Contact Management is the process of collating and organizing contact information. Every interaction a business makes with contact is tracked and leveraged to drive conversions.
A person or an organization that shows interest in your service or business is a ‘lead’. When a lead buys your product or service, he becomes your customer and is saved in your database as a ‘contact’. A contact can be an individual or an organization.
Today’s software technology offers comprehensive data management systems to manage customer data. They help with improving categorization and make searching easy.
The advantage that contact management bestows on businesses is the ability to ensure greater engagement with its customers. Additionally, the unified customer information repository allows everyone in your organization to seamlessly access data.
Here are the key advantages of contact management:
Unified data repository: A consolidated data repository that simplifies data access for every employee across the organization.
Efficient data collection: Ability to store customer information with low overhead and high efficiency.
Powerful customer insights: Track customer pain points, interests, and needs efficiently, utilizing it to drive sales.
Leverage drip marketing: Send pre-written messages to customers at planned intervals via social sites and emails to drive sales.
Although contact management did come a long way from its initial days, most (in their software application avatars) were just databases with some advanced functionalities at the core. With contact management becoming increasingly entwined with sales management, the need for a system with the capability to collate diverse business data was felt. Eventually, this led to the evolution of contact management into modern CRMs.
CRMs not only allowed easier information access across the organization but also enabled end to end tracking of the customer journey. The adoption of CRM over contact management was a no-brainer owing to these powerful advantages.
Updated contact information: Give real-time access to contact information to all teams to foster team effort.
Targeted customer interactions: Employees can tailor their approach to every individual customer's requirements based on existing information to ensure higher deal-closure rates.
Lead progress monitoring: Contact management within a CRM enables you to track lead progress as they move down the sales funnel.
Higher returns via analytics: Reliable analytics can help you weed out weak links and make data-driven decisions for higher returns.
Omnichannel communication: Customers can easily pick any channels like email, phone calls, social media, and live chat to reach out to your business as they see fit.
Centralized data platform: Data from every department like marketing, sales, and support is centrally stored. This leads to high data consistency and the elimination of data duplication.
Contact Management Software |
Contact Management in CRM |
|---|---|
Stores and tracks contact details |
Stores business data and interactions to enhance customer engagement |
Limited level of activity tracking |
Comprehensive tracking in terms of individual contacts |
Organizes contact information for easier searching |
Analyzes the data for insights on the contact |
One view lets you see all related records, create records, link existing records, deep dive into records, print records and reach out to contacts right from the contact record itself.
Easy to learn the entire history of your customer relationship with the 360-degree historical view. All of the contact’s interactions are linked with the record for a quick catch-up.
Notifies you via SMS, email, or on-screen alerts when a particular contact becomes active or meets a predefined condition. Never miss out on the right time to engage with someone.
Allows you to create tasks or calendar events that are linked with the contact’s record. Follow ups are simpler with easy accessibility. Calendar events are synced with Outlook and other calendars for easier tracking.
Vtiger helps you find contacts with whatever partial information you can remember from their profile - working with a subset of contacts? Filter the list and make it the default view.
Vtiger CRM mobile app allows you to manage your contacts no matter where you are. The mobile app will enable you to see a unified view of customer data, create records, and check-in onsite events.
Auto imports contacts from CSV files, emails, forms, or third-party apps like Google Contacts when you receive them to focus more on working rather than preparing.
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