What is CRM (customer relationship management)? Full guide

Customer relationship management (CRM) helps companies track and drive revenue in a customer management system (CMS) while maintaining and improving customer relationships. It enables teams to capture and manage customer interactions and sales activities across channels in one centralized place to drive conversion higher with personalized product or service recommendations.

Sales teams typically use a CRM for pipeline visibility and forecasting, contact and deal management, activity tracking, and lead generation–and to integrate all these tools. A CRM also automates workflows, processes, and tasks to boost productivity and help organizations do more with less.

More in this guide:

• Who needs CRM?
• Why do companies need CRM?
• 10 business benefits of CRM
• Key features of CRM
• How much does a CRM cost to implement?
• Frequently asked questions
• Try our personalized CRM for free

From enterprise systems down to CRMs for small businesses, any company with customers can benefit from a more in-depth customer view. A CRM helps sales teams to track leads, personalize their recommendations, and evaluate performance. When businesses integrate with customer experience (CX) software, sales reps can view context that can help them address previously unknown needs—like a solution that would solve a customer’s repeated support tickets about a particular problem.

Let’s look at STAjets, an aviation sales and management company that deals with high quote volumes and even higher quote values. They needed a customizable CRM that gave the sales team a comprehensive view of their pipeline and customer interactions. After trying other CRMs that couldn’t adapt to their needs, STAjets adopted Zendesk. Previously, they lost 10 to 20 percent of all leads due to a small-picture pipeline view. Now, they can quickly capitalize on every lead to the highest chance of converting.

Companies use CRM to accelerate revenue growth and deliver better customer experiences. With CRM systems and tools, they can:

• Get the full context of where prospects and customers are in their buying journey to move deals along.
• See a complete view of key customer and potential customer information in one place to personalize interactions.
• Accurately forecast and manage the sales pipeline to plan, track, and analyze the sales process.
• Set up triggers and automate tasks to keep sales reps on target.

Companies also use CRM to modernize their organization. Legacy or ad hoc solutions like spreadsheets require heavy data maintenance and fail to deliver the comprehensive analytics sales managers need.

Take Standard Beverage, a leading distributor of alcoholic beverages in Kansas. Its sales team relied on scraps of paper or memory for client details, which decreased productivity. They opted for Zendesk, an easy-to-use CRM that reps could adopt quickly. That proved to be the key to pushing the team to modernize its sales methods, which led to a 300 percent increase in accounts.

Sales teams need to be cross-functional and integrate tools—like CRM software—to avoid losing business. A CRM can help sales integrate with other teams like marketing, customer support, and project management, which saves time, keeps them organized, and allows access to deeper insights.

1. Get organized and see customer data in one place

With your customer data organized in one place, you’ll have a clear view of your business. This gives your teams full customer context, allowing them to understand patterns and tailor each interaction—whether it’s a targeted ad, support exchange, or sales call.

2. Set goals and track your progress

Set high-level goals with easy-to-use analytical tools. Monitor team progress and stay informed the moment anyone falls behind or goes off course. You’ll also be able to readily see who’s handling what and where your efforts are most needed to keep everyone on track to hit quarterly targets.

3. Personalize customer interactions

Personalizing your interactions not only makes customers feel warm and fuzzy about their experience—it also fosters customer loyalty, which boosts sales. When companies personalize experiences, it encourages engagement and builds customer satisfaction from each new interaction. Customer relationship management systems help you gather the right information to craft messages that will most likely resonate with your customers.

4. Target your customer base

Don’t gamble with a blanket approach to sales prospecting—target your base directly. CRMs collect, organize, and store historical customer data so you can create targeted, personalized campaigns for your audience. Even better, the technology allows you to segment your customers so you can better understand how to tailor the experience for each group. Understanding your buyers allows you to seek out similar prospects, too, increasing your chances of success.

5. Boost customer loyalty

A CRM has all the ingredients needed to build better relationships with customers—these strong emotional connections are key to fostering customer loyalty. However, customers have high expectations for the companies they do business with. Bad experiences can drive customers away quickly and make it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to regain their business. Companies must provide easy, seamless, conversational experiences if they want customers to stick around, making CRM even more important.

6. Scale your business

As your customers’ needs and preferences change, you must evolve with them. Your CRM powers your business, so it has to provide features that support your growth. A 360-degree customer view paired with automation, web self-service, and omnichannel communication can help your company scale at your desired pace. Increasing customer retention rates means you can plan to expand with less fear that your bottom line will suffer as you introduce new products or services.

7. Increase collaboration between teams

Teams can easily collaborate when everyone uses up-to-date information from your sales dashboard. Customers hate repeating themselves, so when departments share information internally, the customer experience improves. Marketers and salespeople use the same data to craft consistent messaging so no one is confused about who’s making what promises.

8. Improve profitability

Upselling is more successful when you understand your customers and what they want. Like a waiter who knows what the regulars typically order, marketing and sales can be strategic about when and how they take action rather than throwing everything at the wall and hoping something sticks.

9. Automate tasks

Using a CRM to automate repetitive tasks can help your business deliver great customer experiences—all while freeing up your team to focus on selling. With Zendesk, you can automate tasks to manage sales forecasting, leads, quota setting, sales calls, follow-up communication, and more.

10. Work from anywhere

Cloud-based customer relationship management and mobile apps allow salespeople to manage appointments and tasks, update deals, track visits, and log calls—right from the palm of their hand. The Zendesk mobile app even allows access to reporting and analytics so you can monitor metrics, like sales key performance indicators (KPIs).

If you think of CRM as a brain covering the entire customer journey, its features are the different neural pathways connecting and leading back to a central processing center. Many pathways help with workflow and sales automation, some with reporting and analytics and others with call center solutions. These features allow each team to handle specialized tasks effectively.

Let’s look at the most important features of a CRM system.

360-degree customer view

In the Zendesk Customer Experience Trends Report 2024, 64 percent of those surveyed said that a single view of customer interactions would help deliver better support. Integrate your customer service software with your CRM to gain a 360-degree customer view—this can help you leverage data to provide unique, personalized experiences.

• Centralized platform: A centralized platform puts all customer information in one place, so you always have full customer context.
• App integrations: Connect your business apps with one click to help improve your workflow.
• API access: Modify and customize your interface with rich, open APIs.
• Mobile app: Meet customers where they are, wherever you are.
• Subscriptions: Track a customer’s recurring revenue and view their subscription end dates.

Productivity tools

The best CRM software offers tools that help your agents work more efficiently. These include:

• Email integration: Syncing your existing email to your CRM gives you better visibility into the sales process and boosts your productivity with alerts, templates, automations, and more.
• Sales engagement tools: Build lead lists and automate outreach so you can easily connect with (and follow up with) qualified prospects and personalize your communications.
• Task player: By keeping the context of each task, lead, or deal in one place, a task player can streamline routine actions (like contacting a customer) so you have more time to focus on selling.
• Messaging and live chat: Whether they were sent via text, social media, or live chat, messages with a lead or contact are instantly logged and recorded.
• Smart lists and templates: Segment and filter your leads, then save your most frequented views of customer data as “smart lists” for quick access. You’ll no longer need to repeatedly customize a view.
• Sequences: Create a sequence to automatically email prospects at your chosen intervals.
• Power dialer: Like speed dial on steroids, a power dialer allows you to create and automate a custom call list.
• Bulk outreach: Select multiple contacts and send numerous emails at once.
• Sales triggers: Automate specific parts of your workflow and reduce admin work by building trigger-based actions.

Reporting and analytics

Even a simple CRM with no frills needs reporting and analytics capabilities to provide invaluable insights into your business and customers. You can tailor these powerful features to meet your individual needs.

• Accurate forecasting: Predict deal volume and revenue growth so you can continue refining your strategy.
• Pipeline analysis: View and analyze your deal progression to see where there might be bottlenecks or areas that need improvement.
• Advanced analytics: Gain a deeper understanding of trends and performance with real-time and historical data, pre-built dashboards, customizable dashboards, and collaboration tools.
• Activity reporting: Generate reports that evaluate metrics—like calls made and email outcomes—and help you track activities that could lead to potential sales.
• Performance metrics: These metrics from sales trackers tell you whether you’re on pace to reach your goals—or if your pipeline needs tweaking.
• Custom dashboards: Use widgets to monitor performance goals, activities, and tasks.

From modest startups to massive corporations, there are CRMs—and pricing options—for everyone. Zendesk offers a great time to value because you can implement and integrate it quickly and start seeing a return on investment (ROI). In fact, 70 percent of teams are up and running with Zendesk in less than eight weeks, and more than 66 percent of the companies saw a return on their investment within the first six months.