CRM proves its value in the Covid era

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a huge impact on the economy and businesses, causing significant disruption to their daily operation. But at the same time, it is in the midst of these circumstances that CRM has proven its momentum, helping businesses expand their reach and adapt to customer needs.

Despite the often-heroic efforts to deal with the crisis, the latter has highlighted some interesting systemic weaknesses. For example, legacy CRM systems failed to meet customer concerns during the pandemic, causing key business revenue sources to shut down abruptly.

But now that we are closer to the end of this phase and businesses are gradually beginning to recover, the opportunities for the CRM industry look better than ever. It is certain that, for a long time to come, consumers and employees will continue to avoid face-to-face contacts, large gatherings and multi-person meetings.

The latest cloud CRM technologies allow businesses to grow without having to come in direct contact with their customers. Modern systems help them expand their reach by adapting their response to each customer. Features like data logging, automation, segmentation, dynamic content, triggers, campaigns and interest tracking allow them to target their audience with much greater accuracy. Thus, they ensure that the right message will reach the right person, at the right time and through the right channel.

Even with reduced marketing budgets, modern CRM platforms offer sales and marketing teams the ability to lay emphasis on unique, personalized points of contact, converting more leads to real customers, and adding more points of contact to an already extensive omnichannel mix.

Those that are not only looking to overcome the current crisis, but to improve their business for the future, should seize the opportunity to become more flexible, meeting their customers’ needs and preferences.

CRM is, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future, an important management tool that businesses can rely on to generate more revenue and maximize the value of customer interaction. Ultimately, the most important advantage of any business is the knowledge of its customer base and with CRM, they can use this element as a key point of differentiation to retain existing customers, while constantly acquiring new ones. It is though unfortunate that it took a global pandemic for many decision-makers to realize this.