CRM Software Features: The Ultimate Tool and Guide

What Is a CRM?

Before delving deeper into the process of selecting a CRM platform, let’s ensure everyone understands what a CRM is. CRM means Customer Relationship Management software. It’s a comprehensive customer database. 

This software tracks all of your customers. It includes information about them, their preferences, and previous bookings/sales. It organizes this information neatly for you so you can access it at a glance.

These tools also allow you to automate workflow and manage customer information. In doing so, you can analyze statistics and easily engage with your clientele. By using this tool, it enables you to acquire, retain, and develop clients, which leads to improved productivity.

Which Industries Use CRM?

CRM is a multi-faceted tool that can cater to almost any business type. It manages external interactions and relationships. This management includes the sales, service, marketing, and business development departments.

As such, multiple industries use this tool to drive success in their business deals. Join us as we briefly discuss a few of the industries that benefit the most from this software.

Hospitality

The hospitality industry is one of the main players in CRM software use. This industry is based on providing an excellent experience to customers. To do so, you must engage with them effectively. When traveling, people want either a personal or professional experience. 

CRM allows businesses to interact with the clients in a timely manner. It allows faster communication and effective booking systems. It also has the benefit of decreasing the chances of issues cropping up in specific bookings.

Tourism

Tourism companies, like adventure travel experts or services, use CRM to keep track of clients and their chosen activities. Say a resort allows for a Safari day tour, but it also offers a spa experience and accommodation.

This software will ensure the company can effectively manage its different guests. They can see at a glance which ones are signed up for what activity. It further automates processes like confirmation emails or waivers the clients must sign.

Real Estate

Real estate is another industry that has to manage clients, listings, and associates effectively. Using this online tool, landlords of large complexes can keep up with various tenants. Meanwhile, real estate brokers can keep an eye on sellers and interested parties.

It can also help in marketing campaigns when advertising real estate. It tracks deal cycles and generates contracts and proposals. For a market where a lot happens in a short period, CRM is essential to keep on top of the latest changes.

The Importance of CRM Features

CRM has various benefits, which means it’s essential for running a streamlined business. Businesses cannot afford to make assumptions about what their customers want. CRM tools allow them to make informed decisions based on analytics and customer information.

CRM features are significant in facilitating this understanding of your customer base. We look at three essential reasons why CRM features can make a difference for your business:

• Streamline and Automate Processes: The base purpose of this tool is to better manage your workflow by automating various processes. Standardized marketing, support, and sales processes allow for a smooth workflow. That way, it improves your business’ coordination. 

It allows for quicker service and enhanced after-sales service, which keeps customers coming back. It also makes it easier to manage a large business without any details or clients falling through the cracks.

• Improve Customer Service: Another base feature of this software is increasing customer satisfaction by offering quality customer service. By improving your customer relations, engagement, and pre/after-sale service, you create happy customers. Satisfied clients often turn into loyal customers and, thus, into recurring clients. 

This tool also allows you to identify any weaknesses. As such, you can fix any aspect negatively affecting your customer satisfaction levels. Some advanced CRMs even include customer service capabilities, which enhance your support features. 

• Increase Sales: A natural result of effective CRM management is increased sales. The tool manages customer data. It notifies you of information such as birthdays, anniversaries, age, location, and industry. 

This information enables personalized offers and communications to clients. Making clients feel important is one of the aspects clients value the most in businesses. As such, you can make an offer or deal at the optimal time to get successful sales and improve your ROI.

Benefits of CRM Software and Features

We touched on the three main benefits above, but there are many other benefits you can get from this software.

• Make Smart Offers: Know your target audience and forecast sales/opportunities. It allows you to recognize the opportune moment to implement a new strategy or deal.
• Enables Remote Work: This software ensures you can access your database from anywhere. It’s ideal whether you implement a completely remote position or only need it for emergencies.
• Decrease Your Overhead Costs: CRMs are an all-in-one solution most of the time. It doesn’t have specialized hardware requirements, which helps you lower IT and update costs.
• Improve Customers’ Lifetime Value: By providing an enhanced experience and quality services, customers are more likely to remain loyal. As such, you create profitable relationships that last for longer than usual.

Why Trust BestCRMsoftware.com?

BestCRMsoftware is the ideal platform for you to find the tool that works for your business. We have 27 years of combined experience in CRM consulting. Our experienced team of CRM and SaaS enthusiasts explores the different tools available. In this way, we ensure that we recommend only the best options.

We also ensure you can make an informed decision by providing the necessary knowledge about this software. From explaining the features to reviewing tools and consulting you on your business’s specific needs, we’re here to help.

Why Should I Use BestCRMsoftware to Understand CRMs?

When looking at CRM implementation projects’ failure rate, studies have found that 30% to 60% of these projects fail. The reason isn’t that the tool didn’t work as required or that there was a system error. Instead, it’s because the team implementing the software didn’t understand how to work with it.

The primary reasons behind a failed implementation project are:

• A lack of insight about what the product offers, and so couldn’t effectively implement its features.
• Undefined business or sales objectives meant there was a lack of direction.
• Users weren’t trained to manage the software, so they couldn’t effectively adopt it in the daily business processes.

At BestCRMsoftware, we aim to ensure you have all the knowledge you need at your disposal. In this way, you don’t become another one of the numbers in statistics like the above.

Our Dedicated CRM Software Feature Tool

Whether you’re a newcomer to Customer Relationship Management or someone who’s used it before, our feature filter is ideal for you. It helps you understand the various functions of this tool more intrinsically. 

We showcase a glossary of terms in a user-friendly manner that makes it appealing to browse through them. It showcases the specific features and all the CRMs that list these features on dedicated pages. As such, it makes it easy to find software that works for your business purposes.

How to Use Our CRM Software Feature Filter

Use the sidebar navigation to find specific terms under our alphabetical headings, or search the term in the box above it. You can click on the relevant feature, and it’ll open a page dedicated to explaining the feature.

This page will also list the CRMs that provide that feature, making it easy to find appropriate software. With over 100 features available, you’re sure to find the tools that your business needs to thrive.

Key Features for CRM Software

While CRMs have over 100 possible features, the tools pick and choose which of these features to offer. Still, most CRMs will offer specific key features that are innate to CRMs and their functionality. 

We discuss these features in detail below to give you a better idea of what to look for. Within no time at all, you’ll be able to find your ideal customer relationship management solution.

Contact/Customer Management

Businesses have a massive address book, as it keeps the contact information of every customer. As such, it can very quickly become almost impossible to manage, especially if you’re looking for specific people or categories. 

One of CRMs’ primary uses is to manage your contacts for you. You can apply tags and filters to clients, which allows you to access specific categories within seconds. It lets you personalize your offers, as you can cater to a specific group of people. 

If you’re thinking of offering a deal for people in a specific state, the location filter will also help you access all your clients in that state. 

Sales Rep and Client Opportunity Management

Sales are the most important aspect of a business and go hand-in-hand with customers. Using CRMs, you can quantify the opportunities your sales reps have with specific customers. It allows you to identify the ideal time and place to offer specific products. 

Clients have a higher probability to remain loyal to a company that offers them products and sales they like over just generalized deals. As you can identify the customers most likely to convert, it streamlines your sales and marketing processes. 

It also optimizes the time management of your sales team, as they don’t waste time trying to convert a client who isn’t likely to bite the bait. As such, you can improve efficiency and facilitate successful sales.

Lead Management and Identifying High-Quality Leads

Part of being a business is turning leads into actual customers. However, often, you can lose leads as the business is seen as “too pushy” or you don’t contact them at the opportune time. With this software, it helps you identify high-quality leads and when to contact them. 

It analyzes the leads’ demographic and psychographic factors. In doing so, it determines when you should contact them for the best results. You can customize your lead scores and improve the efficiency of your team by having them contact the right leads at the right times. 

It also ensures no leads fall through the cracks, as the system will remind the team to contact them at a specific time.

Quote and Order Management

Part of lead management is the quote and order management. If a possible lead requests a quote for products or services, you need to know when to follow up with them regarding the quote. 

If you do it too soon or too late, you might lose the sale. If the customer accepts the quote, CRM can also generate the order. CRM is multi-functional in that it allows the sales rep to change the quote based on customer feedback or cancel it if the quote falls through. 

It allows you to see previous quotes and sales connected to that lead or customer. In this way, you can better understand their purchase habits, which leads to personalized offers and successful sales.

Dashboards and Report Features

CRMs provide a user-friendly interface with dashboards and generated reports. It allows even people who aren’t tech-savvy to use the system easily. Many tools also allow users to customize the dashboard so they can see relevant information at a glance. 

The dashboards also have intuitive navigation, which makes it easy to implement the system company-wide. The dashboard is accessible through various platforms and devices. It allows your personnel to access it from anywhere easily. 

As the reports offer real-time data updates, your team can make data-driven decisions. This information allows them to always stay on top of the latest changes that affect sales.

Analytics on Sales

Sales analytics is the not-so-secret secret to successful marketing campaigns. After all, how can you know what works if you didn’t test it? Past sales campaigns will show you a lot of what worked and what didn’t. 

This feature compiles the data of all past sales campaigns and turns it into hard data that helps you plan future ones. You can see what products fared better with what age groups and what sales tactics were the most successful. 

It also helps you collect data from website traffic, polls, surveys, social media, and past purchases. Identifying sales patterns and customer wants becomes easy with this feature. After analyzing the data, it presents its findings in an easy-to-read format.

CRM for Mobiles

Mobile CRMs allow you to have easy access to your dashboard and reporting and integrate perfectly with most smartphones. Since smartphones are a significant part of everyone’s lives, it only makes sense to ensure you can access your customer relations. 

If you’re out and about but need to implement a quick change, mobile CRM apps ensure you can do so within minutes. Staff can quickly find related information for an after-hours booking or while they’re “out in the field,” so to say, managing events and situations. 

It also means you can access the system remotely from anywhere, even if you leave your laptop or tablet behind. Mobiles are the future of businesses, and CRMs understand this.

Automating Sales Force

We stated that sales are the most important function for any company. So, it only makes sense that CRM software will help you automate sales. Specific elements of the sales process can become automated to help increase your efficiency. 

Automated data organization, outgoing calls, and follow-up campaigns all help streamline the process. These tasks are all repetitive actions, so automating them will allow your sales team to focus on more complex and critical tasks. 

It further provides notifications of when to contact customers or send sales invoices. All of these changes help standardize the company’s workflow by boosting the sales functionality. 

Forecasting Sales

Like with opportunity management, sales forecasting is essential. It ensures you don’t dedicate your resources to a venture that’s sure to fail. Forecasting possible sales ensures you have a benchmark by which to evaluate them. 

Using this benchmark, you can determine whether your efforts and results are on par with each other. It lets you get an idea of how the company must perform, which lets you identify any performance under that bracket. 

In this way, you can see when you have to direct the sales efforts and when your sales are on point. It also helps identify times when you’re doing better than expected.

Integrating Email Client

With a built-in email client integration, you can ensure all the necessary information is available on your CRM platform. There’s no need to use third-party software. Further, employees never operate without knowing the latest communications with the clients. It automatically saves your email communications on the client’s profile.

With the email messages transferred between the email service and your CRM tool, you have all the information you need at your disposal. That way, if a customer needs support, pulling up their profile will provide the latest communications and data on that client. An all-in-one solution is always the best option to prevent many unnecessary systems from trying to do the same job.

Workflow and Approvals

An inefficient workflow can be the primary inhibitor that breaks down integral business processes. If receiving approval for a specific action takes hours to days, it also means you leave customers waiting for hours to days. As such, automating and streamlining workflows ensures your company has an efficient system in place.

This function will help you automate certain processes, like data analysis, campaigns, and data collection, to facilitate a smooth workflow. It also connects users who need approval or input from the other and identifies problem areas in the process. By improving these areas, you ensure a more systematic workflow, which becomes a standard for your company and clients.

Other Primary Features

Besides the above key features, there are others you should look out for that can help any business thrive. These are:

• Task Management
• Document/Template Library
• Pipeline Management
• Project Tracking and Management
• Social Media Integration/Scheduling
• Customization
• Third-Paty Integrations
• Cloud-Based or On-Premise CRMs

All of these features ensure a more comfortable and intuitive experience when integrating CRM software with your existing system and processes.

FAQ

What are the key features of a CRM?

CRMs have various key features, which often change slightly based on the industry the tool is suited to. Still, most CRMs will have the following features:

• Contact Management
• Sales Automation and Management
• Lead Generation and Management
• Dashboard, Reports, and Analytics
• Workflow and Approvals
• Mobile Client and App

With the above features, the CRM is suited to almost any industry or business. However, it can also have additional features that help design your workflow and processes better, like Support Automation and Product Level Quotes.

What are the three basic CRM functionalities?

Almost all of a CRM’s features form part of three main functionalities:

• Sales Force Automation: Improve sales by automating specific processes, forecasting sales, and managing contacts, opportunities, and tasks.
• Marketing Automation: Grows revenue by successfully marketing business through automating customer journeys, marketing campaigns, email marketing, and the market and sales funnel.
• Customer Service Automation: Improve your customer relations by offering quality customer service with personalized experiences, premium contact management, and improved relationships.

What are the key components of a CRM?

While the specifics of the features can change depending on the software, all CRMs should fulfill specific components in some way or another:

• Customer Management
• Automatic Sales Force Processes
• Automatic Marketing Processes
• Customer Service and Support
• Analytics and Reporting