How Important Is Sales CRM Software?

by Mohit J. White Hat Link Building Services

CRM, or customer relations management, is a very important, often-underestimated component in business software. CRM is somewhat of a blanket term, though, as is encompasses a great many types of application involving customer data, accounts and so forth.

While CRM software itself, in general, can probably be coaxed to perform any of the specialized functions, choosing a specialized software dealing with your particular part of customer relations is a good idea. For example, if you work in support, CRM software based around providing help with common issues, and that evaluates past issues that particular customer may have had, is a lot more helpful than CRM software for customer retention or sales. Sure, those other forms of software could probably manage it, and it could probably manage their functions, but the specialism is very helpful.

Today, I’m going to explain why you want to look for specific, specialized sales CRM software, and what distinguishes sales CRM from something like customer retention or customer support. I understand that a great many people reading this will probably be more than aware of these distinctions, but I ask that you indulge me and some slight pedantry with that. I will also give some advice and what to look for, feature-wise, with sales CRM software.

The distinction?

CRM software can also, albeit slightly incorrectly, be used as a term for POS software, or point-of-sale. This is the software used for running cash registers, self-checkout systems and so forth. However, while this is often wrongly considered a form of CRM, it often does integrate with CRM software, sharing databases and inner operative calls, and a lot of the software is made by the same major developers and studios thus, the use of the terminology isn’t that far from the truth. However, sales CRM software is not POS software, unless you’re using a literal term for POS and have picked bad software, at least.

When it comes to sales, CRM software is largely to do with ongoing customer relations, such as subscriptions, frequent customers, etc., and can also be used for the customer retention mentioned earlier.

Combating turn is a big problem that a lot of companies have, churn being the gradual loss of return customers, un-subscription, what have you. For this, tracking customer journeys, evaluating customer feedback in an intelligent, often AI-aided way can help to combat the churn, and get customers to come back.

What to look for?

Some CRM suites are intended to be an all-encompassing solution, with configurations and specific extensions or add-ons being intended to aid in specialism where needed. This is fine, you can go this route if you have broader CRM needs, and just want to go with one provider for all of it. In that scenario, I would actually be the first to encourage this is your way of solving the problem. If you only need sales CRM, due to not needing other forms of CRM, or because you’re happy with your other CRM, but it can’t be coaxed to perform these needs, then here are the basic features you should look for. For sale CRM software, detailed customer journey tracking is pretty much a requirement. Sales CRM should also be able to help you identify sources of churn, by comparing customer feedback with times when customers are lost, as well as changes in a product or service that see a spike in positive customer feedback and increase customer retention. Like all other CRM software, sales CRM software should also provide very quick, easy ways to identify a customer, look over their history, and diagnose whatever problem they may have.