The ‘R’ in CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is where the genie resides, i.e.customer relationship. In the era of overstimulation and over-crowdedness, relationships are the key to reach the customers’ hearts. Retail customers these days desire more personalized care in the marketplace, right from the store to the leading social media platforms such as Facebook, and Instagram. Everyone wants to be treated as a unique entity with unique demands and unique supply.
Focus on the client relationships will help the companies encourage loyalty amongst customers. This is where a CRM solution comes into play. CRM applications allow the retailers to pay more attention to their customers’ needs right from the moment they enter the store.
The software simplifies personalization and exhibits positive vibes for enriching customer experience. The integration of offline and online services generates a welcoming experience for the customers.
What is CRM?
CRM in the retail industry serves as a central hub that amalgamates marketing, sales, and customer service processes. It helps the retailers to track all the stages of a sales process. It aids in planning strategic decisions and marketing services/goods efficiently. The customer relationship management facilitates business transactions, empowers sales representatives, eliminates communication hurdles, which in turn, increases productivity. Alignment of sales process, and management of customer data helps the retailers to build profitable and long lasting customer relationships.
What role does a CRM application play in a Retail Business?
1. Customer History
A CRM software stores all the information about customers such as their profile, past purchases, phone details, business cards, etc. It keeps a track of all the history of a customer which will give you insights into their individual needs and behaviors. This, in turn, helps in checking out the customer demands and improving the business architecture for enhancing customer experience.
2. Classification
Fetching all the customers information would help you to segregate your customers in varying sections. This way you can segment the market in groups and handle customers effectively. The categories may be of – teens, families, vegan, long-term customers, new-buyers, heavy purchasers, and much more. This classification would help you to design a proper strategy which will suit your customers better.
3. Customer Tracking
A Retail CRM solution will help you to track all the customers individually. It provides you a clear picture about the customers behavior, i.e. which of them are loyal and which are not. This way, you can provide them refined services. It will help in rewarding loyal customers to retain their loyalty and fetch more customers.
4. Track Purchases
CRM allows you to have an eye on all the purchases made on an individual basis. This will let you know the interests of customers and determine the faults of some product. This way, the owners can provide personalized services to the users through newsletters or emails. In the case of a damaged delivery, you can also provide the next purchase at a cheaper price, or may even opt for a free service.
5. Streamline Sales
CRM in Retail can be used to identify the customers’ original intent of visiting their store. This way all the conversations can be streamlined and the data can be tracked easily. For instance, if the customer has recently bought a washing machine then an ironing board or matching dryer can be suggested to them with a CRM application.
6. Reduce Training Time
A CRM software eases the training method of employees. By having all the processes unified in a single solution, it becomes simpler to train the employees and the time consumed is significantly reduced. The workers become efficient at their jobs as less time is spent on the checkout counter doing recurring jobs.
7. Stock Management
A CRM solution helps the employee to know the stock levels in advance. Whenever there is an understock or stock overflow situation at the store, managers and employees can take appropriate decisions for overcoming the situation.
8. Improve ROI
By availing the data collected from their CRM applications, retailers can find out which marketing strategies proved to be most profitable and which were completely rejected by the customers. This way, they can tweak and reconfigure the undesirable strategies and turn them better. By honing their strategies, retail businesses can gauge their effectiveness and generate a higher return on investment.
Features to be integrated in a CRM for Retail Business
1. Customer Database
Allows the collection and storage of all the customer-related information regarding present and prospective clients in a unified place. This feature helps in the identification of valuable customers and permits the agents to follow client interactions.
2. Appointment Scheduler
It keeps a record of all the contact appointment schedules happening within the company. Have an eye on all the meetings with the customers and accurately schedule future appointments.
3. Contact Management Tool
The system is useful for tracking all the contacts. It even aids in planning customer interactions.
4. Sales Lead Tracking
The system tracks all the data regarding potential customers and determines sales opportunities.
5. Quote Management
The quote management toolkit helps in changing and managing details related to the quotes given to customers.
6. Document Management
It allows the storage and sharing of all the vital documents in a centralized location. It allows easy access of the documents from any location, at any time, from any device.
7. Order Management
The order management toolkit makes it feasible for managing customized pricing, lead-to-cash cycle time optimization, accelerating revenue generation.
8. Analytics and Reports
The feature generates sales forecasting with the powerful dashboards. It helps in tracking purchasing trends and determining customer behaviour.
9. 3rd Party Integrations
Integrations with other systems facilitate the exchange of data with other applications like email, calendars, notes, and others. It is integrated with the sources of external industries data.
Also Read- How Can IoT Improve the Retail Industry?
Points to be considered while developing a CRM for Retail Industry
- Have a clear set of features for your CRM in retail business. Identify the requirements, and share them clearly with the development team. Don’t go for bells and buttons that are hardly going to be availed in your organization. Pay attention to having a design involving the basic feature kit and an intuitive design. Ideally, document all these features and share it with your team before they get their hands in the development process.
- Breakdown the CRM solution into different roles- sales, marketing, support. This way the employees would have access to specific information and feature kit. Set the privacy controls as per the user roles. This will eliminate the risk of data breaches between departments which aren’t supposed to access it.
- A well crafted CRM software for retail helps in building loyalty, and creating brand ambassadors who would spread a positive word for generating positive consumer experience. But don’t get them wrong as a bad mouth would do more harm to your business then a good mouth would help.
- Database plays a crucial role in retail CRM development. There are numerous methods of collecting information for building a successful CRM database. Many retailers opt for collecting customers’ email addresses when they visit the physical stores. This is to offer the latest discounts and news to the customer once they sign-up for receiving newsletters online. Whatever be the way of data capturing, if the customers are asked the right question, and the marketing campaigns are targeted to individuals based on their categories, interests, then the database can be successfully created.
- Use the database to personalize products, events, and discounts offers for customers. It is crucial for users who are inclined to engage with the brands, shout out to these customers and inform them about the benefits of signing up.
- Rewarding loyal customers is always recommended. It is one of those factors that reap long term benefits.
Need a Tech Partner for building a custom CRM to empower your Retail Business?
Improved profits and productivity are two of the major goals of any retail companies. Integrating CRM applications into the sales processes is one fine way for retail stores to boost those two big P’s and forge long- lasting customer relationships. CRM software empowers the marketing and sales teams to perform their jobs effectively. It automates the repeating tasks which in turn boost the employees’ productivity as they can cater to more jobs at store such as attending customers.
Matellio, with its double-decade expertise, can assist in creating a CRM application for your store Using cutting-edge technologies our developers can produce solutions catering to the company’s requirements.
So, you wish to develop a CRM application? Matellio is here at your service.
