Introduction
Customer relations is an essential aspect of any business, whether offline or online. As more and more customers are choosing to engage with e-commerce businesses, the necessity for e-CRM has increased tremendously. E-CRM software is a specialized tool that leverages social media, email marketing, bulk messaging, or site cookies to personalize engagement at the increased number of touchpoints, not possible with traditional CRM.
This blog will explore eCRM and how combining an eCRM with customization boosts efficiency. Additionally, we will explore the benefits of eCRM and the best features of eCRM that are essential for driving business growth.
What is an eCRM?
An electronic customer relationship management (eCRM) is the newest form of customer relationship management software that works online to track and manage customer relationships. It takes the help of various digital platforms like websites, social media, messaging applications, emails, and forums to manage customer interactions at various points of contact.
Data generated through various digital platforms helps in understanding individual customer preferences and behavior, which in turn creates customer profiles. These customer profiles are helpful in personalizing interactions and services further.
Combined with the powers of CRM software, these vital customer data create comprehensive customer journey maps that can enable businesses to customize or recommend products and services. Reports suggest that a staggering 94% of tech companies are using CRM software to drive sales efficiency and enhance customer relationships.
How a customizable CRM helps businesses modify workflow fields and modules
Not every relationship is alike; hence, you may need features to customize your offerings to strengthen your customer relationship. Customization not only will help your customers, but it also helps your sales team by streamlining processes and speeding up workflows. With customizable CRMs, it is possible to establish new workflows, data fields, and entire modules to support various operations.
Here’s how businesses can achieve customization of CRM;
- 1. Customization of workflow fields
• Adding new fields: A customizable CRM allows new field additions to gather specific data required in different scenarios.
• Modifying Existing Fields: Existing fields can also be customized. It means altering field names, data types, validation rules, and display format, amongst other things.
• Eliminating Unrequited Fields: If a field is irrelevant to the workflow, users can remove it, ensuring the interface is less cluttered and that users see only the information they need to use.
- 2. Customization of modules
• Custom Modules: Every industry may organize it differently to cater to business needs. Customization of its CRM allows companies in different sectors to build brand-new modules to track specific aspects of their business.
• Modifying Existing Modules: Entire modules within a CRM can be customized by adding new fields, headings, data types, etc.
• Establish module relation: Companies can validate the relationship between different modules to simplify data analysis.
Top 10 features of e-CRM for driving business growth
Let us look at some of the top features of eCRM that are driving business growth. Though modern eCRM offers many advanced features that improve business efficiency, these are must-have features when implementing a CRM for an online business.
- • Centralized database: A centralized database for customer information is at the heart of an eCRM. It records a customer’s personal information, financial details, purchase history, customer’s profile based on their purchase behavior, etc. Consolidating information on customers provides companies with analytical insights that help them tailor their marketing and sales pitches.
- • Sales pipeline visualization: As a customer interacts with a company, its sales funnel journey begins. Managing to track every interaction through email, chat, social media, or offline calls allows conversations to be synchronized across every platform. It also ensures that the sales team never misses any customer conversations, providing superior service to the customer.
- • Contact management: Organizing customer contact is essential to effectively target customers with specially curated content. Contact management helps categorize customers into different segments by adding labels and filters that allow for segmenting customers based on pre-defined criteria.
- • Mobile compatibility: With the advancement of technology, convenience is in our hands in the form of mobile devices. Now, sales and services are on the go. An eCRM with mobile compatibility allows for sales and support teams to reach out to customers and assist them from anywhere, at any time without interruption. It further improves customer satisfaction and experience as they receive assistance quickly.
- • Automated operations: Out of many features of eCRM, automated operation of workflows is a huge add-on for companies. Automatic management of routine tasks saves time and ensures critical tasks are never missed due to the busy schedule of sales teams.
- • Third-party integration: Integration of eCRM with third-party tools bolsters its efficiency in offering a consistent experience to customers. Integration with tools like email marketing, social media platforms, instant messaging tools, or financial tools allows cross-functional teams to access customer data and work collaboratively in offering a comprehensive service to the customer.
- • Customization flexibility: Every industry and different companies within each industry are different from each other. The customization of features of eCRM allows different companies to use the tool as per their business needs. Not only features or fields, but most customization should allow for the addition and customization of entire modules to allow companies to visualize and manage different workflows.
- • Scalability: No single company remains at the same stage as their present, and it requires to be agile and ready to scale up operations and features as business demands. An eCRM should be flexible enough to scale up as per the demands of any business, allowing it to grow without a complete shift into another system.
- • Analytical reporting: Data forms an essential part of making strategic decisions for business growth. A top feature of CRM should include analytical reporting to provide critical customer data to fuel decision-making. With accurate reporting, businesses can identify consumer trends, understand buying patterns, and measure customer satisfaction by tracking key metrics.
- • Self-service: Often modern, eCRM software offers features to allow users to access product-related information and self-help guides to resolve minor troubleshooting issues. It allows users to be in charge of resolving their queries and equips them with information to do it at their own pace. It boosts customer satisfaction by providing users with appropriate information.
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How combining features of eCRM with customization boosts efficiency
There are various ways that companies can enhance the customization of eCRM;
- 1. Simplify Procedures
- • Specify Actions: Customizing means also that actions and processes needed in a certain business can be integrated and performed automatically through the eCRM platform. With the help of removing the data entry activities and reduction in errors, the employees prove more focused on other important tasks. These are some of the software via which the following are carried out: email marketing, follow-up reminders, and lead assignment.
- • Main Client Interface: Implementation of this can ensure that the clients have a view of the tool, information, and data relevant to their duties. Thus, it becomes possible for the employees to come across the things they require, move around with ease, and work with greater speed and efficiency.
- 2. Better Data Management
- • Collect Useful Information: The companies can capture specific values that are required within fields and modules of the customizations. It guarantees that they have all the information that would enable them to understand their clients as well as the mode of communication to use so that they come up with the right conclusion.
- Companies can use this arrangement to favor their organization by revising the data to correspond to their company format. This enhances data availability and assists in the generation of the report as well as analyzing the customers’ behavior.
- 3. Improved Client Experience
- • Interactivity: It affords clients with highly personalized interactions through data and system operations. This refers to the anticipation of customer needs and going out of your way to meet them, informing the customers about new products, and even addressing the customers’ needs even before they know they have them. The individual correspondence should bring about increased client satisfaction, and that will, in turn, increase their loyalty.
- • Continuous communication: It also encompasses various forms of communication like email, chat, Facebook, and Twitter, as well as others. An eCRM can automatically respond to such queries, as well as pass them on to other specialized teams, thus enhancing the rate of communication even further.
- 4. Enhanced Productivity
- • Enhanced Task Management: As a result of the customization of eCRM, there will be effective task management with the improved identification of workflows. This includes amazing tasks for the right person, setting deadlines, and tracking progress. This tends to ensure that tasks are completed on time since any project is completed by observing its schedule and improving teamwork.
- • Reduced learning time: The eCRM is less complex for the employees to learn if it follows their working schedules. Forcing workers into taking a precise route also reduces the time taken to set up and train them for production purposes.
- 5. Making Decisions Based on Data
- • Customized reports: Customization of eCRM makes it possible to have some kind of reports that will suit well a certain company’s needs. These reports provide quite useful information about companies’ sales performance and customers and assess the performance of marketing strategies. The utilization of the data helps companies maximize their strategies and make the right decisions.
- • Real-time analytics: Real-time KPIs and tailored dashboards are analytics instruments for personalized eCRM dashboards. It can assist them in identifying consumer trends and any obstacles that can be seen ahead and adapting strategies appropriately.
Conclusion
To sum up, companies looking to succeed in the current competitive environment must use the ten essential features of eCRM: By having such features, businesses stand a chance to strengthen their interactions with customers, increase engagement, create loyalty, and eventually propel sustainable growth by deliberately implementing and utilizing these features. With an e-CRM system, companies can turn customer relations from transactional contact to deep, enduring relationships, benefiting the company and its clients. By adopting these characteristics, businesses can cultivate a future with customer-centricity at the center of success rather than merely enhancing client relations.
Frequently Asked Questions
Centralized storage of customer information allows the accumulation of all aspects of a customer, including by name, age, gender, preferences, and the products they have purchased in the past. It reaches out to the general public, customizes communications, identifies certain needs, and proceeds to fulfill them with suitable products or services, enhancing engagement.
E-CRM, also known as electronic Customer Relationship Management, deals with using technology, especially online media, to interact as well as maintain the data of the customers. E- CRM is quicker and includes multiple channels such as online networks, social networks, or others that are different from the phone and paper-based processes of traditional CRM.
Today, customers prefer using their mobile phones and tablets to interact with firms and organizations. Mobile accessibility helps the customer to get any information, make a purchase, or seek support from any location at any time of their convenience.
Electronic customer relationship management uses more digital tools to manage and track customer relationships. Here are a few of the major functions of eCRM;
• Record and analyze user data from purchase history, preference, & behavior.
• Personalize communication through targeted marketing campaigns.
• Boost customer service by streamlining communications.
• Improve customer retention by increasing customer satisfaction.
• Ensure data-backed decisions through extensive analytical reports.
• Automate workflows by scheduling repetitive tasks.
Nisha Sneha
Nisha Sneha is a passionate content writer with 5 years of experience creating impactful content for SAAS products, new-age technologies, and software applications. Currently, she is contributing to Kenyt.AI by crafting engaging content for its readers. Creating captivating content that provides accurate information about the latest advancements in science and technology has been at the core of her creativity.
In addition to writing, she enjoys gardening, reading, and swimming as hobbies.
