Best CRM Software in India

Customers are an integral part of any business. Analyzing and managing their behavior is crucial to every company’s success. So, most firms look out for different strategies and tools to automate these tasks and do everything in one click. Here is where the CRM – Customer Relationship Management comes to play. With different modules and several benefits, CRM software is now an integral part of every business. 

Here is our buyers’ guide that can help you understand what CRM is and pick the best match for your company. Have a look. 

Customer Relationship Management or CRM, as it is usually called, is a computer application intended for sales purposes. This software helps every company organize its sales from scratch, capture sales inquiries, and maintain everything in one place. 

Going further, we’ll discuss what a CRM can provide to its user and how it can help your organization grow exponentially. 

Technology now plays a crucial role in reducing human errors and enhancing accuracy through automation. Understanding the same, several reputed and budding vendors created the customer relationship management software keeping the essence intact and adding their tweaks. You can find several vendors providing CRM software with different features and customizations. 

Customer Relationship Management, as the name says, covers three crucial entities of every business – the customer, the relationship, and the management. 

Customer – forming the crux of this software, the customer is an essential component of every business. Knowing what a customer feels about the services provided is the best way to figure out future strategies. Service providers must be aware of the inputs like customer suggestions, requirements, and disappointments. Lack of improvement here, even after receiving such feedback will lose you your customer. 

Relationship – in any business, you’ll find two types of relationships: business-to-buyer and business-to-business. Usually, business owners maintain good relationships with their clients by having regular interactions with them and understanding their feedback. Here, the whole idea is conveying to the customer that the owners value their customers. Moreover, every owner also needs to improve their production quality over time. 

Management – at last, comes the management part, wherein business owners manage the statistical data to analyze the results. This recorded information also helps them plan their future strategies and provide their best to every customer. 

A good CRM software automates the entire process discussed above. Right from handling customer data to managing the frequency of interactions with valuable clients, CRM software does a lot to improve your business

Customer Relationship Management software provides a wide range of features through automation. Every feature or module deals with a specific operation to help businesses grow. The following are some must-have features you can get from the best CRM software. 

Contact Management 

Maintaining a proper record of every contact related to your company is any CRM’s core functionality. The areas covered under contact management are the names, addresses, and social media handles. The data is usually available in a searchable database, making it easy for the user to find the necessary details when needed. A good CRM categorizes your contacts and segregates them into different groups. It tracks your prospects’ texts, emails, and call histories to fetch the necessary data and segregates it accordingly. 

Email Integration 

Managing and segmenting your prospects is mostly possible through email integration. The CRM creates a centralized hub for these segregations. There are different modules to automate your email interactions with clients based on pre-existing templates. You can personalize these emails based on your contacts for follow-up emails, custom drip campaigns, etc. 

Sales Automation  

CRM solutions automate different aspects involved in sales. Outgoing calls, customer feedback, follow-ups, database organizations, and several other sales-based processes are automatically handled through different modules here. Moreover, the inputs here are used to forecast the sales and understand the success metrics. As in, you can understand if your efforts are being converted properly, or if you need to come up with new ideas. 

Pipeline Management 

The entire pipeline of your company’s sales is manageable through good CRM software. It tracks every process involved in sales and scrutinizes them thoroughly to determine the success and failures during deal closures. The software also presents you with an analysis of these results to help you understand how the deals were cracked or lost. You can use these reports to guide your sales team to improve their performance and boost your sales in the future. 

Lead Management 

Identifying potential customers (leads), analyzing them, and nurturing the leads to convert them is all lead management is about. The CRM software moves every lead through the sales pipeline and automates the entire process. It comes with different flows and transitions at different levels to manage quality leads and convert them to business. 

Reports and Analytics 

Reporting and analytics feature is a must in every CRM software right now. Every user has to understand what plans are working for them and what needs improvement to optimize their sales. Most vendors providing the best CRM software provide customizable report modules. They also provide an overview of different metrics of the company to analyze its performance. 

Mobile and Cloud Applications 

CRM is one software that requires flexible access. Keeping that in mind, most CRM vendors provide mobile and cloud-based applications for the software. This feature lets the user monitor their reports, dashboards, and everything remotely or wherever needed. Moreover, this feature helps the team stay connected no matter what, and communicate with the customers as and when required.

Looking at the features of CRM software, you might have understood how easy it is to manage your customer relations. However, we’ll make it easy for you by listing the benefits of the CRM software here: 

Better Results 

When talking of the CRM software benefits, the users perceive a lot of improvements in their sales, customer relations, retention, productivity, etc. Let’s discuss them in detail: 

Customer Service: 

CRM software comes with several features that focus on enhancing business-customer connections. All of your contacts are managed by a CRM, which also collects crucial customer data like demographics, purchase histories, and prior communications across all channels and makes it readily available to anybody in your organization who needs it. This guarantees that your staff has all the information they want about the client at their fingertips and can offer a better customer experience, which usually increases client happiness. 

Sales: 

The CRM software tools assist you in streamlining the sales process, creating a sales funnel, automating crucial processes, and gathering and analyzing all of your sales data in one location, to enhance productivity and sales. This software also aids in the establishment of a step-by-step sales procedure that your staff can adhere to consistently and that you can readily modify if problems develop. 

Productivity: 

CRM software deploys marketing automation technology to speed up lengthy processes like drip campaigns while giving more time to focus on things that can only be completed by humans, like content creation. Also, it ensures that no duties are overlooked (e.g., all important emails are always sent to the right people). The CRM also provides you with a dashboard showing how well your business operations are doing and areas where improvement is essential. 

Customer Retention: 

After acquiring and converting leads, it's critical to work hard to keep consumers happy and foster brand loyalty. Use the CRM and the information from it to encourage repeat business. High customer turnover can have a number of detrimental impacts on your business, such as decreased revenue or disturbed cash flow. CRM includes sentiment analysis, automatic ticketing, customer service automation, user behavior tracking, etc., to help identify issues and promptly resolve them with your customers. 

Customer Segmentation: 

A contact list with hundreds of names is cumbersome and daunting. How do you determine which clients want to read your email about the new item you have in stock? Here’s where the CRM plays the trick. Using your criteria, it automatically partitions your contact lists and simplifies the discovery of the people you want to get in touch with at any time. Contacts can be sorted by region, gender, age, buyer stage, and any other factor you like. 

Sales Forecast: 

For any business, evaluating the previous performance is crucial to make strategic plans for the future. The automated sales reports feature from the CRM software helps you figure out the important trends in the market to gain a sense of what to anticipate from your future sales cycle performance. Using these details, you can change your goals and KPIs to match the trends.

Streamlined Communication 

Communication in any business in two ways. The internal communication within your team and your team’s communication with the clients/ leads. Here’s how the CRM helps in both ways: 

Internal Communication: 

The CRM makes it simple for your staff to communicate with one another, apart from improving communication with your consumers. Using the CRM, your team can easily monitor how other workers are communicating with a potential customer and keep a unified brand voice. Moreover, the team members can also communicate with one another through messaging, emails, tagging each other on projects, and sending comments or alerts. 

Communication with the Clients: 

Lead nurturing is a daunting task involving several processes and communication opportunities. The CRM provides you with different modules and features to automate the process by giving notifications to your staff for getting in touch with prospects and keeping track of all communications, phone calls, and emails. 

Automated Sales Reports 

The CRM software comes with different dashboards and reporting tools. These let your staff members automate and manage their pipelines and procedures, making it easy for your team to gather and arrange the information on potential and present clients. The CRM also assists your team members in other areas like performance reviews, goal tracking, and quick progress checks on all of their tasks. 

Centralized Information Database 

Another thing that CRM software excels at is creating a centralized database to house all of the company's client information. The software also makes this database readily available to anybody who needs it. Now, the salesperson can easily determine the goods a particular consumer is interested in. Records of the contacts who interacted with the company previously are also included in the CRM database. You can use these to guide your staff for the upcoming marketing campaigns and sales pitches. This improves the client experience while saving your staff time from having to go through outdated files and information. 

Detailed Analytics and Reporting 

Having a tonne of client data is a thing, but you also need to understand what it means and how to use it. CRM software often includes analytical features to contextualize data and divides it into useful metrics and actionable things. You can assess the performance of a marketing campaign and adjust the optimization strategies using these crucial projections like click-through rates, bounce rates, demographic data, etc. 

CRM software comes in different types based on the requirement. You can choose from any of the following types to suit your business and make the best of it. 

Operational CRM 

The most prevalent kinds of customer management software are operational CRMs. They provide capabilities for sales, marketing, and service automation. With the help of these solutions, you can organize contact information and provide better assistance for both existing and potential clients. 

Since they improve the operational effectiveness of your marketing, sales, and customer service divisions, these are regarded as the top operational CRM solutions software. Also, they combine all of the activities to streamline the complete client experience, right from lead creation through return business. 

Analytical CRM 

Analytical CRM solutions come into play if you wish to gather and use comprehensive customer information to make wise decisions. These solutions help you gather extensive consumer data and develop a thorough understanding of their preferences and behavior. Since your efforts are in line with the needs of your customers, you can make better marketing and customer service decisions.

You can solve the following queries using the analytical CRM systems: 

• Is there enough traffic to your website, but no leads are appearing? 
• Do you have sufficient lead generation but no sales? 
• Are your prospective consumers failing to act? 

Collaborative CRM 

CRMs that promote cooperation across various teams and departments within a company are the collaborative CRMs. Collaborative CRM solutions place a greater emphasis on customer service, unlike operational CRM systems that balance sales, marketing, and customer service equally. 

A collaborative CRM system is a great option if your business wishes to simplify its customer service procedures. CRM software enables marketing and customer care teams to collaborate and respond to client inquiries, giving customers a better experience. 

Strategic CRM 

A strategic CRM system is useful if you want to create long-lasting ties with your clients. It is a client-focused solution that enables you to grow your company. Though it has many aspects in common with a collaborative system, it also gives the ability to get important insights and make wise choices. However, they can be changed to fit your needs and the way you deal with clients.

CRM software, when chosen and implemented properly, will go a long way in streamlining your business perfectly. The right choice significantly enhances your revenue by boosting your sales. So, here’s our quick guide to help you pick the right CRM software for your business. 

Accessibility and Deployment 

Remote working is the latest trend now. So, you should make sure that your CRM software is usable on a variety of platforms and devices. Also, your staff should be able to work on the program anywhere and on any device.

Generally, you can find two different deployment types for CRM software: 

Cloud-based: This CRM application is deployed on servers owned and operated by a third party and is accessible from any computer or mobile device through an internet connection.

On-Premise: On-premise CRM software is housed on regional corporate servers or within the premises of a company. So, only devices that have been registered on those servers can have the access to such systems.

Cloud-based CRM systems are widely used at the moment, for they provide more accessibility. These are thus for businesses wanting their employees to have access to the system from different devices. 

Customization and Usage 

Marketing, sales, and customer service requirements vary based on the type of firm. As a result, a system that works for one business cannot cater to another company’s needs. So, you’ll need a system that offers smooth customization possibilities wherever necessary. Right from the dashboard, style, database, etc., everything has to be customizable. You should be able to add and delete people, define roles, and create value that is unique to your company on the CRM software you chose. 

Moreover, ensure that the chosen software is simple to understand and apply. It shouldn't take more than a few days for your sales representatives to become familiar with all the key features. Also, CRM software may have the opposite impact if it is sophisticated and difficult to use. Implementing CRM software will have little value because you will need to invest a lot of time, money, and resources in educating every employee. Regardless of how basic the program is, providing training is still essential.

Pricing 

Another crucial aspect of choosing the CRM for your business is its cost. So, when selecting CRM software, you should be careful and avoid making errors. Usually, the price changes based on the deployment method, the features, the functions, the customization, and more. Additionally, if you pick a cloud-based CRM, you will have to pay a monthly membership cost. If you haven't thought about it previously, these might mount up over time and increase your firm’s expenses. 

Customer Support 

Using a CRM product with excellent customer service makes sense, for employing the program might cause you to encounter several discrepancies. You can get past this obstacle with a solution that offers good customer assistance. You can contact customer service representatives to have your questions answered instantly.

Generally, every vendor providing CRM software at the moment features a help desk and live chat options where you can have your questions addressed immediately. While some businesses only accept support requests and emails, others provide phone help. To ensure that no problem affects your services, you should also seek a system that offers 24/7 assistance. 

Integrations 

Choose a customer relationship management system based on your integration requirements after determining your needs. Most CRM systems support basic interfaces with other sales and marketing tools. A CRM system that allows multiple integrations with different systems is always above the edge. To begin with, CRM software needs to be easily integrated with other business solutions like ERP, email marketing, social media marketing, and similar ones.

CRM is an ever-evolving tool with a promising future. Modern integrations and advancements of these systems improve their scope and performance simultaneously. Having said that, here are the top marketing trends for CRM software in 2023. 

Cloud-based Solutions  

The fact that organizations are choosing cloud-based CRM software over on-premise solutions is no surprise now. Nowadays, even most small business CRMs are cloud-based. Apart from being available at reasonable pricing, these solutions are adaptable, don't need business maintenance, and have superior integration choices. Cloud-based customer relationship management technologies are more effective than conventional CRM systems due to real-time analytics, consistent feedback, and more flexibility. 

Business Intelligence 

Business owners can better evaluate data using business intelligence in CRM software to make choices, understand the value of customer connections, and improve team productivity. It also helps you identify numerous marketing trends like client personalities, purchasing patterns, and industry impact. This information can be used to create multi-channel marketing campaigns to improve customer engagement, facilitate cross-selling and upselling, and increase customer retention. 

Predictive Analytics 

Predictive analytics is now being combined with popular modern CRM solutions to provide every firm with fresh insights into enhancing their sales strategies. Also, it examines data at every stage of the consumer lifecycle to forecast potential behavior, apart from suggesting the latest methods to interact with them. 

Integration Options 

You can manage your company operations more easily by integrating all of your departments and technologies. Modern CRM software accomplishes just that. These customer relationship management systems let the users combine all of the systems, including email marketing, accounting, and help desk, improving the efficiency and seamlessness of the company activities. 

Strategical Insights 

Using CRM systems to design your content strategy is an excellent move since they hold detailed and priceless information about your clients, like their calls, chats, phones, and transactions. Also, it will assist you in producing content that specifically focuses on solving your client's concerns. 

At the moment, we can anticipate an increase in the number of companies using CRM data to customize emails, landing sites, and blogs that satisfy the needs of their target audience. Based on this, there is a higher chance of lead creation and prospective sales.

1.  What are the types of CRM?

Usually, CRM system comes in four different types – operational, analytical, collaborative, and strategic.

2.  How to choose the best CRM for my company?

When choosing the CRM system for your firm, list your requirements. Then match the price, reputed vendors, integrations, and user interface.