Safety in Numbers: Making Better Decisions with CRM Analytics

For anyone familiar with modern business, it’s becoming fairly obvious that it takes more than a smile and a thank you to keep customers satisfied. True customer satisfaction depends upon the ability to establish and maintain long-term relationships. These relationships help to ensure an ongoing, mutually-beneficial association that can actually be leveraged to bring in more new customers. In essence, by establishing a positive relationship with your customers, you’ll be ensuring improved business — now, and for years to come. However, in order to give your customers what they want, you’ll first need to find out as much as you can about them, and about your own organisation. As such, data capture and analysis are at the heart of any effective customer relationship management (CRM) solution. Collectively, this concept is called CRM analytics.

What is CRM analytics? Also known as customer analytics, CRM analytics is a catch-all term used to describe the various programs and processes designed to capture and analyse all available pertinent customer data, and to present any findings in user-friendly ways. The goal, of course, is to use this analysed data to make better-informed, customer-conscious business decisions. CRM analytics is useful for businesses of all sizes, but it is especially vital for large organisations that deal with (potentially) thousands of customers a day. With so many different clients being serviced at once, it can be difficult for those in sales, customer service, marketing, and any department who might be involved to keep track of where each customer is in the sales funnel.

At the same time, even those clients who are at similar points in their customer journeys may require vastly different actions in order to move them forward. CRM analytics software provides a single, unified platform through which all authorised team members can access specific information on individual customers, in order to provide them with the personalised service. And, given that 30% of marketers say having disparate data sources is the main reason they cannot glean useful insights from a customer, a system that collects all available data into a single location is perhaps the most important step towards creating a working customer relationship.

Even if you have a hundred million customers, none of those customers want to feel as though they are just another faceless revenue-source in the crowd. The data you gather on your customers needs to be both expansive and accurate, enabling you to customise your strategy to fit the individuals that make up your clientbase, rather than the clientbase as a single entity. That said, the ability to personalise the customer experience is just one benefit of CRM data analytics; here are several others:

• Easy Customer Segmentation
  CRM analytics tools also makes it possible to segment your clients into various groups, such as those based on age, gender, spending habits, etc., for easier marketing and sales management.

• Effective Predictive Modeling
  Another benefit of CRM analytics is using customer data to accurately determine how successful future business decisions may be, reducing the overall risk. CRM predictive analytics rely on, among other factors, effective technology, organisational support, and access to large volumes of customer and company data, all of which are made available through effective CRM solutions.

• Flexibility with Third-Party Customisation
  No matter how flexible your CRM tool, there will always be limitations to what it can do for your business. That’s the bad news; the good news is that those limitations can be surpassed through the use of custom-designed third-party apps. These apps can be designed to fill in the gaps in your CRM solution, potentially solving CRM performance issues related to Mac compatibility. The best CRM programs for Mac computers are those that allow users to build-upon the standard, out-of-the-box system.

• Clear Profitability Analysis
  CRM sales analytics are designed to be able to determine which groups of customers (thanks to customer segmentation) are likely to bring in the highest ROI. This allows businesses to focus more of their advertising, marketing, and sales efforts on the most valuable demographics, ensuring higher profits over time.

• Painless Event Monitoring
  In many ways, the customer relationship is defined by events. These events, such as completed sales, memberships sign-ups, specific dollar-amounts spent, etc., are valuable metrics for businesses to keep track of. CRM analytics tools can not only identify and record these important milestones, but can also alert relevant departments to them as they occur.

• Actionable Web Analytics
  There are few areas of modern business that are as perfectly designed for data analysis as company sites, be they homepages, social media pages, e-commerce sites, or any other company sites on the web. Analytics CRM can gather this low-hanging data fruit, and compile it into actionable conclusions related to customer use and site effectiveness. Email correspondence can likewise be analysed.

It has been suggested that the total spend on marketing analytics increased by 60% in 2015. On the other hand, 50% of respondents to a 2011 Focus survey stated they have not realised the full value of their marketing automation investment, and less than 25% use their platforms to their full potential. With so much money going towards analytics platforms that are apparently being underused, it only makes sense that those businesses looking to invest in effective CRM analytics wouldn’t want to rush the decision. Because of this, finding the right CRM analytics solution comes down to a few different factors beyond the tasks that the tool is designed to perform. Here are several factors to consider that set superior CRM analytics solutions apart from inferior ones:

• Ease of Integration with your business
  You shouldn’t have to change your existing systems or processes to fit your analytics tool. The best analytics tools are those that can easily integrate with your business as it currently is.

• Flexibility when you need it
  You have a better idea than anyone else of what you need your CRM analytics to be able to accomplish. Because of this, there will likely be times when the out-of-the-box CRM analytics system of your choice won’t be a perfect fit. Thankfully, flexible CRMs that can be customised and adapted provide a solution. This flexibility also comes in handy when you need your analytics system to scale and change along with your growing company.

• Simplified Usability
  There is no shortage of software tools designed to improve business efficiency. However, with each new program and system introduced to an organisation, employees are forced to learn a new set of controls and protocols. CRMs that feature intuitive controls, built-in tutorial programs, and multi-channel support generally mean higher adoption rates, and improved effectiveness across the board.

• Capacity for all your data needs
  It’s called big data for a reason. Your CRM analytics system will have to be able to capture, process, and store massive amounts of digital information, so be sure to find something that has the capacity to do so.

• Interactive Visualisation
  If your CRM analytics tool gives you reports that are just as confusing as the original data, you are far less likely to be able to turn that information into real, usable insights. Instead, select analytics options that rely on data visualisation, in the form of interactive graphs, charts, and other image-centric reports.

Salesforce CRM Analytics

Salesforce CRM analytics is a powerful, accurate, and expansive CRM analytics solution, designed to provide users with a single, unified system capable of collecting and analysing customer data to turn into valuable insights. And, because you shouldn’t have to take a chance when it comes to the future of your company, Salesforce offers a free 30-day trial. Additionally, Salesforce uses a pay-as-you-go pricing model, so you’ll only be charged for the services you use. When it comes to CRM analytics, Salesforce knows how to help you find a data solution that makes sense.

CRMs are a proven and trusted business technology; in fact, the average ROI for a CRM system is $5.60 for every dollar spent. But before you can really take your customer relationships to the next level, you need to understand who your customers are, what they want, and how they think, and for that, you need data. Informed decisions breed business success, and the more accurate and understood your data is, the more informed your decisions will be.

CRM analytics bridge the gap between the numbers and the clients, allowing you to see the most important connections, causes, and consequences associated with each and every customer action. And, when you are able to effectively leverage that information, your company's success will really be by the numbers.