Today, businesses are not just aiming for profits but also focusing on creating lasting relationships with customers. Closing a deal is just one aspect of a business strategy. But, the true challenge comes in providing enriching customer experiences and retaining their loyalty.
To provide better customer service, you need to know everything there is about a customer. You need to understand behavioral patterns, product preferences, pain points, budgets, etc. And, to store and access all these details, you need a good contact management system.
What is a contact management system
A contact management system, as the name suggests, stores customer information and helps you plan and manage your business activities around this data. It enables businesses to meet customer demands and achieve targeted sales goals. A contact management system stores customer information – both for leads and contacts.
What is a lead
A lead is a prospective customer who might or might not be interested in doing business with you. Sometimes they show a willingness by sharing personal information like phone number, email address, or even a social media profile to gain in-depth information about your service offerings. Most of the time, lead information is gathered from social media, conferences, events, etc. Remember, while a lead may express their interest, they may not always buy your product or service.
What is a contact
Contact or a customer in a CRM is an individual or an organization who has purchased a product or service from you.
How is a contact management system relevant in a CRM
A customer is the core of a CRM and leads or the contact information is stored in what you call lead or contact records. While most contact management systems act like databases of customer information, a contact management system in a CRM offers much more.
Contact management in a CRM stores information useful for marketing, sales, and customer support activities. It provides the latest information about customers, aids in managing your communication, generates actionable insights, etc. And most importantly many contact management systems give a unified view of the customer – a 360-degree view of all related details.
These are essential for providing a superior customer experience, establishing a relationship with your customers, and selling more products.
How is contact management beneficial to a business
In a study, 54% of business leaders want to give more priority to growing their business in 2022. And, having a good CRM seems to be a desirable solution that gives you access to customer data, allowing for personalized service. To understand this better, let us look at the benefits of contact management in a CRM:
Centralized data management systems
Contact Management records in a CRM store the smallest of details about a customer, like a name, age, gender, industry, products or services bought, etc. You can even record data such as the number of times they responded to your calls, opened emails, and even how many times visited your website.
This comprehensive view of your customers, empowers your teams to perform better.
A contact management system allows you to have centralized data accessible by every team across the organization. When you have a clear view of your customer, you can use the information to:
- Use historical data to study behavioral patterns and create engaging conversations.
- Use the latest data to prepare for meetings well ahead of time.
- Understand your customers on a deeper level and strengthen customer relationships.
- Collaborate with customers to build trust.
Personalized customer interactions
When you have a database of each customer handy, you can make all interactions unique and personal. By looking at their engagement level you can prepare yourself before making a call. Also, historical data will help customer support teams to address specific customer issues.
Engaging conversations and interactions help drive customer satisfaction, thus retaining their loyalty.
Multiple Communication Channels
Many contact management systems provide you with multiple channels to communicate with your customers. An effective engagement can only happen if there are different means of communication that will help in offering better support. If you only depend on a single channel, you might keep your customers waiting for a long time because there will be a lot of queries coming at a time. Chatbots take care of most part of your interactions by handling multiple queries at once.
You can also integrate different social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, etc. into your CRM and connect which is quick, easy, and cost-effective. When you have different ways to communicate from a single place, achieving a stellar customer experience for your business will not be a big deal.
Boost in productivity
CRMs of today integrate with many third-party apps and information that flows between these apps and the CRM. With a unified view of customer data, sales reps do not have to move between different apps and screens to lookup data. In fact, many CRMs allow you to access customer records directly from the chat windows, events, meetings, etc.
This helps sales reps to have relevant information on hand to conduct informed meetings and customer support to resolve more issues, thus increasing productivity.
Besides, automating repetitive tasks, you can also increase productivity by directly making calls or sending an SMS from the CRM which saves a lot of time and allows the team to focus on higher-value tasks. You don’t have to dial the number on your phone or open an email window all the time to perform such kinds of actions.
Actionable insights
You can generate actionable reports that give you accurate insights about your customer. Metrics like campaign analysis, product preferences, costing, performance metrics, etc., help businesses to make data-driven decisions to boost revenue.
Introduction to the Contacts module in Vtiger CRM
The Contact module in Vtiger facilitates a 360-degree view of customers using the One View feature.
It lets you, deep-dive, into the contact records to view related details in a single place. It lets you connect with your customer through various communication channels and tools.
It also allows you to collaborate internally with different teams inside the organization and externally with your customers. Watch this space for a detailed blog on the Vtiger Contacts module.
Before wrapping up, take a look at Vtiger Contact Management and sign up for a 15-day free trial to keep your business running round the clock.
