In the time of the eCommerce bloom, information became even more valuable currency in a fight for every customer. All retailers, being primarily online, with additional online sales or with only online promotion for their physical store, have to accept the digital transformation of the retail chains.
CRM or Customer relationship management is a software solution that can help with the effectiveness of interactions with customers. The driving motives behind CRM integration in retail business are increasing efficiency, improving customer service and better communication and management of customers. All with the help of information management
What will such software bring on the table for retailers? Before you order new business software for customer management, please browse through our list of benefits of CRM solutions for retail.
- Better customer segmentation
CRM solution helps with better informational organization. The idea is to know more about your customer. The relevant data could be shopping preferences, interests, gender, demographic data, or something else that can drive profiling.
Having precise data of the customers enables personalized customer service. You could use this insight to segment your efforts to each group. In the end, using customer profile data should result in retail decisions aimed towards customers you currently have.
- Targeted promotions
Customer segmentation is done, and what now? CRM withholds all relevant information about your customers. When you know the habits and what customer wants you can target him systematically. If a particular customer visited a specific product on your store, you could send him special offers.
The way to do it depends on your company workflow. Customers can be targeted through Google or Facebook ads, or directly with an offer through email. This strategy opens the door to relevant lead creation and conversion.
- Improved Customer Experience
The segmentation data can help in creating better customer experience. For physical retailers, you can arrange your inventory based on purchase preferences of customers. For eCommerce, additional information will enhance their shopping experience. Shipment tracking, order status update, inventory checks, new offers, favourite item alerts, and other tools can increase customer satisfaction.
In the customer support, having a history with all past activity of a customer will shorten the time needed for an agent to find the solution. This brings us to the next benefit.
- Improved Efficiency
As all business software solution, the idea behind CRM is to automate repetitive action, self-service processes, and other less relevant tasks so that the company can focus on core business.
With the CRM system in charge of small tasks like forms, reports and some legal issues, your sales team can focus on closing the leads and customer service.
Another layer for efficient use of data from CRM solution is through communication, emails, and documents that are automatically stored in the system. That means that in any given time, all teams and employees can access the information.
It makes the retailers less dependent on individual agents, but more critical shared data can boost sales and marketing initiatives at the same time.
- Better analytics and reporting
Centralized data management enables improved analysis and better insights. Most CRM will have an automated report generation. Everyone in the organization will get all the information on a customer with one click.
With such insights and correlated sales plans, agents can create opportunities for new sales, promotions for customer retention or after sale marketing.
- Optimize marketing efforts
Marketing team with CRM has an unbelievably valuable tool. The customer profiles are the fuel for marketing activities. Segmentation, targeting, and promotion creation are all simplified cause of the information factor.
You don’t have to bust your head in the digital marketing target group creation. There are clear leads from customer behaviour data. The guys in marketing can create products and promotions and roll them out at the right time.
- Create loyalty programs
Making sales is the primary objective for any retailer and maintaining the satisfied customer another critical task. CRM if done and implemented right has all the data you need to create effective retention strategies.
With the whole purchase history on your dashboard, you can build loyalty programs that include points and discounts. Cost of keeping the great customer with discounts is lower than getting new buyers.
Why choose custom software development?
There are two ways you can go with CRM implementation. Many large software players have CRM products that can be implemented in the retail world. For every solution, the contractor will need to customize the software to align it with the workflow.
Branded solutions tend to have a higher price, and are implemented with certified contractors, not solution developers. Sometimes this process can be inflexible and time-consuming.
There is another way. You can choose an experienced software company that makes tailored made solutions for every project.
FortySeven Software Professionals provide IT staff for the realization of the products. The idea is to create a CRM solution that Client currently needs for the current situation and customers, depending on the requirements.
The advantage of custom development is having IT professionals working with you on the solution that have features that address all your needs.
Top benefits of the custom solution are:
- personalization
- support and maintenance
- scalability
- cost-effectiveness
How does this work?
- The first step is sharing your ideas and expectations.
- After the requirements analysis, the initial plan will be specified, and the number of IT professionals will be assigned
- Discussing the details with the Client and choosing the engagement model. The Client has total control over the project the whole time
- Outcome: The client has full control over Intellectual Property Rights, tech and business know-how, suggestions on the needed solution, successful implementation and up to 24-hours management supply.
Customer Relationship Management is a powerful tool that creates transparency with the ability to customize the data fields and workflow completely. Centralized and data with complete history for every purchase, customer, procurement, item status and other relevant information for a retailer can make life easier for all the departments.
With the automation of repetitive processes, sales and marketing will be able to focus more on their primary task. CRM software will make your company more efficient and with extra time and insight give you an opportunity to be more competitive on the market.
