Customer Relationship Management systems offer a number of benefits to businesses of all sizes and industries. The customer is a key revenue driver for businesses. Effectively managing the relationship with the customer is a huge priority.
A recent survey was conducted by Software Advice in which they interviewed businesses of different sizes and different industries. One of the main questions that they asked were what areas of CRM technology they were planning to invest in. They also asked about the main benefits they were experiencing from their CRM implementation.
When asked about future investment, there were three areas that companies identified as the top areas they were looking to invest in. These areas CRM users identified as areas that they were looking to increase their current investment in. They are as follows:
- Help Desk and Customer Service
- Marketing Automation
- Social Media Monitoring
The first reason that companies are looking for CRM is to manage the company’s help desk and customer service operations. This makes sense for a number of reasons. As we continue to advance in the information age, the voice of the customer is louder and more extensive than ever before.
There are two keys to customer service and help desk management goals. The first is issue tracking and resolution. Businesses want to make sure that they are doing an excellent job at resolving incoming customer issues and keeping their customers satisfied.
Another area of big investment is in providing self service solutions. Businesses recognize that if customers are able to resolve issues on their own, this will increase customer satisfaction and customer resolution time. This will also decrease business costs because the customer will not need to interact directly with someone from the help desk department.
The second area that companies are looking for CRM solutions is marketing automation. Marketing is the lifeblood of a business. Without new customers coming in and encouraging existing customers to continue to spend money, it is only a matter of time before a business is in serious trouble.
Marketing automation allows a company to obtain a significant amount of visibility into the prospective and current customer. With it, the company can track how they interact with the company’s website, what pages they visit, how long they stay on and what resonates with them the most.
The third area that companies are making new investments in is social media monitoring. Reputation is very important for a business these days. Customers have a bigger voice than ever before and much of that is due to the rise of social media. Smart businesses recognize this and are aggressive at monitoring their brand on social media and interacting with prospective and current customers that talk about their company on these websites.
Here is a breakdown of all of the areas that businesses said they are looking to make new investments in:
