In the latest digital age where customers are supreme for business growth, companies across industries typically look to technology to get the help to address what their customers want. In retail, a CRM (customer relationship management) system or tool is one such technology that offers an ample of advantages, not only making work-life simpler, but also transforming the business from the bottom.

As customers nowadays have become more aware and demanding, they know what they want and where they have to buy it. Social media and mobility are playing a crucial role in determining consumer behavior, but most retailers fail to gain more insights about their customer experience. So, this is where CRM comes in. It assists the retail industry so a retailer can stay in touch with all their customers and also provide them personalized service.

It helps in gleaning information about each customer, provides crucial trends, consumer behavior insight and pattern of sale by collecting and analyzing sales data. Customer relationship management also helps retailers by collaborating customer information and enabling them to formulate effective strategies, take crucial actions and create customer-centric programs to run a successful retail operation.

Here we have accumulated the top 4 key trends a CRM tool or software offer that present effective assistance to retailers.

Align Marketing and Sales

As CRM is able to perform predictive analysis and manage contents based on each customer’s needs, it is one of the greatest tools for automating processes while deploying and nurturing campaigns. Besides this, the tools provide the sales team a wide range of access including pricing literature, automated and scored leads, personalization of data and dashboard, and a close integration with email and mobile devices to reach the sales goals. By embracing a CRM, both sales and marketing teams can collectively manage leads and campaigns, that can help consolidate sales and marketing funnels to better serve sales efforts and outreach.

Monitor Team Efficiency

Most CRM tools come with an integrated field service management capability, which allows marketers to know about their sales representatives with real-time tracking and check-ins if they visit any customer. With this solution, field representatives can also access the field service management on their mobile devices and input information about site and customer interactions, which can help in ensuring maximum productivity.

Improve Customer Service

While a CRM tool helps a retailer to gather all the germane insights about their customers, it ultimately enables companies to advance their customer service based on data collected. According to reports, due to poor customer service, around US$41 billion goes down the drain every year. However, putting a CRM in place effectively can build long-term, productive relationships with customers. It can also be leveraged as an interactive service that can provide information that a customer service team needs to address their customers’ issues.

Manage Business Inventory

A CRM software automates entire business processes and reduces operational cost, thereby boosting overall profits. However, there is one challenge every product-oriented business face is managing inventory. Thus, customer relationship management can assist those retail companies that have inventory needs but lack internal resources. It provides retailers the ability to manage purchase orders, customer product orders, and even track all inventory in multiple warehouses.

So, a CRM tool has the potential to increase the retention of customers by serving them in a more focused and convenient way and boost the overall business efficiency and productivity.