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In an increasingly competitive marketplace, now more than ever businesses are struggling to distinguish themselves from their competitors. Even if a business is not in the financial field, companies need to be as efficient and coordinated with each other. CRM software can help you streamline your team’s workflows across many departments or functions of your company by making it easier for everyone involved to communicate and collaborate on projects at once.
There are many different types of CRM software, each with their own benefits and drawbacks. The “types of crm platforms” is a question that has been asked by many people over the years.
CRM software is a technology that helps companies manage and enhance their connections and interactions with prospects and customers. CRM is divided into three categories: operational, analytical, and collaborative. In this post, we’ll go through the advantages and benefits of each kind of CRM software, as well as the ideal use cases for each, to help you decide which one is right for you.
3 Types of Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Although there are three basic forms of CRM, they all attempt to enhance client relationships and service. CRM in actions help you save time and effort by automating key business procedures. CRM with analyticss are designed to collect and analyze data in order to assist you provide better service to your clients. On the other side, CRM that works togethers connect your sales, marketing, and support teams together to help you better understand your customers’ demands.
CRM in action
An CRM in action manages and tracks your company’s interactions with your prospects and customers to help you acquire new customers and retain existing ones. It automates business processes to save you time. Business owners also employ this type of CRM to generate leads, convert leads into customers, record contact details, and serve customers. It also allows you to facilitate accounting, inventory, project, and human resource functions from a single system.
Who CRM in action systems are best for:
- Companies that wish to use their CRM to manage and monitor company processes across departments
- Salespeople who must monitor pipeline phases and conduct sales activities such as appointments and quotations.
- Teams in charge of executing and tracking marketing initiatives as well as connecting them to prospects and contacts.
- Salespeople and company managers who are responsible for managing post-sale initiatives for the items they offer
- Businesses that use their CRM to plan and execute inbound and outbound calls
The core features of an CRM in action include Automated Sales, Automated Marketing, and Automated Customer Service.
The sales pipeline dashboard in Salesforce Essentials (Source: Salesforce Essentials)
Automated Sales
Automated Sales is the process of streamlining manual and repetitive steps in the sales process, such as appointment scheduling, pipeline management, lead conversion, and taking notes. This frees up your sales team from administrative tasks and allows them to focus more on selling products and interacting with customers.
Another aspect of Automated Sales is lead scoring, which involves ranking your prospects to let sales representatives hone in on which leads are worth pursuing or are ready to engage with your business. For instance, Salesforce Essentials, which is an example of this type of CRM, can be set up to monitor your leads and automatically update their contact details every time they interact with your company, so your team spends less time on data entry.
Automated Marketing
An CRM in action’s Automated Marketing feature streamlines repetitive marketing tasks, such as email marketing campaigns, workflows, and social media posts. This process nurtures leads by identifying your audience, choosing the right content, and automatically triggering actions based on a set schedule or the customer’s behavior. Effective Automated Marketing tools let you focus on growing your business without worrying about every message or post that you have to send.
Automated Customer Service
Customer Automated Customer Service is the process of significantly reducing human labor when servicing clients in order to improve customer satisfaction and decrease labor costs. Modern CRM systems incorporate help desk tools, such as knowledge base, artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots, canned responses, self-service customer portal, and an interactive voice response (IVR) system.
CRM with analytics
An CRM with analytics collects and organizes sales, marketing, and customer service data in a way that makes it easy to discover insights and displays detailed reports you can use to make strategic business decisions. In addition, it integrates with invoice software to let you generate reports on your company’s cash flow.
Who CRM with analytics systems are best for:
- Managers who want data-driven information such as performance indicators and dashboards.
- Customer service analysts that track customer service activities and offer suggestions based on data.
- Accountants who want a centralized data storage system for referrals, leads, partners, and clients
- Professionals that evaluate sales metrics and trends and utilize that information to make sales projections are known as business intelligence analysts.
The primary features of an CRM with analytics include Data warehousing is a term that refers to the process of storing, Data Exploration, and Analytical Processing in Real Time (OLAP).
The sales analytics page in Zoho CRM provides an in-depth look at all areas of a company’s sales performance, including revenue goal against actual revenues. (Image courtesy of Zoho CRM)
Data warehousing is a term that refers to the process of storing
An CRM with analytics, like Zoho CRM, acts like a data storehouse, which saves data from various sources in a centralized location. It also organizes the stored data so it can be easily accessed, analyzed, and used in generating reports. This could include details about your customers, business interactions, and even employee performance.
Data Exploration
Data Exploration is the process of analyzing warehoused data to uncover meaningful patterns, trends, and relationships in your data. It automatically interprets the pieces of information so you can use it to improve your sales, marketing, and customer service strategies.
Analytical Processing in Real Time (OLAP)
OLAP is a technique that allows users to simultaneously examine and extract corporate data from numerous database systems. It also adds forecasting features to your CRM, enabling you to make data-driven choices about company trends, demand, and budget.
CRM that works together
A CRM that works together, which is also known as strategic CRM, makes cross-team communication and collaboration systems more efficient, improving customer satisfaction, brand loyalty, and company profitability. It covers sales, marketing, customer service, and technical support teams, as well as customers, creditors, vendors, suppliers, and distributors. This type of CRM also uses automation to accomplish its goals.
Who CRM that works together systems are best for:
- Multi-location or departmental businesses that rely largely on cross-team communication
- Teams that must follow clients across numerous channels, particularly in the digital realm
- Companies who desire to improve client retention and loyalty by learning more about their consumers.
The three main features of a CRM that works together are Management of Interactions, Management of the Channels, and Management of Documents.
You may start a conversation with your coworkers immediately from the deal page in Freshsales. (Image courtesy of Freshsales)
Management of Interactions
To provide a better understanding of your prospects and customers, a CRM that works together lets you log all of their touchpoints with your company in a centralized access point. This way, even if not all of your teams interact with the customers directly, everybody can see their customer journey and improve customer service based on the recorded facts.
Management of the Channels
A CRM that works together, like Freshsales, makes it easy for your company to track and communicate with your customers via their preferred channels—be on the phone, email, or social media. It records how your customers get in touch with you and lets you respond to them using the same channel.
Management of Documents
Management of Documents is a process or system used to capture, track, store, and share electronic documents, such as proposals, contracts, and digital images of your business files. A CRM that works together allows your teams to access these documents from a centralized location without having to go through a department’s desk or opening a separate software to retrieve the data that you need.
CRM Costing
Pricing for the various types of CRM solutions can range from free to $99 or more per user, per month. Some vendors offer free plans for a limited number of users or features. Others offer basic packages that include only the essential CRM functions, like contact management, lead management, and standard reporting. Full-feature packages include advanced capabilities like pipeline management, Automated Sales, and wide customization options.
To learn more about CRM software features, integrations, strategies, and implementation, get our free CRM e-book now.
Types of CRM Software Examples
Examples of each of the three kinds of CRM software are included below, as well as links to our list of the best CRMs for small companies. To discover more about each supplier, go through the tabs below.
Salesforce Essentials enables you to keep track of and manage your contacts, accounts, and sales. It also has a case management system that allows you to arrange your responses to consumer comments. Starting at $25 per month per user* with a 14-day free trial.
*Based on a yearly billing cycle. Monthly rates are also available at a little greater cost.
To see whether Salesforce Essentials is the appropriate match for your company, read our review.
Visit Salesforce Essentials for more information.
What it does: Zoho CRM provides comprehensive analytics and business information to help you track your sales cycle and make informed choices. Lead analytics, deal insights, activity data, and email analytics are some of the features. Starting price: free (for up to three users) or $14 per month per user* 15-day free trial
*Based on a yearly billing cycle. Monthly rates are also available at a little greater cost.
Learn more about the features and capabilities of Zoho CRM by reading our review.
Go to the Zoho CRM website.
Freshsales lets your sales, marketing, and customer service teams to collect and see all client interactions in one location. Customers may also contact with you by phone, chat, email, and WhatsApp. Price: Free (for an infinite number of users) or $15 per month per user* 21-day free trial
*Based on a yearly billing cycle. Monthly rates are also available at a little greater cost.
To discover more about how Freshsales can help your company expand, visit our Freshsales review page.
Are you looking for free or low-cost alternatives? Check out our list of the best free CRMs for small companies or our guide to the best CRMs for startups.
Conclusion
An CRM in action is best for companies wanting to use automation to make their business processes more efficient. An CRM with analytics is recommended for businesses that need performance metrics and dashboards to formulate sales forecasts and make data-driven decisions. A CRM that works together is for businesses that have multiple departments or locations that need an efficient system to have unified operations.
Many of the functions connected with the three categories of CRM software are overlapped by many current CRM vendors. It’s critical to know which sort of CRM software would best meet your company’s demands before deciding which one to utilize.
CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. It is a software system that helps businesses manage their customer relationships and interactions with customers. There are three types of CRM systems: 1) Salesforce, 2) Microsoft Dynamics, 3) Oracle. Reference: 3 types of crm.
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