Customer Relationship Management CRM is undoubtedly a very powerful tool and a great weapon for any company to improve all aspects of its business. However, many companies have popular misconceptions and wrong understandings about CRM software and tools.
These misunderstandings in Customer Relationship Management need to be corrected rapidly. The more time you lose without CRM in your business, the more profit and revenue you will cost your company.
In this article, we will show you these misconceptions and the truth about them so you can easily understand the Customer Relationship Management CRM nature and benefit.
1. CRM is only software.
CRM is a complete system with many components. The CRM software program is just a small part of it. These components include business processes, technological implementations, and people who run the process.
You can not reap the full benefits of Customer Relationship Management CRM without successful cooperation between all of these components. So you need to understand that CRM is not an IT issue and a software program. The software part is simply a part of the CRM system increasing its abilities as an enabling device. The system at first is designed by people, then when it works properly it can do its job implementing and managing your business needs.
When these factors cooperate it can deliver value to your customers and company in many different ways.
However, the right order of business must be followed to implement the CRM programs properly; this includes factors as the right operation sequence, effective business strategies, proper personnel’s attitudes, and the suitable IT management.
2.CRM is complicated and difficult.
The definition of CRM in simple words is to find new customers, retain them to be long time customers, and maximize profits and business growth.
However, the technology is developing rapidly so this puts some pressure on IT specialists to keep up with the new systems.
This may make the basic concepts of installing the CRM system, but the cause of these concepts may not be that hard after all. In the past before the IT tools, customer relationships were managed by primitive customer databases.
Nowadays, technology has progressed a lot and the whole customer management is changed with better tools. However, the core behind targets and CRM remains the same. The goal is always to increase profits and augment the company’s growth.
Try to keep this CRM structure in mind and you will surely know that it is more than computer software.
3. CRM is expensive and your small business won’t afford it.
It is undoubtedly wrong that small businesses can not afford IT services such as CRM. Nowadays, service providers have created smaller plans designed for small businesses’ needs. These plans have affordable prices and limited functions.
You can operate these systems easily without an expensive IT professional team. To get the best results we think you should focus on the procedure and its strategies and then use the software in the last part only.
4. Inaccurate evaluation for the Return On Investment in CRM.
When implementing a CRM software, Return On investment is the measurement of returns gained against the costs sustained. Some people say that CRM gives a low ROI, but this way of thinking is not reliable.
The truth is that you are more likely to get a poor ROI when your business is not implementing CRM systems, this will cost your business more.
The poor ROI usually has some reasons that include ignoring marketing strategies and people, absence of reliable measurements to your results, absence of vision, and goals concerning opportunities approaching and growth potential.
These points are very important to tackle and solve before adopting a CRM system. If you manage these problems before using a CRM you will get the best of it and you can not get a low ROI value.
5. Which team will be responsible for implementing the CRM?
Here is one of the most asked questions about CRM. The CRM system implementation can not be a single team’s responsibility to do. Many teams can be involved such as marketing, sales, customer service, or IT.
The one responsible mainly should be the company’s CEO.
The CEO is the leader of the company and he should be responsible for making and formulating the business strategies. If you want your business to achieve the most success, the CEO and his associates should be educated and trained about the implementation of CRM systems.
A deep understanding of all the aspects of CRM programs to gain the maximum benefits of CRM system implementation.