Did you know 94% of consumers’ interviews revealed that a great customer relationship is the most glaring reason for their loyalty to a brand?
The secret to delivering a great customer experience is seamlessly engaging with them through improving your customer relationship management. This is where Customer Engagement Platforms come in. Customer Engagement Platforms are software solutions that business leaders use to automate their customer service endeavors by gathering customer data, and even keeping track of trends for real-time satisfaction of customers’ wants.
It is quite unfortunate that having more loyal customers makes a brand require a lot more effort to keep track of customers’ preferences, this often makes it a problem for the company as customer relationship management will become more expensive. For this reason, affordable alternative software tools (such as Wrike, Smoobu, Agile software, etc.) have been developed to support teams in managing meaningful interactions.
A Business Review published recently by Joshua Machtfor The Harvard Business Publishing also points out a vital role played by CRM software in elevating the productivity of a business, the author expressed that “In cases reviewed, sales increases due to advanced CRM technology have ranged from 10% to more than 30%”.
There are countless possible benefits for both brand and consumer that will open up when a brand invests in Customer Engagement Platforms.
11 Reasons Why You Should Invest in Customer Engagement Platform
We have fastidiously highlighted 11 benefits, which are seemingly the most relatable reasons why a brand owner should improve its customer relationship management by investing in Customer Engagement Platforms (CRM software). They are as follows:
1. Promotion of Sales:
Some companies find it difficult to introduce new products due to poor communication with their consumers which is why your brand needs to invest in a consolidated CRM platform to avoid such situations in the future.
The use of customer relationship management software fills the gap between brand and client, which makes it easier for the production department to focus on the products with greater sales thereby making the job of the sales team much more efficient because the demands of the consumers are directly met by channeling more energy to where it is most appreciated.
2. Building Customer Profile:
Customers have their personal preferences and a very effective way to satisfy them is by gathering and organizing customer data to build profiles. Customer engagement platforms are embedded with tools that carry out these tasks without stress. If a company is unable to render a quality customer experience individually, then it would cause the customers to pull away from the company.
3. Better Customer Service:
Customer service is key to customer retention. If your customer retention rate is slipping then you need to invest in CRM software to explore integrated tools and make strides towards the rendition of better customer service.
Furthermore, quality customer service encourages positive word-of-mouth from the customers and improves the customer relationship management of the firm, motivating the customer to stay with the firm rather than switch to a competitor.
4. Adjust the Company towards the Customer:
A good customer engagement platform that stores and organizes customer data can serve as a muster point to checkmate performances of departments of the company, such as rating the performance of the marketing team where advertising expense is channeled to and that of the sales department where profit is generated. A customer relationship management software uses its insights to induce purpose and direction to your consumer-centered goals.
5. Business Forecasting:
Reports are produced by downloading data into spreadsheets. It will take a lot of time to create manually and will probably be inaccurate. These imprecise reports will result in delayed and possibly erroneous planning and forecasting. Also, these time-consuming tasks will distract the sales department from doing what they are meant to be doing—selling. A good CRM software will gather and store relevant data in an accessible file location to assist in making accurate forecasts.
6. Appreciating High-value Customers Better (Deepens customer relationship):
You want your best customers to feel appreciated, but that is difficult because you cannot know the value of each customer if your brand does not employ CRM software.
A CRM software can identify them by downloading customer data into spreadsheets then acknowledge them, provide the right incentives, and nurture them to increase customer loyalty, which will improve customer relationship management.
7. Gain Competitive Advantage:
Healthy competition between brands is normal. Offering greater customer service than your rival will make the customers more comfortable dealing with you giving you an edge over your business rival.
After a terrible customer experience, the customer would be reluctant to return to the company. Hence it is very important to have a good customer relationship with your customers.
8. Centralized communication:
Despite the clarity of phone calls, brand-to-client communication over the phone takes too much time, and sometimes customers will have to form a waiting line till it gets to their turn. The live chat tool makes communication a lot easier on CRM software.
Customers like to know that their complaints have been taken note of and are being acted on, this is a good reason to invest in a customer engagement platform.
9. Innovation and Better Branding:
Whether it is adding more features to new versions of your products or completely developing new products to satisfy real-time demands, there is no better way to get to know the trend than customer relationship management software. Customers will pay a higher price as long as they get a better experience with the product especially when the new features rally directly with their recently suggested upgrades
10. Address Customer Concerns in Real-Time:
Arguably the biggest benefit of a customer engagement platform is the availability of tools to assist brands in responding to negative customer feedback in real-time. Brand owners, store managers, staff, etc, will get notified the moment a customer leaves negative feedback.
This opens up a big chance to reach out to them before their negativity spreads to other customers. Most times you just need to apologize or offer them a discount on their next purchase. Indeed, any customer will be so happy to see you responding to their issues almost instantly.
11. Motivates Sales Staff:
With customer reviews at your disposal, it becomes a lot easier to direct your sales representatives on how to go about customer interactions for even better results. Also, sales representatives interact with customers directly and as such influence customers’ experience to a large extent.
With a customer engagement platform, you can practically dig deep into customers’ feedback and find out where your sales reps are lacking and how they can do better at their jobs. Overall boost sales. The benefits of Customer Relationship Management Software are not oriented for only the customers, it eases employees’ work too.
A software consultancy firm in a recent tweet said, “An integration of point-of-sale (POS) and CRM can streamline sales & marketing operations which can save time & costs while improving customer engagement. Collaborate to automate your sales!”. This goes to say more about how essential and economical CRM software is for the success of a business.
A Good Customer Engagement Platform – CRM Software:
Having discussed the importance of Customer Engagement Platforms, let’s quickly run through some important features that must be found in good CRM software:
1. Self-service option: It is tiring to have to wait for email responses for minor problems, 70% of customers prefer using self-service channels to solve their problems in real-time. Choose a Customer Engagement Platform that offers seamless user-friendly self-service tools to boost your chances at customer satisfaction.
2. Live chat function: Customers’ thirst for instant answers is unmatchable but can be quenched with an online presence. An option to chat with a customer service agent will go a long way to promote trust from customers.
3. FAQs & Webforms: A good Customer Engagement Platform has tools that allow customers to fill out forms for you and keep records of data filled out in the forms. The data gathered from these forms are used to prepare answers for Frequently Asked Questions. It is made accessible to non-customers too.
4. Convenience and accessibility: When selecting the right CRM software for your brand, it is important to select one that is very accessible. Despite being full of aesthetics tools, It is practically useless if employees don’t know how to use them.
5. Adaptability: A good CRM will not only satisfy your company’s current needs, but it also has the potential to grow with your brand: it should include multiple modules, features, and possibilities for integration. All features of every CRM software are geared towards maintaining positive customer-client relationships.
There are a lot of CRM software out there that exhibit these qualities which may make it difficult to select from. However, we have conducted thorough research to determine the best CRM software that will deliver maximum satisfaction to customers and provide support to other administrative activities.
We prioritized accuracy, reliability, and accessibility in our research, and have unarguably determined that the best in the industry is CRM software.