How can CRM software help me improve customer relationships?

Learn how a CRM can boost your customer relationships

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

Businesses rely on trust and building strong connections with their customers. One of the most powerful ways to do that is through a customer relationship management (CRM) tool. Thebest CRM softwareputs the customer front-and-center, so you can optimize your marketing and sales processes to drive conversions and boost revenue.

There are some excellent CRM tools out there. Once you’ve chosen theright CRM platform for your small business, andimplemented it in an effective way, it’s time to roll up your sleeves.

We’ve got you. These helpful nuggets of information will improve customer interactions, optimize your processes, and increase your bottom line.

Choose the best CRM software for business

The right CRM technology platform will provide you with the framework, measurements, and tools you need to transform customer relationships. Depending on your needs, we’ve written some very helpful buyer’s guides so you can make an informed choice, including thebest CRM for real estatebusinesses and thebest free CRM softwareplatforms.

Understand why it’s important to improve customer relationships

Why should you care about improving customer relationships in the first place?We believe it comes down to several areas.

Customers are increasingly looking for authentic businesses and brands that they can trust. You build connections through content messaging and communications that speak to a customer’s needs. Great customer relationships help them feel valued, and show that you care.

Retaining customers is just as important as acquiring new ones. You can strengthen existing relationships to avoid customers going to a competitor. It’s good business practice.

Are you a pro? Subscribe to our newsletter

Sign up to the TechRadar Pro newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed!

Focusing on customer relationships is a clear signal to everyone that you’re building a brand and culture that embodies trust and bases its success on great relationships.

Ultimately,great customer relationships drive successful business growth.

Realize that building better customer relationships is about optimizing customer-facing processes

Businesses rely on efficient ways to find, engage with, and sell to customers. This means building repeatable, streamlined CRM processes. You want every interaction to be quick, easy, and valuable to your customers and your business.

It’s a great idea to frame “improvements to customer relationships” around the processes that move clients through your marketing funnel and into your sales pipeline. When you’re looking to improve customer relationships, what you’re really doing is optimizing the business processes that interact with the customer.

This is an ongoing, continual approach. As you define, measure, analyze, improve, and control each CRM area, you’ll be strengthening customer relationships and helping your business grow.

Focus on improving one area of customer relationships at a time

You can’t improve everything about your client relationships at once. Prioritize the specific CRM processes that will have the biggest positive impact the most quickly. Select one area where you can make changes, get that right, and then move on to other areas. Don’t be tempted to do too much, too soon.

Consider these suggestions for small business CRM improvement areas

Here are some useful starting points for customer relationship improvements:

CRM platforms vary widely in the features they provide to your business, but these areas are universal.

Understand the specific CRM processes that fall into each improvement area

Once you know what customer relationship area you want to improve, you’ll need to dig into the underlying processes. For the specific area:

Use CRM metrics to create a baseline for customer relationship processes

You can’t improve what you can’t measure. Once you’ve established the processes and touchpoints that you want to improve, identify the main metrics that show how they’re performing right now. Track these metrics so you can create a reliable, accurate baseline for their “default” performance.

You’ll use this as the baseline for future improvements—as you make changes, you should see some variance from these baseline scores that show how effective your improvements are.

Questions that drive actions to improve customer relationships

Every business is unique, so we can’t say exactly what will work for your customer base. What we can do, though, is to share some questions you can ask to define the specific CRM changes you want to make.

Questions about small business CRMs and marketing

Questions about capturing and using customer information

Questions about customer communications and interactions

Questions about small business CRM measures and metrics

As you answer these questions, you’ll create a list of proposed CRM changes for further analysis and discussion.

Understand the user-led, data-driven changes that will most improve specific CRM processes

Good principles for making changes to your CRM processes include:

You should have a list of specific, well-reasoned, and supported changes you can make to your CRM processes and platform.

Make the changes and measure improvements

Here we go! It’s time to experiment. There are several approaches you can take to implementing changes, so mix and match to see what works for you:

You should be closely tracking your CRM metrics throughout. Once you’ve made the changes, analyze your results closely. Compare them to your baseline to ensure you’ve made sustainable CRM improvements.

Once you’re confident that a change has worked, you can make it part of your daily operations.

Keep tracking CRM metrics so everything runs smoothly

Once you’ve made improvements to a particular area, you’re not quite done. Create CRM reports that show how you’re doing compared to your initial baseline. Look for significant variations that could highlight underlying issues. Put control measures in place to bring everything back on track.

Repeat these steps to continue optimizing customer relationships

Improving customer relationships is never quite done. There will always be more initiatives, better changes, stronger processes, and greater benefits to the bottom line. Keep at it. Once you’ve optimized one part of the process, move on to another. That way, you’ll build a culture of continual improvement, focused on putting the customer front-and-center. Your business success is sure to follow.

Further reading on CRM software

Take a look at our guide to thebest CRMs for small business, and to thebest free CRM softwareif you’re on a budget. Read up onwhy you need a small business CRM, so you know what you’re getting into, and understandhow a CRM can drive customer growth.

Paul is a professional writer who creates extensively researched, expert, in-depth guides across business, finance, and technology. He loves the challenge of taking complex subjects and breaking them down so they are easy to understand. He can quote ‘The Princess Bride’ in its entirety and believes the secret to good writing is Earl Grey tea.

7 myths about email security everyone should stop believing

Best Usenet client of 2024

Smeg Combi Steam Oven review: a multi-functional countertop oven that looks stunning and cooks well