The Best CRM Software 2019
The Definitive Review and Tutorial 2019
(updated monthly)

What is a CRM system?

There are various reasons why organizations use CRM solutions.  In the beginning, the CRM industry primarily focused on PR people and sales while offering a way for customer information to be stored and to keep track of communication with these customers.  Fast forward to today, and CRM solutions stretch across wide areas of business which include marketing, analytics, customer relationship management and even some lightweight project management.  There are even some CRM systems which have chatbot’s built in as well as call capabilities, which allow reps to communicate with clients directly within the system. 

CRM software has become so affordable, that even the smallest business is able to invest, which is largely down to the proliferation of SaaS solutions which are affordable as well as deliver shed loads of functionality without the hassle of a major software implementation project. 

Of course, how you effectively manage your customer relationships is something that is personal to each business.  There are lots of factors to consider when reaching out to new customers and retaining their information including how the business is marketed, operated and even which salespeople are employed.

Now, most small to mid-sized businesses choice of tool to achieve this is by using the spreadsheet.  However, what happens is the organization quickly grows beyond this once they realize how valuable each customer interaction is together with how many ways this can be achieved.   In this day and age, you can interact with customers in more ways than ever before via new advertising avenues, ever growing lists of social media channels and a whole host of digital marketing strategies. 

But how can you manage these interactions? 

Well, that’s where an efficient CRM comes into play.

Not only are CRM’s far easier to use than a spreadsheet, the added bonuses are that it is able to remember all customer contact information, every interaction whether via email, phone or social media.

Remember though,

CRM software isn’t solely about maintaining and tracking contact information, although many look upon it at as mainly being a sales tool, it has most definitely moved well beyond that. 

Selecting the correct CRM software for you and your business can improve your team’s productivity and collaboration tenfold as well as heighten customer satisfaction.  Customer and marketing service departments can really improve their operations by using the data from the CRM to record and reuse their customer’s incident information as well as effectively segment the demographics. 

Finally, CRM software helps to coordinate interdepartmental actions and can help measure and set goals, track and deliver email marketing campaigns and basically keep a beady eye on what people are saying about you and your business on social media.