What is CRM What is the significance of it in todays increasingly competitive world?

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Information Technology (IT) has been a game-changer for India. Businesses and customers from across the world look up to Indian IT and ITeS companies to do good work and create value. With the landscape constantly changing, the role of CRM in the IT industry for companies to stay ahead of the competition has become more evident than ever.

What is CRM for IT Industry?

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software keeps getting attention because it enables businesses to stay updated with the needs of customers, which are constantly evolving. Rapid progress in the IT sector has especially enhanced the need for IT and ITeS companies to adopt CRM software.

In broad terms, CRM software enables businesses to build relations with customers and increase acquisition, retention, loyalty, and profitability. But modern CRM tools do much more. They also allow IT companies to improve operational efficiency and substantially reduce the time spent in generating reports for internal purposes and for clients.

CRM system stores and analyzes massive amounts of customer data and provides insights into customer behavior and how a company can influence.

Role of CRM in the IT Industry

A CRM software, through its database and analytics, benefits IT companies in many ways. Some of the key functions which benefit from it are:

1.Sales and Marketing

CRM tools store information of leads from various sources like social media, offline marketing activities, business development, and more. Having all data in a single place makes it simpler for businesses to manage their sales funnels and convert leads into customers. Business development managers use CRM tools to find lucrative up-selling and cross-selling opportunities and reach out to customers on time for the renewal of their contracts and subscriptions. They can send quotations directly and log all their activities in the software.

2.Operations and Support

Call centers and customer support units are critical components for customer relations. CRM tools record all interactions between the support teams and customers and also generate reports to show agent productivity and highlight metrics like the number of open versus closed tickets, main causes of ticket creation, and so on. IT companies can thus improve their SLA’s and provide better service to their customers.

3.Analytics

CRM tools process, interpret and report the data of sales and operations to build a picture of the ideal customer and current performance of operations. This doesn’t just enable companies to focus more on which marketing campaigns work, but also how they can improve operational efficiency. Employees also generate reports to share internally and with their customers faster, and have to depend less on multiple tools for the same, since all the information become available in a single integrated tool.

How CRM Tools Benefit IT Companies

CRM tools give businesses plenty of insights into their current functioning and building a roadmap to achieve their goals. Some ways in which they enable companies to grow are:

• Stable growth – Growing the company scientifically and sustainably in the national and international landscape.
• Improved communication – Customers, partners, employees, and other stakeholders communicate in clearer and faster ways with each other.
• Resource management – Depending on the current and future market trends and the company’s goals, it can allocate resources and plan budgets accordingly.
• Improved customer satisfaction and loyalty – Timely and efficient customer support helps companies serve their customers better.
• Achieving competitive advantage – Companies can leverage CSAT data and surveys to identify changing trends and cash in on those trends early.

The Components of a CRM for the IT Industry

The following components of an effective CRM tool enable companies in the IT sector to manage budgets and meet deadlines:

1.Singular database

The database stores vast amounts of information of leads and manage customers from various sources like the website, exhibitions, social media, spreadsheets, and more, in a secure cloud-based platform. It also analyzes this data to provide a clear picture of the ideal customer for the company.

2.Mobile App

An easy-to-use mobile app tracks everything regarding sales and project management and makes it visible real-time on configured mobile devices. This means people no longer need to be limited to their workstations to remain productive.

3.Integrated Telephony

An integrated IVR and telephony system enables the right agents to handle relevant customer queries. Calls can be segregated by skill, issue, priority, and more. Managers can also generate reports to track their agents’ productivity and overall department SLAs.

4.Customer Support Tool

Along with telephony, IT companies can also provide customers with a tool to create tickets for their concerns and queries, which then get answered by web-based and chat-based support teams. In all this, customers can track the status of their tickets.

5.Automated Reminders

Business development executives and managers can set reminders to follow up on meetings and quotations, remind customers about contract and subscription renewals, connect for service appointments, project discussions, and more.

6.CSAT Measurement System

Understanding customer perception is important for a company to improve its services. This is why companies can use tools to record and analyze customer feedback and satisfaction levels.

Summing Up

A CRM tool enables IT companies to automate salesforce and enterprise operations, provide better customer support, and strategically increase market share and customer lifetime value, thus reducing churn and increasing profitability.

In today’s competitive times, a CRM tool is a must for every company in the IT sector.

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