6 Advantages and Disadvantages of Using a CRM Software

A business is usually operated on the basis of the many resources that are employed by the business owner and teams. Yet, the success of a business depends on choosing the right tools and resources that would make your business not only thrive, but grow as well. The use of digital tools has become the norm in these times since most business is now moving online to find customers in the places where they spend maximum time – on websites, at e commerce stores as well as social media, more than any place else. One of the most notable tools in this regard would be the free CRM software. Let us understand what it does and how it can help a business.

Before we understand the pros and cons of a CRM software, we would have to first understand what CRM really does. CRM or customer relationship management refers to a system or process that would help you organize the data around which your business revolves, so that you can build engaging relationships with the audience that you reach. This would help in servicing them better so that you give them just the solutions that they want with data backed operations and campaigns. 

Here are some of the advantages of using a CRM software:

1.  You can use a Free CRM software 

Most of the CRM platforms are usually free for the initial and most basic plan. This is something that would be of tremendous help to startups and new companies that would want to maximize reach without burning a hole in the pocket. Therefore, budget friendly and economical benefits would be one of the greatest gifts of a CRM software. When you are ready to grow your company and hence your team, you would find affordable enterprise level plans on the same platforms to help you tide over and adapt to your new business reality as well. 

Read Also – What is Real Estate CRM and Why Do I Need it?

2. Organization becomes your middle name

When you are using a free CRM software, you can easily get organized – in all aspects. Not only is all your data in one place, but it is also organized as per the audience base, the product and the exact action that needs to be taken during any stage of the sales or marketing funnel. As a consequence, you also end up with a better organized and better functioning team since each team member would be allotted the right tasks for his or her role to avoid any kind of chaos or confusion. Organization is one of the main things that a business usually looks for when trying to do business with all the big data available online. A free CRM software can easily help in this journey. 

3. Better servicing of clients and customers becomes your core reality

How many times have you found yourself grappling with phone calls, emails and other forms of communication in order to service a simple request by a client – whether it is post or pre sales? Well, there are a number of small and mid sized business owners who face this problem on a daily basis. When it is time to service a request, we usually have to find and go back to all the initial conversations so as to service the client in the best possible way.

If you add changing team members to this list and requests that go from one department to another, you may have a serious problem on your hands. Yet, with the help of a good CRM software, the solution is also close by. You can use CRM in order to store the information gleaned from conversations so that the same gets called up automatically when you have to interact with a client or a customer. As a result, quick and seamless servicing of every request becomes a reality. This would also help the customer retain faith in your brand. 

4. Efficiency becomes the team mantra

When you have organization and better collaboration at play thanks to CRM, you will find that your team members are even more efficient than ever before. They would not have to fall prey to needless communication that can create confusion and duplication of tasks, or even missing out on tasks entirely. Also, they would also be in a better position to actually engage the customer so as to make conversions. This would help greatly in furthering motivation factor within the team and hence team member would take it upon themselves to perform better. They would also have the bandwidth to contribute to the business goals in a more certain and tangible manner rather than being left to grapple with the many mundane tasks that can eat into one’s energy and productivity. 

5. Analytics and insights that actually deliver results

You will find yourself inching closer towards your goals when you bring in a CRM software since the analytics and insights would align with the past performance, the current tasks and thus let you know what you should do in the future for better performance. This would increase your efficiency by leaps and bounds and bring you closer to success as well. 

6. Automate the mundane

One of the greatest benefits of the right CRM software would remain the fact that you can very easily automate all the tasks that would drain the bandwidth of the team and its members in the past. From data gathering to using the relevant data for campaign building and even delivering emails as well as social media posts – a CRM software will take care of all of these needs with much ease. 

Apart from these 6 benefits, there are also a few disadvantages that a CRM software can pose. You need to choose the right software with care since upgrading may be very expensive for some platforms which will leave you with unforeseen costs. Also, you would find that a lack of hands on leadership can affect the way the team works since automation cannot fill in all the gaps.