What if we told you that there was a software solution that would increase your productivity and profitability? Well, it exists. CRM Software can help you streamline the process of customer service management as well as sales. 

It is an integral part of many businesses today.

Productivity and profit are two of the most important aspects that any company needs to maintain in order to be successful. 

And when CRM software is introduced into a business, these two metrics can increase exponentially. 

This blog post will cover how CRM software can help companies become more productive and profitable.

The ‘R’ in Customer Relationship Management is where the magic lies: the customer relationship. In today’s world of over-crowdedness and overstimulation, relationships are the key to connecting with retail customers in a meaningful way. Research reveals —as does intuition—that retail customers now desire more personalized care in the marketplace, from the sales floor to social media platforms. 

Everyone wants to be treated as uniquely individual, not merely as a statistic or a consumer with money to spend.

Once a company focuses on building client relationships, it can expand its trust and loyalty factor. CRM software allows retail companies to be all the more attentive to their customer’s needs from the moment they first walk in the door.

CRM software makes personalization simple, thus providing customers with a good feeling about the brand. The integration of online and offline services creates a whole brand experience that makes customers feel welcome.

CRM software also increases productivity on the sales floor, getting employees to train faster, respond smarter, and sell easier. CRM retail software allows employees to collect valuable client information and integrate a company’s marketing efforts into the checkout process. Social media and mobile platforms can be drawn into the system as well to target potential customers right where they’re at—through their phones and computers.

CRM software makes the process of selling easier from the sales floor all the way up to the corporate offices and out to the supplier warehouses. 

Recording all client and merchandise data in one system makes everyone better at their jobs and saves time; it helps automate processes from email marketing to checkout to text message marketing and everything in between.

Personalized customer care

By keeping track of their regular customers’ tastes and contact information, retail sales teams can respond to their customers’ particular needs in a much more personalized way. In fact, 73% of consumers say they’d rather purchase from companies that use their personal information to make their shopping experience more relevant. 

For bigger-ticket sales, when greater care and more touchpoints are required, CRM allows one salesperson to take over where another left off, so no one has to start the sales process from scratch again—a potential nuisance and buying deterrent.

Facilitates list segmentation

CRM software allows retail companies to filter customers through their email list by interest, life stage, demographics, or other factors right inside their system. 

By segmenting their email list this way, they can target relevant populations in specific areas with their marketing efforts. 

For example, retail stores might find it useful to target clients in the northern US with outerwear promotions as the seasons grow colder, whereas sending the same promotion to clients in tropical locations would be a waste of resources.

Streamlines the sales process

CRM software can be used to track customers’ original intentions for coming into a store as well as all their purchases. This allows employees to pick up the conversation where they left off and equips them with the information they need to offer complimentary items or upsells. If a customer recently purchased a washing machine, employees can suggest a matching dryer or ironing board based on the information available to them in the system.

Reduces employee training time:

CRM retail software makes it easier to train new employees. Having all processes integrated into a single software system makes workers feel far more efficient at their jobs, increasing confidence on both sides of the transaction.

Less time spent at the checkout counter creates more time for engaging with customers and learning more about the product.

Simplifies stock management

Integrated CRM software that allows employees to check stock levels improves the customer experience. When an employee has access to stock levels at other stores or warehouses, they can do everything possible to obtain what their customers want. This also makes it easier for managers and corporate employees to manage stock from afar.

Syncs with other programs: CRM for retail often syncs with other programs such as payment processing systems, email providers, and accounting software. These integrations make all employees more productive by giving them immediate access to the information they need.

Integrates mobile and social platforms: Integrating mobile and social platforms into the sales process with CRM software increases the productivity of salespeople by an estimated 11-14%. 

By expanding the reach of their marketing beyond the walls of the store, retail businesses can boost their marketing productivity and increase their returns.

CRM or customer relationship management is an integral part of the organization, whether they are local or international players. They are increasingly seeking innovative ways to maximize employee productivity in order to meet the operational demand on day to day basis. 

There are innate challenges that occur in terms of operations, size, and orders placed by customers. Providing value and ROI for each activity performed in the company is therefore what everyone wants to maximize. 

Most of these activities are, however, driven by the employees, their team performance, managing operations & website, and customers within the allocated budget.

Engaging customers and managing customer data also require the employees. The totality of these activities needs to be controlled to make ROI be realistic. While routine tasks are automated, employees are seen analyzing the customer data have been flooded with modern gadgets. 

To aid the employee actions, capture markets, do sharp analysis, convert customers’ need advanced systems and employees are able to capture data. 

CRM is one facet of how the organizations can put together systems, processes streamlined in order to engage employees effectively to achieve a better output. Therefore, to spend less time in CRM, cross-functionality in teams needs collaborating and real-time information access, which is much needed in today’s business world.

Some of the best CRM software which can increase employee productivity thus can be illuminated here today.

Integrating mobile

The traditional method of marketing has moved on and has leveraged a range of technologies that are enabling functions. Therefore, the salespeople in the field using PDAs, Smartphones are brought into the loop wherein the real-time data access is managed through CRM. 

This is pocket-friendly when compared to the employee being tracked sharing data from customer sites that make CRM integrated systems approach a hit in the sales circuit. The new addition in the existing CRM module will help to track the employees, transact, authenticate, report, therefore providing your firm with an edge over the competitors.

Integrating with back-office:

So after the front-end integration of CRM with mobile, the next move should be to digitalize all transactions, account information not only on desktops but also on smartphones, tablets to access quotes, sales, orders, invoices to be authorized on a real-time basis. 

The integration of the front end with the back end helps in managing the transactions that are information and specific to that module. The front-end and back-end integration help CRM to integrate the functions digitally and help the parties, actors to be in sync on real-time data transaction and access.

Applications with role-based interface

The importance of different user groups within and outside of the organization clubbed under one application interface is about segregating what these groups do. It also reflects the process-based systems approach to task completion, and through an online mode, it is easier. 

The edge of managing the CRM rests on the ability to create role-based interfaces which can cut across functions and departments. The role-based interface gels easily when the projects are huge, and teams need diverse skills to reach complex goals.

Sharing via social media

The option to share problems, achievements, and needs can foster better results through customer relationship management. It can lead to sharing of ideas, solutions, or even crowdsourcing for a particular project in the organization. 

The ability to share in social media will help the employees to seek the crowdsourcing function, which will enable the power to resolve problems within the firm and even beyond (involving stakeholders). The power of social media helps to seek more options within and the best resolution through the

Expand intranet

The scalability function should be able to foster two-way communication within the office, an interoffice collaboration between multiple users across different locations on a real-time basis. 

This will help to contribute to a given task or problem, enabling quicker decision-making and fail-safe solutions. 

The bigger loop of involving the stakeholders will help to provide more transparent visibility into the system. This enables the stakeholders to plan ahead in order to deploy lean, right time, and right place solutions.

CRM Statistics You Need To Know

The CRM industry continues to grow at a staggering rate, and each year new statistics are reported based on CRM trends.

The reason?

CRM is now at the heart of every growing business.

In 2020, we saw increased use of CRM software on mobile devices.

This was aided by businesses increasingly adopting cloud-based CRM solutions, allowing their employees to access the software anywhere they go on the smart device of their choice.

Those who have embraced these technologies have seen a huge improvement in both the adoption of CRM software by their employees and the meeting of sales quotas – And according to Buyer Zone (now acquired by Business.com), 91% of companies with more than 11 employees now use CRM software.

But, which statistics should you pay close attention to?

And moving forward in 2021, what will happen?

In this data-driven post, we take a look back at some of the most important CRM software statistics released last year, the reasons behind them, and the impact they will have on your business in 2021 and beyond.

And given that 150,000 people use SuperOffice CRM every single day, we have unique access to millions of data points on the top trends, which we’ll be sharing in this report.

(We always keep these numbers up to date with the latest research and development within the CRM industry.)

The rise of mobile CRM

Since the very early days of CRM, some businesses have struggled to get employees to adopt and use the software. However, with increasing use and dependence on mobile technology, those companies using mobile CRM solutions are seeing far higher adoption rates.

Offering mobile CRM access does not just increase the use of the software but also the productivity of the workforce. Statistics from Forester have shown that 50% of teams improved their productivity by using a mobile CRM.

And it doesn’t stop there. Users of mobile CRM are achieving better results!

A Nucleus Research report finds that for companies using a mobile CRM, 65% are achieving their sales quotas. While only 22% of reps using non-mobile CRM have reached the same targets.

Access from multiple devices

This information is filtering down to both businesses and their employees.

The global mobile CRM market will grow 11% to $15 billion worldwide this year as businesses seek to connect with their customers through their mobile devices.

Although the use of CRM on a mobile device is still lower than that from a laptop or desktop, the rising use from mobile devices and tablets means that 81% of users are now accessing their CRM software from multiple devices.

Increase in cloud-based CRM Solutions

It’s this increasing need to access their software from multiple devices and locations that have led to the rise of using cloud-based CRM solutions.

In 2008, only 12% of businesses used cloud-based CRM – This figure has now increased to 87%!

We have our own data to back these statistics up, too.

For example, only 15% of new customers subscribed to SuperOffice’s cloud CRM in 2010.

Today, our cloud CRM is sold to 97% of our customers.

CRM growth not slowing down

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software revenues have overtaken database management systems to become the largest of all software markets. And with revenues expected to reach over $80 billion by 2025, it’s no surprise that CRM is the fastest growing software market.

So, where do these projections come from?

Nearly 60% of organizations increased IT spending in 2020. And it remains the same in 2021.

This year-on-year investment is seen as necessary by most businesses in order to keep up to date with the new and emerging technologies and digital transformation.

And this trend is unlikely to change as companies invest more in CRM to become GDPR compliant.

We can see that CRM software leads this technology investment, with 44% of businesses planning to increase IT budgets in 2021, up from 38% in 2020. This is not just to keep up with their competitors, but also as a result of improving sales.

Where is this additional spend going?

Mostly on customer-facing products.

Topping the table are the 47% of businesses planning to increase spending on help desk and customer service software.

The investment in customer service software shows the intention of businesses to retain existing clients by not only improving customer service but also providing online self-service options.

Personalized marketing

It’s not only customer service software that companies are investing more in.

The largest share of digital marketers’ wallets in 2021 goes to email marketing. It’s estimated that the US will spend over 350 million dollars on email advertising in 2021, which makes a lot of sense given email’s consistently highly-rated ROI of a $51 return on every $1 spent.

Not only are marketers seeing increased revenues, but as the customer experience takes the top spot in marketing priorities, delivering personalized marketing messages through email marketing is a sure-fire way to beat the competition and build a brand that consumers trust.

(Not sure how to personalize your email campaigns? Use these B2B email marketing examples to inspire you.)

2021 is the year of the customer (again)

All of these statistics and research point towards 2021 being the year of the customer.

We live in a world where 60% of consumers begin their product research with one or more search engines before heading to a particular website – and they will use mobile devices, laptops, and desktops to search for products they are interested in.

In order to engage potential customers across multiple devices in multiple channels, you need data and processes. And with CRM software, you are able to create a 360-degree overview of each person you connect with.

Conclusion

The CRM industry has seen staggering growth in recent years.

And 2020 was no different. Last year we found out that overall CRM usage increased from 56% to 74%.

Broken down, this statistic showed that 91% of businesses with over 11 employees now use CRM, compared to 50% of those with ten employees or less.

This growth was in no part down to how effective its users found it to be. With 74% of them saying that CRM software has improved their access to customer data!

Businesses will continue to increase investments in CRM solutions. They are fueled not only by improving results but also by a need to keep up with their competitors and create a great customer experience. This is all expected to turn the CRM sector into an $80 billion industry by the end of 2025.

What should you do?

Well, if your business has yet to adopt CRM – now is the time to invest. And if you can only access your CRM solution through a desktop or laptop, it’s time to go mobile.

When evaluating your CRM software options, it’s best to give your employees the possibility to work anywhere and on the device of their choosing. The more comfortable they are in accessing the platform, the more likely they are to use it. And the key to CRM success!

Are there any important CRM software statistics we missed in this post?

Martin Gessner

Martin Gessner is the Founder of Focus on Force.

He has spent over 10 years working in various Salesforce roles including business analyst, project manager, consultant and solutions architect. Along the way he has earned twelve certifications, published "The Salesforce Career Playbook", and helps Salesforce professionals learn more about Salesforce, develop their career and prepare for certifications.