What Is Customer Relationship Management CRM?
CRM is a software platform with powerful capabilities of data analytics, artificial intelligence, and process automation that is used for the management of customer interactions through multiple communication channels on a unified central platform. The centralized management of customer interactions on a centralized CRM platform improves customer satisfaction and experience, which helps improve customer retention as well as the quality of service.
Primarily, CRM software was designed to manage customer communication for services, marketing, and sales, but with the evolution in the technology, now CRM is also used for managing other stakeholders of a business entity such as contractors, partners, vendors, and team members. The global market size of the CRM software is continuously increasing. According to the Statista projection, the global market size of CRM software will reach $40.26 billion by 2023 from $35.9 billion in 2019.
A professional CRM consultant can help businesses design and customize the CRM platform to achieve the most desired business automation in any business, especially in eCommerce.
A Few Examples of CRM Systems
The global market of CRM software is heavily dominated by traditional software players. This does not mean that other players are not emerging in the market. The market share of the top 10 vendors accounts for about 62.4% while the share of other small players accounts for about 37.8%. The examples of a few major players are listed below.
Salesforce CRM
It is a leader in the CRM industry and also has a decisive lead in all domains like sales, marketing, and services. Salesforce grasps over 18.4% of the global CRM market share with over 150,000 customers across all sizes of businesses worldwide. The cloud-based CRM solutions powered Salesforce is one of the major attractions of the Salesforce business.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM
Microsoft CRM implementation powered by Microsoft cloud platform has increased significantly in 2019. Microsoft’s comprehensive product, which combines both ERP and CRM solutions has achieved deeper traction in the domain of the enterprise market.
Microsoft dynamics cloud CRM ranking rose to the 2nd position with a bigger demand for Microsoft Dynamics GP consultant services in 2019. Microsoft consultant salary is also on a steep rise in all major markets to attract qualified and skilled professionals for catering to the increased demand for Microsoft Dynamics consultant services.
Adobe CRM
Adobe is one of the top players in the CRM market. The share of Adobe CRM in the marketing domain is significant as compared to the other fields. Like Salesforce CRM, Adobe’s CRM solution is growing faster than the average growth of the market.
SAP CRM
SAP is a comprehensive enterprise solution including CRM and ERP modules. SAP CRM qualified for the second position in the CRM market in 2018 with a huge market share of about 8.3% preceded by Salesforce at the top slot. SAP is one of those CRM players, which did not lose its market share as compared to the previous year.
What Are Major Benefits of CRM Integration in eCommerce Businesses?
Two factors in eCommerce business are of a highly critical nature. First, managing multiple channels for marketing, sales, and services simultaneously; and the second, automating the business processes powered by the latest technologies.
The CRM integration offers a solution to the above-mentioned issues in an eCommerce business. The major benefits of using CRM in the eCommerce business are listed below.
- Effective marketing – Through the implementation of CRM, you can make very effective marketing strategies. You have detailed information about different types, and segments of customers who can be your prospective customers. CRM offers you deeper insight into customer behavior and other information, which is very useful in developing data-driven and personalized marketing campaigns through multiple channels.
- Improved user experience – When a customer gets a smooth and flawless automated service from product search, discounts, cart adding, checking out, payment, and shipment, the level of user-experience UX improves significantly. Thus, a satisfied customer becomes your brand ambassador.
- Better order management – A professional CRM offers numerous automated tools for managing demand/supply, generating leads, shipment tracking, customer feedback, and many others that improve the order management process for both customer and merchant.
- Better customer support – A professional eCommerce CRM software allows the customers to talk and register their complaints through multiple communication channels such as email, contact form, phone, SMS, text, chatbot, and others. An automated process of trouble-ticket generation through the CRM platform keeps the communication interactions very transparent and traceable.
- Efficient use of resources – eCommerce CRM platform offers numerous options for promotion, incentives, multiple modes of payment, affiliate programs, customized offers, and many other options, which improve the usability of available inventory, human resources, and digital assets.
- Reduced cart abandonment rate – Normally, the cart abandonment rate in the eCommerce business is very high. There can be many reasons for that cart abandonment such as time availability, payment issues, network problems, or any other. A professional CRM professional helps customers to gently remind about the cart abandonment and help complete the order through personalized messages.
- Valuable business intelligence BI – CRM integration offers a merchant with a deeper insight into the customer’s purchasing behavior, interests, shopping pattern, location, and many others. By digging that raw data through CRM analytics tools, you can get a very valuable business intelligence BI, which can help you improve your business significantly by devising information-based marketing and sales strategies.
- Social media tool integration – Social media play a very important role in modern marketing, sales, and services. Professional CRM offers multiple options for social media integration, which leads to effective marketing and sales through social media platforms.
Final Takeaway
A professional eCommerce CRM software platform offers agility, automation, analytics, and efficiency in all business processes and eCommerce business is fully influenced by process automation. So, the integration of the CRM platform in the eCommerce business opens up a new arena of opportunities by providing numerous benefits as highlighted in this article.