kinds of questions about a CRM .
A sales CRM is a tool that will organize all customer data in one place and will allow your sales team to automate administrative tasks, organize processes, and optimize and manage the sales funnel.
These types of tools will allow your sales team to save time so they can focus on taking advantage of opportunities and closing more deals. Additionally, having all customer data in one place will give you the opportunity to understand their needs and preferences to improve their experience.
A sales CRM , in other words, is a platform that will make life easier for your team of sales representatives so they can sell more. By automating some processes and improving customer relationships, it will be a matter of time before opportunities increase considerably.
2. “How easy is it to gather data from all of our customers?”
This is one of the first CRM questions most IT leaders ask themselves before choosing a platform for their company.
Capturing the full customer experience means recording all interactions across support, sales, marketing, social media, and connecting all the channels and applications they use to interact with your brand.
However, when data is stored in different formats or isolated across multiple cloud environments, it can be difficult to bring it together.
The task of connecting customer data falls to programmers, who are often forced to learn new proprietary programming languages and use new APIs .
To have a complete view of the customer, the CRM platform needs to be open enough to connect to all the applications and data sources a company uses.
The most flexible platforms leverage open standards so developers can use the skills and technologies they already know.
A CRM platform that can easily gather customer data should:
Be open and able to connect to any external application or system.
Give developers the flexibility to store and exchange data in any format and take advantage of open standards.
Adapt perfectly to the rest of the enterprise architecture.
3. “Does CRM enable the organization to grow and remain agile?”
This is one of the questions about a CRM that weighs the most when choosing a platform!
As businesses grow, IT leaders need to think strategically about internal processes and business rules that accommodate the new equipment, products, and services that customers use.
This requires introducing new applications to handle specific needs (such as those used to manage expenses or subscription services) and these often end up being insufficient in less than 12 to 24 months.
Many CRM platforms lack the flexibility to adapt to constantly changing business requirements and often require the hiring of expensive consultants and programming resources. In addition, changes can take weeks or months to implement and cause unnecessary problems in managing a CRM.
For a CRM platform to keep a company agile as it grows, it needs to:
Be future-proof so that developers can test innovative and accurate solutions without causing major disruptions.
Adapt easily and economically to business growth.
Assimilate existing technical knowledge within the organization without forcing employees to learn something new.
4. “How can we adapt the CRM platform to the particular aspects of our business?”
In addition to assimilating the inevitable changes that come with growth, the introduction of new business models and forms of interaction with customers will often require customizing the way technology works.
As companies compete for brand loyalty and invest in delivering the best customer experiences , IT leaders are urged to manage customer data that is scattered across multiple applications, systems, and interaction channels.
Today, more than 2.5 trillion bytes of data are created every day , and it is predicted that by 2020 , 1.7 MB of data will be created every second for every person on the planet . That data list of zimbabwe consumer email contains valuable information about your customers: who they are, what they are like, what their goals are, and how they interact with your business.
Creating real business value from customer data puts a lot of pressure on your CRM platform. It now not only needs to connect data to gain insights into the entire customer experience, but it also needs to be tailored to the needs of your industry and your particular business.
What is a CRM? and How does a CRM work? are some of the basic questions about CRM that professionals in charge of choosing a customer relationship management tool ask themselves. However, in our article we went deeper and chose the 6 questions about CRM that IT leaders should ask themselves when they are in the process of deciding which CRM to choose .
Keep reading and find out.
1. “What is a sales CRM and how does it work?”
It sounds like a basic thing, but it isn't. Many of the IT leaders out there don't know much about customer relationship management platforms , and that's why it's normal for them to ask these kinds of questions about a CRM .
A sales CRM is a tool that will organize all customer data in one place and will allow your sales team to automate administrative tasks, organize processes, and optimize and manage the sales funnel.
These types of tools will allow your sales team to save time so they can focus on taking advantage of opportunities and closing more deals. Additionally, having all customer data in one place will give you the opportunity to understand their needs and preferences to improve their experience.
A sales CRM , in other words, is a platform that will make life easier for your team of sales representatives so they can sell more. By automating some processes and improving customer relationships, it will be a matter of time before opportunities increase considerably.
2. “How easy is it to gather data from all of our customers?”
This is one of the first CRM questions most IT leaders ask themselves before choosing a platform for their company.
Capturing the full customer experience means recording all interactions across support, sales, marketing, social media, and connecting all the channels and applications they use to interact with your brand.
However, when data is stored in different formats or isolated across multiple cloud environments, it can be difficult to bring it together.
The task of connecting customer data falls to programmers, who are often forced to learn new proprietary programming languages and use new APIs .
To have a complete view of the customer, the CRM platform needs to be open enough to connect to all the applications and data sources a company uses.
The most flexible platforms leverage open standards so developers can use the skills and technologies they already know.
A CRM platform that can easily gather customer data should:
Be open and able to connect to any external application or system.
Give developers the flexibility to store and exchange data in any format and take advantage of open standards.
Adapt perfectly to the rest of the enterprise architecture.
3. “Does CRM enable the organization to grow and remain agile?”
This is one of the questions about a CRM that weighs the most when choosing a platform!
As businesses grow, IT leaders need to think strategically about internal processes and business rules that accommodate the new equipment, products, and services that customers use.
This requires introducing new applications to handle specific needs (such as those used to manage expenses or subscription services) and these often end up being insufficient in less than 12 to 24 months.
Many CRM platforms lack the flexibility to adapt to constantly changing business requirements and often require the hiring of expensive consultants and programming resources. In addition, changes can take weeks or months to implement and cause unnecessary problems in managing a CRM.
For a CRM platform to keep a company agile as it grows, it needs to:
Be future-proof so that developers can test innovative and accurate solutions without causing major disruptions.
Adapt easily and economically to business growth.
Assimilate existing technical knowledge within the organization without forcing employees to learn something new.
4. “How can we adapt the CRM platform to the particular aspects of our business?”
In addition to assimilating the inevitable changes that come with growth, the introduction of new business models and forms of interaction with customers will often require customizing the way technology works.