What can a CRM software do for your contact center?

Thursday, August 25, 2016

For brands, every customer interaction is important, as it presents an opportunity to build meaningful and long-lasting relationships. It's important for organizations to be present whenever and wherever customers need them in order to foster trust.

However, with the proliferation of multiple touchpoints, such as email, social media, and the phone, call centers find it increasingly challenging to keep track of the customer experience. This is where a CRM tool can help you.

A customer relationship management (CRM) software is a computer application that allows agents to monitor and handle customer interactions occurring at various channels. The tool stores customers' contact details and other information relevant to the company, such as account details and transaction history. These pieces of information are kept in one database, helping organizations easily retrieve them when needed.

If you can't decide whether you should purchase a CRM application, take a look at these four benefits of having one for your business.

1.   Optimize your internal processes.
Silos —isolated systems, departments, and processes— in your organization can slow down your customer service and other processes. A CRM tool can eliminate these silos by giving all departments easy and fast access to the information they need, as it can create a centralized database that stores all data relevant to the company. This is a great way to connect your front and back office and let everyone find the data they need to carry out their tasks efficiently.

2.   Manage multiple platforms.
A CRM software is a must-have for brands that want to design and provide an omnichannel customer experience. It integrates multiple platforms to give customer support agents, marketers, and managers a single, 360-degree view of the customer. This lets them effortlessly track cross-device conversations, allowing them to provide flexible solutions to their target demographic.

3.   Make the most of data analytics.
CRM tools allow organizations to collect and synthesize all the data relevant to the company and its customers. Although carrying out analytics processes is still a challenge for many brands and contact centers, it's already providing business leaders plenty of insights about customers, their preferences, purchasing behavior, and the brand-related problems they commonly experience.

4.   Improve the customer experience.
Given its capacity to gather and store customer data in an omnichannel setup, a CRM software allows brands to personalize the consumer experience and improve the quality of customer service they deliver. To achieve this, companies must work with people who possess the right skills, including statisticians, marketers, and customer relationship experts.