So, you've decided that your small business lacks CRM. But who should be responsible for that? Not all in a row for sure! Actually, there's a special role — CRM manager. They are entrusted with the responsibility of managing customer relationships, overseeing the CRM systems, and ensuring seamless interaction with customers. Today we will tell you everything you need to know about CRM managers and find out if you can do without one. Keep reading!
Table of Contents
- What is CRM and How Does It Relate to CRM software?
- Core Responsibilities of a CRM Manager
- Required Skills for a Successful CRM Manager
- Can a Small Business Do Without a CRM Manager?
- Conclusion
What is CRM and How Does It Relate to CRM software?
First things first. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a strategy used by businesses to manage their interactions with leads and customers. It involves using data analysis about customers' history with a company to improve business relationships, specifically focusing on customer retention and ultimately driving sales growth.
On the other hand, CRM software is a tool that companies use to manage, analyze, and improve their customer relationships. It collects and organizes customer data from various channels and simplifies the process of recording and analyzing customer interactions and managing customer accounts.
Core Responsibilities of a CRM Manager
This might be surprising, but a CRM Manager's duties go beyond just understanding the CRM software. It's not a technical role at all. Their tasks involve building and maintaining strong, long-lasting customer relationships and analyzing customer interactions. Here's what exactly a CRM manager does:
Data Gathering
Gathers and studies customer data from different sources like feedback, surveys, transactions, website visits, and social media. This helps understand what customers want and how satisfied they are.
CRM Usage
Uses a CRM system to keep track of all customer data, communicates with customers, monitors customer activities, and measures how well your strategies are working.
Strategy Development
Comes up with new strategies to improve customer experience and loyalty. This includes campaigns to keep customers, attract new ones, increase sales, and grow brand awareness.
Complaint Handling
Deals with customer complaints. Records and solves these issues using the CRM system and follows up to make sure the customer is happy.
Team Supervision
Supervises interactions between customers and important team members like customer service agents, sales agents, and marketing managers. Makes sure these team members have access to the right customer data, communicate well with customers, and work together to provide great service.
However, you still need a designated manager for each department. The CRM manager's job is just to bring everything together.
Also, The Secret to Maximizing Sales Using A CRM
Required Skills for a Successful CRM Manager
As you can see, a CRM manager has a fairly wide range of tasks. And to perform them, they need the same range of diverse skills: strategic thinking, communication skills, and technological expertise. If you want to hire a CRM manager, pay attention to the following:
Customer Acquisition
Possesses knowledge to attract new customers, retain existing ones, design and execute campaigns targeting diverse customer types, and also can gauge the success of these initiatives.
Communication Skills
Has excellent verbal and written communication skills, capable of articulating ideas, plans, and results clearly, while also adept at receiving feedback and responding to it promptly and professionally.
Emotional Intelligence
Perceptive of social and emotional cues, capable of adapting their approach based on the customer's personality and mood, and skilled in management of their own emotions and stress.
Product Knowledge
Owns comprehensive knowledge of the business's product or service, is capable of articulating it to customers in an understandable manner, and can discern customer needs and recommend appropriate solutions.
Team Collaboration
Excels in teamwork within the customer care unit, coordinating efforts and goals, supporting and motivating team members, as well as providing guidance and feedback.
Data Analysis
Has an analytical and data-driven mind, must be capable of collecting and analyzing data from various sources to enhance the customer experience, and proficient in using tools and software that assist in managing the CRM system.
Task Management
Should possess the ability to efficiently manage multiple tasks simultaneously, prioritize them based on their importance, and adapt swiftly to changes.
A sales, marketing, business, or related industry diploma will be a plus to all of the above skills.
Also, Is It Time to Upgrade Your Online Marketing by Installing a CRM?
Can a Small Business Do Without a CRM Manager?
Based on information from Glassdoor, a CRM manager in the U.S. earns around $90,410 per year. This includes a basic salary of $82,413 and extra earnings like bonuses or profit sharing, which average about $7,997. For a small business, especially a newly created one, this money can be a serious argument against hiring a designated CRM manager. So can you somehow do without that special guy?
Well, if you're a small business with straightforward customer interactions, you may not need a dedicated CRM manager. The use of the CRM software can be managed by existing staff members who have been appropriately trained. Sales agents and customer support agents, for instance, are typically tasked with tracking customer interactions, keeping contact information up to date, and setting tasks and reminders for follow-up with contacts.
A CRM administrator, on the other hand, is a tech-savvy individual responsible for the management and maintenance of the CRM system, working closely with the team to ensure the system is functioning as it should.
When choosing a CRM system that will be used by the entire team, pay attention to features such as:
- Ease of use — its interface should be simple enough so that even people who are far from technology, but talented in other areas, can fully use all the functionality they need.
- Collaboration — the software should allow your team members to work together with the same databases.
- Integration — the system should easily integrate with other marketing applications that you use. And, if necessary, allow you to integrate other applications using the API.
And by the way, our TruVISIBILITY CRM has all these advantages. It is the core of the TruVISIBILITY Suite — an all-in-one marketing software platform. This means that CRM integrates with other online marketing applications that make up the platform, so you can not only manage your customer data, but also create rule-based and AI-powered chatbots, build websites with blogs, and launch email marketing campaigns.
TruVISIBILITY CRM is extremely user-friendly, so your team won't spend much time on training. Plus, it allows them to work together through access to the same applications and databases.
Conclusion
Now you know that special CRM managers should be responsible for CRM in companies. Their responsibilities come down not only to administering CRM software but also to building and maintaining strong customer relationships and analyzing customer interactions.
However, if you have a small, simple business, then you can do without this costly manager. It is enough to implement a CRM system, train staff on how to use it, and probably appoint one technician who will make sure that the software works as expected.
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