Top 7 Must Have Features in CRM System [ in 2020 ]

Top 7 Must have features in CRM System

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software is a system to manage a company’s interaction with current and potential customers. It uses data analysis about customers’ history with the company to improve business relationships with customers, specifically focusing on customer retention and ultimately driving sales growth.

It is vital for company to track their customers before and after they become actual customers. Any small detail missed or untracked can lead to failure in customer retention. A CRM System should be smart enough to inform company about the details and status of the customer and should be simple enough to be understandable at a glance. A CRM System should be able to take care of people and processes & having a good understanding of customer’s businesses are focused on.

A CRM System should be customer centric and focused on pipeline of stages of customers for business decision making. Many CRM systems are primarily focused on retention of customers, giving less rooms for conversion of leads to customers. But, the concept is changing rapidly. Now, CRMs are focused on managing leads as well. To increase retention of customer, it is important to have understanding of how the leads actually converted to customers. So, more and more CRM system are involved in full life cycle of any business customers.

The top 7 must have features of CRM System are

1. Contact Management
2. Lead Management
3. Transfer of contacts and leads.
4. Easy creation and assigning of task.
5. Manage Campaigns
6. Easy (at a glance) report to keep track of customers.
7. Campaign Analytics and Sales Analytics

Let’s dive on each features one by one.

1. Contact ManagementA CRM system must have feature to add current customers. Business can retarget these customers for add on/cross selling as well as to keep in touch. Segmenting the customer means having proper knowledge of the previous services customers are using.This is a vital piece of information on deciding whether to cross sell to customer or create a product that the customer is interested in.</>

   Even if business decide to introduce a new product/plan/scheme, previous customers are the primary customers. There is always opportunity to attract customers as they know business and are mostly satisfied with provided services.

2. Lead ManagementA CRM System should also be able to track users who are not yet customers. Prospects, as we call them, are the line of business. Until and unless you have prospects, it is hard to grow business. Even with lots of customers already enrolled or using the service, prospects define the direction businesses is heading to.A CRM System should be able to log the prospects and segment them according to their interest.Some prospects have high probability of conversion; some has low. But even prospects with low probability may be interesting prospects for future and/or different products and services because of crucial data record on the CRM System.

   So, a CRM should not discount any features regarding prospects.

   

3. Transfer of contacts and leadsIn any business, there will always be a team with multiple members handling customers. There will be frequent cases where a single person may not be able to server customer for all their needs.In such case, it is necessary to pass the customer to the responsible team member. Businesses find it hard to manage this scenario because of human nature. Any member will feel responsible to earn and retain their customer, but sometime, it is better for business if the customer is assigned to responsible personnel so that the customer gets the best customer experience.At the end of the day, everyone is working for business interest.A CRM system should make it easy to transfer contacts and leads to other team members. The responsible person should get a real time notification from CRM system, so that no customer is left unattended. An email or SMS system should be nice integration on CRM System.
4. Easy creation and assign of task.Yes, it is easier to assign a prospect or customer to another member. Business frequently face cases where other members needs to do some specific task for the customer. In such case, a CRM system should be able to identity the member and member should have descriptive remarks about the specific steps to be taken to customer’s needs. A detailed email sent on behalf of the member as well as at a glance task on dashboard is a must on CRM System.
5. Manage CampaignsMost CRM Systems tends for focus on customer retention and forget on the business part. It may not have been vital part of CRM system for now but it is utmost necessary to know the details on campaigns that attracted customers in the first place. It determines the expectation of the customer; the channels customers are using to purchase the service; and this information is used to determine on acquiring and retaining customer.
6. ReportingA simple MUST. Not only CRM System should be detailed reports on the life cycle of the prospect to customer, CRM System must have detailed stages or pipeline through which a prospect goes through to actually convert to a customer. CRM System should provide a detailed visual representation of the exact number of prospects, prospects on each stage and summary of how the performance of members regarding the constant customer follow up.

   

7. Campaign Analytics and Sales AnalyticsAnalytics is one part CRM System has to really strong on. CRM System should be able to provide in depth detailed report on each prospect, customer, campaign, tasks. These reports should be downloadable in most common formats such as PDF and Excel. Each report should contain detailed information on stage, pipeline, performance. Report may not be selective for prospects and customers only. Even reports regarding member of a team should be easily viewable and downloadable in any CRM System.

There are many other features that a CRM Software can integration such as notification system, mobile application and Document Management System. But the above features are a must on any CRM system; small or big. It is imperative for business to have a customized CRM according to their needs. In general, business use CRM System that boost their communication and collaboration process with regards with their clients.

Many customer purchase services from business and may forget about the business, but it is businesses’ responsibility to let customer feel the importance. And CRM System is a big part of this ecosystem.