Is your customer service team overburdened, overwhelmed, and disorganized? Perhaps you’re carrying most of the load in terms of diagnosing issues, ensuring customer satisfaction, and strategizing customer interactions. In either scenario, this article is for you. 

12 Crucial CRM Features & Functionality for First-Time Buyers

As a local business owner, you know firsthand that understanding customers’ needs, managing their data, and building strong relationships with them takes work. A lot of work. And when your business has a particularly small team, the tasks involved can feel quite overwhelming. 

The right CRM software can help businesses improve their customer-related workflow. Since there are several CRM options in the market, you should keep an eye on the specific features each offers when determining the right fit. And we’re here to help.

Read on to learn what crucial features to look for in CRM software and how to find the right fit for your business. 

What is a CRM software?

CRM software is a digital system designed to help you organize your customers and their data. This type of software not only enables you to improve your workflow but also helps you to meet your customers’ needs and improve their satisfaction levels at the same time. 

Essentially, it works to help you manage your relationships with your customers across the board–past and future, in every demographic, and at every stage of the customer journey. 

Who needs a CRM?

Who doesn’t need a CRM is almost the better question. Nearly all businesses need CRM software. No matter the business size or type, all companies should prioritize their customers to meet their needs effectively. 

There are many critical benefits of using CRM software that small businesses can no longer live without if they want to keep up with big box office chains and businesses. Since the advent of businesses such as Amazon, the need for careful and accurate CRM software has become even more important to compete in a marketplace that is catering, with increasing accuracy and attention, to consumers’ needs and buying history. 

CRM software automates processes, improves customer service, and significantly increases sales, raising the tide for all of the boats in your marketing harbor. It is the tool if you want to stay ahead as a local business and provide the level of service that major businesses are able to provide. 

What Makes a Good CRM: 12 Key Features to Look For

When starting off, there are 12 key features every CRM platform should have that you should be on the lookout for. Remember: CRM software should make your life much easier, not harder. Consequently, you’re looking for a platform that is easy to use, accessible, and seamless. 

1. Workflow Automation

An ideal CRM optimizes your workflows by automating processes such as data analysis, marketing campaigns, data collection, and other tasks that you might be doing manually right now. It offers accessible reporting and helps to streamline your operations and routing in a seamless way. Look for automation that is highly customizable and allows you a good deal of personalization. 

2. Customization

Speaking of which, let’s talk about customization. When it comes to choosing a CRM, you want software that can grow with your business. You want a platform that can change according to your needs, and pivot at the drop of a hat. That’s why CRM worth its salt also offers a variety of features for customizing your reports and dashboards, allowing you to access updates through a platform that you can access in various ways. The more customization tools you see, the more flexible the CRM is. Look for a platform that gives you the maximum amount of customization and personalization power. You won’t regret it. 

3. Integrations

What to do with the features and desktop productivity tools you already have? Keep them. We mean it. The best CRMs also integrate seamlessly with features and software you already have, allowing you to tailor them to fit the exact needs and capacities of your business. If you’re having to change too much about your business for your CRM, they’re just like a toxic boyfriend–chuck them out. 

4. Customer Service

As we mentioned, CRM software is all about helping you manage and maintain your relationships with your customers. It should help you offer consistently phenomenal customer service and take your customer relations to new heights. Good CRMs deliver world-class customer service automation, allowing you to manage customer cases individually and personally with effective tracking and tools to personalize your client communications. 

5. Lead Management

Good CRMs also have effective tools for helping you decide where to put your time and resources in terms of leads. These tools help you determine the leads who are most likely to convert based on a number of demographic factors, improving the productivity of your sales efforts like lead scoring. Consequently, it’s vital to choose a CRM with a winning algorithm–one that takes all variables into account and is able to speak uniquely to your business and individual needs. 

6. Reporting

When is reporting useless? When it’s impossible to understand. Which actually happens a lot more than you think. An ideal CRM offers easily digestible data analytics and insights conveniently from one simple dashboard, like this one from Podium. A platform like this makes reporting transparent across your organization, helping you and your employees stay on the same page and subsequently increasing efficiency and trust. 

7. Sales Forecasting

A CRM should offer excellent sales forecasting, allowing you to create a projection by which you can effectively analyze and evaluate your results and determine whether they match up with your efforts. Pro Tip: Look for a sales forecasting features that allows you to creatively project your goals in colorful and personalized ways. 

8. Pipeline Management

Your CRM’s pipeline management feature should offer you thorough visibility into every stage of your sales process. It should allow you to see where your customer is at in the funnel at any given moment. A good CRM will provide information in such a way that will help you identify weaknesses, improve your forecasting, and strategically plan for the future. Compare platforms to determine which will give you the most visibility. 

9. Document Management

Many people think document management is a negotiable feature. We’re here to tell you: it’s not. If you want to organize your customers well, you need to organize your business documents well too. A great CRM comes with document management, allowing you to effectively store your paperwork digitally and keep all of your information in a place where it will be easily accessible and secure. Keeping your information all in one place in a secure and readily available way is a complete game changer when it comes to getting in front of your customer relationships and designing campaigns that will have the impact you want them to. 

10. Analytics

It’s time to talk about metrics. Sales analytics is one of the most crucial features of any CRM. Analyzing data from social media, website traffic, and polls well allows you to run better campaigns in the future. You also need an array of different insights and analytics in order to streamline your operations and improve your customer experience. More importantly, you need these insights and analytics to be easily accessible and digestible so that all of your staff, sales reps, and customer support can understand what’s going on just from a quick glance. 

11. Campaign Management

Trust us, this is a feature you don’t want to skimp out on. Look for software that allows you to manage your sales and marketing campaigns from one place, like this one from Podium. With the right platform, you can successfully plan, execute, and analyze your campaigns with ease. You’re able to easily manage tracking, scheduling, marketing automation, reports, and insights. You’re also able to gather customer data points in order to more effectively strategize for future campaigns. 

12. Chat Integration

Finally, look for a CRM that has a Good. Chat. Feature.

Having a good chat feature is priceless when it comes to utilizing CRM software. With the right platform, you can chat with customers, employees, and partners all from the same place via text.  Pro Tip: Not all chat features make life easier. Look for one that can move asynchronously from mobile to desktop, utilizes messaging, and has an excellent routing service. 

Questions to Ask Vendors Before Getting a CRM

Another way to ensure the CRM you choose fits you is knowing what to ask vendors. You should have a thorough conversation with any vendor before purchasing their product. Questions to ask might include: 

• Does it include marketing features?
• What’s the data retention policy? 
• Does it offer customizable email and text templates?
• Does the system come with a mobile app?
• Does it utilize text? 
• Can you tell me about the integration features? 
• What campaign management capacities does it have?
• Which businesses typically use this type of CRM successfully?
• What are its particular weaknesses? Strengths? 
• What are the customization options? 

It’s important to remember that even with all the questions you ask and the research you do, you might pick a CRM that turns how to be the wrong fit later down the road. Selecting a CRM with a free trial can be especially useful here, allowing you to try features out in real time and see how the software is actually going to work on the ground. There are some things you just don’t know until you know, and you don’t want to be stuck with an inflexible, unscalable platform that will hold you back when you’re trying to grow.

But when you have to make a decision, you want world-class tools and a platform with a reputation. That’s where we come in. 

Improve Customer Relationship Management With Podium

Podium’s platform is truly a one-stop shop, allowing you to manage your customer data from the same place you gather reviews, process payments, and digest feedback. You can see every single lead and customer conversation from every channel in one inbox. You can respond to every text, review, Facebook message, chat, and phone call in a single thread. 

Podium’s CRM system offers top-tier contact management, customization, and integration, featuring winning tools such as Webchat and Teamchat that allow you to text your customers and maintain transparency with your team. Best of all, you can respond to all of your leads within five minutes. 

Try it for free today and see how Podium’s CRM solution can revolutionize the way you do business.