Benefits of Customer Relationship Management (Based on Stats)

Customers are the lifeblood of any business. Therefore, every profit-oriented business needs to attract new customers and build stronger relationships with existing ones.

However, keeping records of customers' data, such as purchase history spread across multiple channels, is overwhelming. CRM technology helps sales and marketing teams manage customer relationships effectively.

Today, the benefits of CRM go beyond improving customer relationships. There is a sea of untapped CRM benefits for your business that tends to go unnoticed.

Let's get started.

What is CRM?

CRM definition: it manages customer data and interactions across multiple channels in a centralized database. Every business owner needs a customer relationship management system to manage their customer journey.

Imagine you know your customers' needs and how to meet them best. Then, you can use the data to automate your marketing and sales processes and to fix leakages in your customer lifecycle.

The top reason why many businesses use CRM is for effective contact management. As your business grows, so do contacts in the CRM database. The best CRM software offers contact management features to help you manage your ever-growing customer interactions.

Why Should Anyone Implement CRM for Success?

The CRM statistics by Grand View Research show that a whopping 91% of businesses with 10+ employees use CRM.

Proper CRM implementation is crucial for experiencing CRM benefits. Here are the top reasons why anyone should implement CRM for success.

• Improves Customer Retention and Satisfaction: 47% of businesses say CRM improves customer retention and satisfaction (Capterra, 2015).
• Increase Sales: 87% of mobile CRM users experience increased sales (FinancesOnline).
• Improves Customer Experience: 85% of CRM users rank improved customer experience as the top CRM benefit (Forbes, 2018).
• Improves Employee Productivity: Mobile CRM can improve employee productivity by up to 15% (Force Manager).
• Better Revenue and Profits: CRM offers an average Return on Investment (ROI) ranging from $8.71 for every dollar spent (Nucleus Research).
• Better Marketing: 79% of marketing leads don’t result in a sale, mainly due to a lack of lead nurturing, a problem CRM helps fix. (Square2Marketing)
• Provides Real-Time Sales Report: 82% of companies use CRM for sales reporting (Grand View Research).
• Reduces Costs: Salesforce CRM helps companies save 25% of their IT costs (Salesforce, 2022).

Benefits of Customer Relationship Management

The benefits of a good CRM system far outweigh its major disadvantage, the cost of implementation. You can use free CRM software for small businesses to start your CRM journey.

However, to enjoy full CRM benefits, you must think long-term when implementing a CRM system. If you only think short-term, what happens when your needs outgrow your current CRM?

As a smart business owner, always choose the best long-term CRM software systems that help you scale your business efficiently.

Here are the many key benefits of CRM for your business.

1. Improves Customer Service and Retention

47% of businesses say CRM improves customer retention and satisfaction (Capterra).

The greatest asset of every successful business is its loyal and satisfied customers.

Do you struggle with providing quality customer service and retaining customers?

Customer service is one of the key components in the CRM process, which improves customer loyalty and satisfaction.

If your customer service is top-notch, you will easily retain customers. 89% of companies agree that top-notch customer service is vital for customer retention (Semrush).

Poor customer service is one of the top reasons businesses record a high customer turnover. You should not be the business that spends money acquiring new customers only to lose them. Instead, use CRM to improve customer service and retention.

CRM is key to a better understanding of customer behavior. It collects important information about your customers from all channels. Your customer care reps can use this information to provide better services for every client.

Real-Life Examples

• Uber: Uber uses CRM to gain insights into various customer issues and quickly resolve them. CRM also helps Uber track its customer satisfaction levels, which helps to offer better customer service to its clients.
• McDonald's: McDonald’s is the largest fast food chain globally, with over 30,000 restaurants and franchises. The company uses CRM to organize user data and provide real-time customer information for all its franchises, which brings better customer retention rates.

2. Increases Sales

87% of mobile CRM users experience increased sales (FinancesOnline).

The best way to increase your sales volume is to retain existing customers. Why? You have a 60% – 70% chance of selling to an existing customer compared to a 5% – 20% chance of selling to a new one.

CRM helps you create an effective sales pipeline that tracks your customer journey. It helps users automate many manual and tedious tasks, such as data entry. Thanks to CRM's sales process automation, your sales team can spend more time on customer interaction for better retention.

Businesses use CRM to store and analyze sales data at a central touchpoint. Any sales rep can easily access the data to improve sales performance.

Real-Life Examples

• Rohan Builders: The real estate firm faced problems tracking leads and finding opportunities for up-selling and cross-selling its products. Before CRM, Rohan Builders closed 12 deals a month. With CRM, its closures increased by 54%.
• Airbnb: The online marketplace for short-term rental stays uses CRM to collect customer feedback to improve the service in the future. We can see that this strategy works because customers share their experiences with others on social media platforms. According to the case study, it helped Airbnb to increase its bookings by 25% through the referral program.

3. Improves Employee Productivity

Mobile CRM can improve employee productivity by up to 15% (Force Manager).

Improving your employee productivity is necessary for maximum results. Imagine a software tool that can automate minor and less-important tasks for your employees.

A good CRM system can have built-in salesforce, workflow, and marketing automation tools. As a result, your sales representatives will get more time to focus on high-value tasks such as identifying customer needs and closing sales.

Employees get a full picture of your business processes and workflow through your CRM dashboard. They can use this information to identify areas that need more attention and improvement.

Real-Life Examples

• Meesho: The Indian-based reseller marketplace uses CRM to automate manual processes and easily share information among employees. As a result, Meesho's employee productivity increased by 70% compared to 5-10% without CRM.
• IndiaLends: The digital lending marketplace uses CRM to handle stressful manual processes and improve employee productivity. With CRM, IndiaLends saw a 90% reduction in human errors.

4. Better Revenue and Profits

CRM offers an average Return on Investment (ROI) ranging from $8.71 for every dollar spent (Nucleus Research).

Using the same sales tactics for all your customers is a disaster waiting to happen. Not all prospects that enter your sales funnel are worth the time and resources.

CRM helps businesses to identify which group of customers are profitable. Top CRM tools rank your leads based on the degree of their interest in your products.

For example, a lead requesting a sales demo is more likely to purchase than one visiting your product's landing page. As a result, you can reduce costs and increase profits by paying more attention to converting customers.

Smart businesses use a reward system to boost customer loyalty. Offering loyal customers discounts or gift rewards help you retain them. Over time, this customer retention strategy will result in better profits.

Using the best sales CRM software is vital for increased profits. The alternative? Using a bad CRM causes your business to lose 10% of its annual income (Validity).

Real-Life Examples

• Humn: Thanks to CRM, a London-based insurance tech company doubled in sales and recorded a 10X customer growth within a year.
• SoMe Connect: The Chicago-based digital marketing agency recorded a whopping 133% increase in revenue with CRM. SoMe Connect's revenue grew from $600,000 to $1.4 million.

5. Reduces Costs

Salesforce CRM helps companies save 25% of their IT costs (Salesforce, 2022).

Every business desires to reduce its Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC) and increase its Customer Lifetime Value (CLV). In other words, businesses aim to reduce how much they spend attracting new customers.

An effective CRM system helps you reduce customer acquisition costs by retaining existing customers. Getting a new customer can be 25 times more expensive than retaining an existing one (Harvard Business Review).

You can use CRM tools to reduce your employees' costs and workload. For example, CRM helps sales reps schedule and plan customer meetings, so they don't lose out on important deals.

Marketing teams can use customer data and sales forecasts to run campaigns with a good return on investment (ROI). Also, CRM reduces customer support costs by reducing the number of employees needed.

Real-Life Examples

• NestAway: The Indian-based home rental startup uses CRM to reduce lead leakage, a huge problem in the home rental market. NestAway reduced its lead leakage by 70% and improved its bookings by 20%.
• Practo: The healthcare application used CRM to save development costs and efforts worth 8 months! With CRM, Practo increased its call center efficiency by 60% per sales rep.
• Activision: The popular video game maker behind the Modern Warfare 3 game used CRM to reduce its annual customer service operating costs by 25%.

6. Better Marketing

79% of marketing leads don’t result in a sale, mainly due to a lack of lead nurturing, a problem CRM helps fix. (Square2Marketing)

Marketing teams use CRM data to provide a personalized marketing experience for their target audience. 99% of marketers view personalization as a vital strategy for improving customer relationships.

The best CRM systems provide valuable customer information for creating a winning marketing campaign for different customers. Marketing CRM software helps you break down your customers into groups based on their needs, interests, and location.

You can send personalized messages to your target audience to get their attention and cause them to buy. For example, a company selling sportswear sends personalized newsletters to male customers highlighting its best-selling male sportswear.

Surely, the company's conversion rates will be better than if it had sent newsletters to all customers showing male and female wear.

Personalized marketing campaigns record higher conversions than general campaigns. It shows your audience that you genuinely care about them and makes them feel important.

Real-Life Example

• Reliability Maintenance Solutions (RMS): RMS's marketing team was losing marketing leads and struggled to manage customers' data. CRM helped RMS to better manage leads and customer journeys with an automated pipeline. The result? RMS experienced an improvement in the quality of interactions and conversions.

7. Provides Real-Time Sales Report

82% of companies use CRM for sales reporting (Grand View Research).

Sales reports are essential for any business that desires to build strong customer relationships. Your sales team can use them to track customers across your sales cycle.

In addition, a good CRM platform shortens your sales cycle, reducing the time it takes to convert prospects.

Real-time sales reports give managers valuable insight into their sales team's performance. We get valuable insights into the team's sales activity for better decision-making.

For example, managers use sales reports to track KPIs such as the number of sales closed, referrals, click-through rates, and new leads in the sales pipeline.

Sales report helps managers to spot changing trends, such as shifting customer preferences and areas for improvement. They can also use existing sales reports to forecast future sales and measure customer sentiment.

Real-Life Examples

• Sify Technologies: The Indian IT company uses CRM to improve its sales reporting system. Sify Technologies' sales team uses real-time CRM sales reports to effectively monitor their sales and other KPIs. CRM helped Sify increase its customer engagement from 50% to 80%.
• Air Tutors: The online tutoring company uses CRM reporting features to track sales processes and spot activities harming customer deals.

8. Improves Customer Experience

85% of CRM users rank improved customer experience as the top CRM benefit (Forbes, 2018).

The best way to boost customer satisfaction is to provide a satisfactory experience. A whopping 89% of consumers will return to buy more from a company where they had a positive customer experience (Salesforce 4th Edition).

CRM helps businesses create a consistent customer experience. Your sales and customer support team probably won't be available round-the-clock to serve customers. However, you can use the CRM automated ticketing feature to provide timely responses to customers' queries for better relationships.

Imagine you have a problem with a product, and it takes 12 hours and 10 minutes to resolve the customer service request. That's the average response time businesses take to handle customer queries (SuperOffice Statistics).

A negative customer experience can prevent your business from hitting its revenue targets. It can also lead to losing potential customers.

Focusing on selling your products and not paying attention to the customer experience leads to massive sales losses. Interestingly, 86% of buyers will buy from a company that offers a great customer experience even if they have to pay more (SuperOffice Statistics).

Real-Life Examples

• Asher College: Asher used various third-party applications to automate phone calls and send SMS and bulk emails. However, this system did not generate the desired results. After Asher switched to CRM, it saw an improvement in customer experience. Its speed-to-lead time increased by 12%, and scheduled appointments grew by 5%.
• Max Life Insurance: The insurance company could not keep up with its customer requests as it grew. Delayed responses threatened its customer experience. With CRM, Max Life Insurance massively improved its response time and process efficiency by 75%.

What Companies Can Benefit from Customer Relationship Management CRM?

Industries such as services, IT, manufacturing, finances, distribution, construction, healthcare, government, retail, and education, frequently use CRM software.

Every business with sales, marketing, and customer service teams can benefit from CRM. Implementing a CRM solution is critical if you want to improve your customer experience and retention rates.

If your company has the below problems, it definitely needs a customer relationship system.

1. Proper Lead Management and Nurturing. Do You Have Trouble Converting Leads?

CRM helps identify the leads likely to convert and focus your best efforts only on qualified prospects.

It increases the likelihood of customer conversion through the following lead management stages.

• Lead Capture Stage: The CRM system collects lead information through a lead capture form and automatically stores it as a new contact card in your customer database.
• Lead Enrichment and Tracking: Here, it finds out more about the lead and tracks all customer interactions with your company.
• Lead Qualification Stage: CRM identifies which leads have the best conversion chance.
• Lead Distribution: It distributes leads to the best-qualified sales reps as per requirements.
• Lead Nurturing: This phase involves carefully managing and nurturing leads to convert them into paying customers.

2. Fast Growth Management. Is Fast Business Growth Affecting Your Customer Service?

Every business desires to scale and grow. However, you can grow so fast that it can affect the quality of customer service. How can you solve this problem? Hiring more customer service and sales agents can be expensive.

A better alternative is using scalable CRM software to manage your business growth because you can scale your CRM plan to fit your new requirements.

3. Unifies Internal Communications. Do You Want to Improve Collaboration Within Your Organization?

CRM helps your business improve customer relations. Likewise, it improves internal communication in your organization.

Employees can use CRM as a communication tool to send notes, and messages, schedule meetings, and tag each other on key activities.

Choosing the CRM Solution for Your Business

CRM is an essential tool for any business, irrespective of size. However, you don't have to wait for your business to grow big to implement a CRM system.

With many CRM solutions in the market, choosing the best CRM tool that offers you a competitive advantage in your field can be difficult.

Before choosing a CRM solution, identify the customer relationship problems you want to address. Then find out which CRM tool offers you the features you need to solve these problems.

Here are the best CRM solutions for your business.

To learn more about CRM, check out the following Founderjar articles:

• CRM Implementation
• Compare CRM Software Costs of Top CRM Solutions
• Free CRM Software for Small Businesses
• Best CRM Software Examples
• Best eCommerce CRM Software
• Best CRM Software for Logistics and Transportation

Sources

1. Customer Relationship Management Market Size, Share, & Trends Analysis Report
2. CRM User Research Infographic
3. 75 Basic CRM Software Statistics: 2022 Data Analysis & Market Share
4. How To Improve Customer Experiences With Real-Time Analytics
5. The Important Statistics you Need to Know about Mobile CRM
6. CRM Pays Back $8.71 For Every Dollar Spent
7. CRM For Business Growth in 2022
8. New Research: Companies Globally Report an Average of 25% IT Cost Savings with Salesforce
9. 70 Powerful Customer Retention Statistics You Need to Know in 2021
10. The State of CRM Data Management 2022
11. 24 Data-Backed Reasons to Personalize Your Marketing
12. 4th Edition State of the Connected Customer
13. New 2022 Study: 62% of Companies Ignore Customer Service Emails
14. 32 Customer Experience Statistics You Need To Know For 2023
15. 79% of Inbound Marketing Lead Doesn’t Convert
16. Leadsquared Case Study
17. Uber’s Use Of Salesforce CRM To Improve Customer Service And Driver Retention
18. CRM Strategy at McDonald’s
19. Learning from Your Customers – The Airbnb Way
20. 10 Examples of Businesses Using CRM to Boost Sales Efficiency
21. Freshworks Customer Case Studies
22. Pipedrive Case Studies

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