10 CRM benefits that enhance buyer experience

Understand the benefits of a CRM system for your business.

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So your sales team has done everything they could to convert a lead into a buyer—sent out emails, queued nurturing follow-ups, and even shared discount coupons. And, yet, all they get are crickets from the lead. 

In such a case, it makes sense to blame the marketing team for sending such poor-quality leads, right? 

This age-old marketing vs sales squabble isn’t the right culprit.

Did you know that these leads were already familiar with your services? One of them downloaded the feature brochure they are most interested in, and another even checked out case studies for their industry. 

The real problem is a lack of collaborative data. If the sales teams had access to additional information about the lead such as touchpoint or customer journey stage, they would be able to drive personalized conversations and increase the odds of conversion significantly.

A powerful CRM might just be the solution to better aligning your teams and getting a unified customer view with data that’s accessible to everyone. The benefits of CRM go deeper; this is just the tip of the iceberg.  

In this article, let’s look at the benefits of CRM for aligning your sales and marketing teams, achieving better sales conversions, and growing your bottom line.

How does CRM software improve your buyer’s journey?

Gone are the days when a buyer’s journey was long because they had to keep repeating themselves as they were tossed between different teams. Today, customers expect to interact with one team and have a seamless experience.

This means being aware of what a lead talked about with the marketing team or how they’re interacting with marketing campaigns is indispensable.

Thankfully, a CRM can help you get rid of siloed teams. A holistic CRM software provides:

  • A unified view of prospect interactions with your business

  • All the information necessary to help gain your prospects’ trust

Think how much faster you will gain the trust of your leads and customers when you engage with them in contextual conversations, remember what is important to them, and respond quickly to their concerns!

All this precious data helps you elevate your buyers’ experience as they engage with you. Consequently, they end up buying from you–often becoming repeat customers if the experience is truly remarkable. 

Ultimately, better conversion and customer satisfaction rates follow, improving your bottom line.

With that, let’s look at each CRM benefit individually so you can understand the full potential of using a CRM tool.

Can CRM software help my business make more money?

CRM software can undoubtedly help businesses make more money by optimizing various aspects of their operations. They provide a centralized location for businesses to store customer data, allowing companies to gain a comprehensive understanding of their customers' preferences, behavior, and purchase history. This valuable information enables businesses to target their marketing efforts more effectively, leading to higher conversion rates and increased sales. Their ability to automate routine tasks like lead nurturing and customer follow-ups frees up employees' time to focus on higher-value activities, such as closing deals and building stronger customer relationships, which can directly impact revenue generation. 

Additionally, CRMs improve customer retention and repeat business. With a well-implemented CRM system, businesses can provide personalized customer experiences, addressing individual needs and concerns more efficiently. Satisfied customers are more likely to remain loyal and make repeat purchases, contributing significantly to a company's revenue over time. They can also help identify cross-selling and upselling opportunities within existing customer bases, increasing the average transaction value and overall revenue.

What are the benefits of CRMs?

1. Enhance prospecting with high-quality leads

A powerful CRM assists with prospecting by allowing you to segment the leads based on their behavior, interest, and location.  For instance, you can segment leads based on those who have visited your pricing page and send targeted messages with offers that’ll interest them.

Second, you can capture lead information using web forms and save it in your CRM for further nurturing.  Another CRM benefit is the integrated chatbot that most CRM vendors, such as Freshsales offer.

This allows you to automatically welcome a lead to your site with the smart bot asking questions (for instance, “Why are you here for today?”) and answering queries around the clock. 

Not only does this reduce your response time, but it also helps you further segment leads and identify high-quality ones. 

An AI-powered CRM also assigns a predictive score for each lead based on their engagement with your business, telling you how likely a lead is to convert. Armed with this, your salespeople would know which leads to prioritize and when.

Talk about identifying and targeting only high-quality leads!

2. Focus on the right deals

An AI-powered CRM gives you a visual overview of all the deals in the pipeline using tags such as ‘likely to close,’ ‘at risk,’ and ‘gone cold.’

Having this visual picture allows you to: 

  • Track the progress on each deal throughout the sales pipeline

  • Gain a quick understanding of the status of deals

  • Focus on the deals that will bring you the most profit

  • Identify and resolve bottlenecks in the pipeline

  • Determine which deals are likely to close and where you need to dedicate more resources

In the same vein, a proficient CRM tool employs artificial intelligence to study all the interactions with a specific lead and pair the info with historical data of what’s worked with similar leads in the past. Using this information, AI recommends the next best actions to take, ultimately maximizing your odds of closing the deal.

“Our sales managers use CRM to convert more marketing leads to real contracts. We’ve noticed that the CRM system helps identify, add and categorize new leads quickly. Our sales managers have a possibility to prioritize orders and close more deals.”

– Maryna Astapchyk, Business analyst, Elinext.com.

Related article: The complete guide to building a successful sales pipeline

Learn more

3. Stay on top of sales activities

Did you know that 82% of buyers expect an immediate response from businesses? And, here’s the shocker: 62% of these buyers consider ten minutes or less as immediate.

Fortunately, one of the benefits of a CRM is helping you keep up with customer expectations, including immediately getting back to them. How? By leveraging a chatbot.

For queries that require human intervention, the chatbot can direct them to a specific sales rep. A CRM with an auto-assign feature can also help you organize your team by assigning territory-based leads to specific sales reps, further reducing the lead response time.

For example, a real estate business would have property listings and projects in multiple cities. This means their system would contain inquiries for various regions. The auto-assign feature would direct all leads from Region A to Realtor 1, while those related to Region B can go to Realtor 2, and so on.

Similarly, you can use workflows to automate mundane processes. 

For example, Doozer, a Freshsales user, uses a lead qualification workflow to automatically send an intro email with a Calendly link to prospects who share their contact info on their website form. If a lead doesn’t respond, another workflow is triggered that automatically follows up with them.

Best of all, with an AI-powered CRM, you can schedule automated, yet personalized follow-ups at a time that best suits your recipients. A CRM like Freshsales also provides workflow templates, which are a predesigned set of actions that can be automated, so your sales reps don’t need to set up workflows from scratch. 

 “My biggest benefit of using a CRM is that it remembers my follow-ups which are weeks or months down the road. That happens a lot in real estate.

I have clients with leases expiring in 6 months or needing to relocate before school starts. It’s a big advantage to have a reminder to come up with details about conversations from months earlier.

My clients know that I am on top of their needs. Even if I write the scheduled call in my planner, there is no room for the notes and history I need to make my calls valuable.”

– Eric Nerhood, President, Premier Property Buyers.

4. Improve conversion rate

A CRM system can help you boost your conversion rate in several ways.

By tracking your prospects’ behavior on your site, you can tell where they’re dropping off and where they are entering your sales funnel. You can use this data to minimize the drop-off points and maximize the converters, therefore improving your website experience for more conversions.

“If we know where most of the buyers are coming from, we can then invest in that traffic to get more buyers. If we know where most people fall off in the buyer’s journey, we know where the leaks are in the path. We can then plug in the holes to increase the number of buyers, and hence our profits as business owners.”

– Vaishali Nikhade, Business Strategist.

A CRM also provides a unified view of all customer activity conducted by both the sales and marketing teams. This is not just limited to their contact details, but the complete lead information, including: 

  • Prospects’ behavior on your site or in-app

  • Emails, call recordings, and chat conversations

  • Marketing materials they downloaded and engaged with

  • Salesperson’s notes, upcoming appointments, and meetings

  • How likely they are to convert

  • Suggestions for the next best actions

And more! 

This 360° view aligns both teams so that marketing knows the campaign that brought in quality leads. The sales team, on the other hand, gets a complete context of the leads to drive personalized interactions and move them to closure. 

For instance, if a lead has been talking to Salesperson A about a feature, Salesperson B can easily pick up the conversation from where it was left by accessing Salesperson A’s notes in the CRM.

 "A CRM tool helps build better customer relationships because a customer no longer works with one person at a company. For example, in the SaaS world, a customer might have between 5 and 15 different people on a call dedicated to their account. 

A CRM allows all the players to see the communication, notes, and activity everyone else has with the customer, so they are caught up, make real-time recommendations for the customer, and do not have to repeat themselves."

– Marc Rioux, Co-Founder, Second Eclipse.

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5. Increase deal value by upselling and cross-selling at the right time

You’re 60 to 70% more likely to sell to existing customers. In contrast, your chances of selling to new prospects are only between 5 and 20%.

However, cross-selling and upselling are only successful when you target the right people at the right time.

With a CRM giving you visibility on your customers’ website and in-app activities, you can see who might be interested in buying more from you. For example, you can tell that a beginner package customer is likely ready to upgrade to a higher-tier package if they visit your pricing page.

Moreover, if you pay attention to your customer’s interactions with your product, you can upsell or cross-sell further. For example, a basic package customer trying to access advanced features.

6. Boost customer satisfaction

With your teams aligned and working as one, reduced response times, and contextual conversations engaging customers, there’s no reason why customers wouldn’t be satisfied.

A CRM can help your entire team come forward with a single brand voice as everyone can access prospect information, customer’s past behavior, questions, and interactions with your business.

7. Create cross-functional and actionable reporting

Utilizing a CRM system for cross-functional and collaborative reporting helps businesses foster better communication and decision-making. By consolidating customer data and interactions in a centralized platform, different departments, such as sales, marketing, and customer support, can access a unified view of customer information. This enables teams to collaborate more effectively, align their efforts, and gain holistic insights into customer behaviors and preferences. By breaking down silos and sharing relevant data, CRM-driven cross-functional reporting empowers businesses to make data-driven decisions, enhance customer experiences, and optimize overall performance across various departments.

8. Create customer-focused automation

CRM systems allow sales teams to automate repetitive tasks such as email communication, lead nurturing, and follow-ups. By analyzing customer data and behavior, sales teams can create automation workflows that cater to individual customer needs, and deliver relevant content and responses at the right time. This automation not only saves time and resources but also ensures consistent and prompt interactions with customers, ultimately leading to higher satisfaction levels, increased engagement, and improved customer retention. CRM-driven automation help businesses prioritize customer-centricity by delivering personalized experiences that resonate with their audience. 

“Given that retention [and customer satisfaction] efforts often cross multiple departments (support sending out QA polls, AE reaching out on a birthday, IT responding to a feature request), having all communication in a single system allows the organization to present a united front and move toward the same goal.”

– Kyle Buzzard, SVP of Sales, Anura.io

On top of this, the sales and marketing alignment means both teams can use each other’s data to:

  • Understand the target persona better

  • Tweak marketing campaigns and personalize messaging based on what interests leads and

  • Empower sales enablement by creating the required content and resources

All this ultimately helps you close more deals and increase revenue.

9. Maintain a centralized database across your organization

A centralized CRM database is crucial for businesses looking to maintain a competitive edge because it ensures data accuracy, promotes collaboration, and enables personalized customer engagement. 

A centralized database ensures that customer data is consistently updated and easily accessible to all authorized users within the organization, enabling comprehensive customer profiling. It collects and organizes data, such as contact details, purchase history, communication records, and interactions, in one place. The wealth of information empowers businesses to gain a holistic understanding of their customers. This enables personalized communication, targeted marketing, and tailored product offerings.

It also fosters collaboration and improves customer service. Sales, marketing, and customer support teams can access the same customer information, leading to more coordinated efforts in serving customers. This unified view of customers enhances issue resolution, streamlines operations, and ultimately contributes to improved customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Overall, using a CRM to maintain a centralized database of pertinent information enhances customer relationships and drives revenue growth.

10. Boost customer retention

Leveraging a CRM system to boost customer retention is a proactive approach that helps businesses build lasting relationships, reduce customer turnover, and maximize the lifetime value of their customer base.

CRMs enable companies to maintain a comprehensive record of customer interactions, preferences, and purchase history. With this data, businesses can develop more personalized and relevant marketing campaigns and customer service initiatives. By providing tailored experiences and addressing individual needs, companies can foster stronger connections with their customers, leading to increased loyalty.

CRM systems also facilitate efficient communication, allowing for timely follow-ups, proactive issue resolution, and targeted offers that keep customers engaged and satisfied. Automated workflows and reminders help ensure that no customer goes unnoticed, enhancing the overall customer experience.

Additionally, CRMs empower businesses to identify at-risk customers and implement retention strategies effectively. By analyzing customer behavior and engagement data, companies can spot warning signs of dissatisfaction and take proactive measures to address them, ultimately reducing churn rates.

Choosing the CRM software

Assess your company size and requirements from the CRM. While choosing a CRM, make sure it fits right into your business ecosystem and solves all your sales challenges.

  • Budget Once you understand your business requirements, determine the pricing structure that’ll suit you best. Watch out for hidden costs in terms of support, maintenance, and implementation

  • Scalability As your business grows, so do your requirements. An advanced sales CRM with pay-as-you-grow pricing should support your business needs as it scales. 

  • Ease of use You need a CRM that makes your life easier, so choose a sales CRM that is simple and intuitive. It shouldn’t make you roam around the software to get work done.

  • Customer reviews As you narrow down your list of ideal CRMs, make sure to check trusted review websites, such as G2 and Capterra, to get first-hand reviews from the existing customer base.

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Benefits of CRM FAQ

What are the different types of CRM?

The different types of CRM systems include operational CRM for sales, marketing, and service automation, analytical CRM for data analysis and insights, and collaborative CRM for enhancing customer interactions. There are also industry-specific CRMs tailored to meet the unique needs of various sectors, such as healthcare, finance, and e-commerce.

What is an open-source CRM?

An open-source CRM is a customer relationship management software that is available to the public for free, allowing users to access, modify, and distribute its source code. Businesses can customize open-source CRMs to suit their specific needs and benefit from a community of developers for ongoing support and improvements.

My business is small. Do I need a CRM Solution?

Even small businesses can benefit from a CRM solution. A CRM helps organize customer data, streamline processes, and improve communication, enhancing customer relationships and efficiency. It can help small businesses manage leads, track interactions, and foster growth, making it a valuable tool for scaling and maximizing profitability.

Who uses CRM?

CRM is used by a wide range of organizations across various industries. Businesses of all sizes, including small startups, mid-sized companies, and large enterprises, utilize CRM systems to manage customer relationships, streamline sales and marketing processes, and improve customer support. It is a versatile tool for enhancing customer interactions and driving growth.

Are there any disadvantages or harms of using a CRM?

While CRM systems offer numerous benefits, there are potential disadvantages. Implementation costs, data privacy concerns, and the need for staff training can be challenges. A poorly executed CRM can result in data inaccuracies and may not deliver expected results if not aligned with business processes. Careful planning and customization are essential to mitigate these drawbacks.