Predicting Sales & Strengthening Leads: 5 Top Cloud Platforms for CRM

Today, be it a small business, a start-up, an established brand, or even as a freelancer, backing it with a robust Customer Service Management (CRM) system is very essential. CRMs help brands to identify and strengthen leads in the infancy stage and offer better revenues, and greater levels of customer satisfaction.

It would interest you to know that CRMs are not new; well the term may be relatively new but they have been on the scene since the 80s. Robert and Kate Kestnbaum were the trailblazers of database marketing (a form of direct marketing involving customer analysis through data to identify the ones who are most likely to react to a specific marketing campaign).

This concept became a success, and so the Kestnbaums joined hands with Robert Shaw who ushered in a myriad of innovative marketing concepts like customer lifetime value and channel management.

With a promise to improve brand presence and enhance the customer journey, the CRM industry is growing at a staggering rate. Considered to be one of the biggest growing software markets globally, it is predicted that by 2025, CRMs will reach more than $80 billion in revenue.

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Informatica’s B2B technology report revealed that 25% of marketers are clueless about their lead conversion rate, mostly because they are not using the right CRM strategy which hinders work efficiency and sales growth.

In this post, we are decoding Customer Service Management system and the top cloud platform that

What is a Cloud Platform?

Let’s first understand what a cloud platform is. It is an operating system that enables software as well as hardware products to seamlessly co-exist in a remote setup or at scale.

Organizations pay rent to access various computer services such as storage, analytics, servers, software, networking, etc. With the help of a cloud platform, organizations can do the following:

• Create cloud-native applications.
• Test and build applications.
• Store, backup, and recover data.

What is a CRM and Why do you Need it?

It is an established fact that CRM is an incredible tool that is bestowing companies with the power to create massive sales leads, improve conversion rates, and expand their customer base.

In a nutshell, a good CRM will help you address a variety of questions like – what customer information is needed for a flawless sales process, how to communicate with your clients and customers in a better and effective manner, how to keep a track of high-priority tasks, how to efficiently streamline processes.

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A Customer Service Management system collects lead data and customer information and then showcases it to the sales, marketing, and customer service teams and helps the teams collaborate better for better ROI. The basic function of this software is to paint a holistic picture of leads and customers and enable brands to offer personalized journeys to their customers.

CRM Helps Companies to:

• Improve sales, and jump in revenue.
• Better segment their audience.
• Automate the Data Analysis process.
• Offer 24*7 customer service assistance through chatbots.
• Feedback Loop.
• Personalize relationships with customers.
• Social media integration.
• Predict sales forecast.

Let’s take a look at the top cloud platform for CRMs.

Copper CRM

This can be called God sent for Google users. This CRM is designed in a way that it can work in real-time inside G Suite and works effortlessly with Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Slide, etc.

It is embedded with all the basic CRM tools like workflow automation, deal tracking, contact management, and reports. It can integrate with a host of common yet necessary tools like Zendesk, MailChimp, Quickbooks, and Slack.

Copper CRM takes extra efforts to protect data by performing independent third-party audits of their systems and providing data security training to the entire staff. The only drawback with Copper CRM is that you may require refreshing your Gmail inbox to update the Copper panel.

HubSpot

An admirable player in automating marketing tasks, HubSpot lays great emphasis on the sales process. You can work around with a variety of tools to generate leads, accomplish more deals, and enjoy a loyal base of returning customers.

One top feature of HubSpot is its library builder which enables all team members to share useful sales information and analyze which works the best for reuse.

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You can make good use of the template generators to create blog suggestions, invoices, business plans, email signatures, and marketing plans. The basic version is free for unlimited users along with unlimited data.

EngageBay

It comes with a free CRM system for several functions such as sales pipeline management, paid marketing, basic contact organization, and service modules.

The high point of using EngageBay is its ability to log each and every customer interaction via email into the CRM database while also allowing you to make calls or draft emails right from within the system.

It also gives an option of publishing your calendar online enabling your customers to select dates for phone calls or meetings along with follow-up reminders.

Be it transactional emails for invoicing and payment tracking or business processes, you can streamline all these with the help of Zapier, Mailgun, and SendGrid integrations. And if you are worried about migrating all your contacts from your previous CRMs, EngageBay automatically takes care of it.

Agile CRM

Apt for large and small businesses, Agile CRM is an all-in-one CRM that is powerful, easy, and affordable. You can count on Agile for good speed and smooth data encryption as it is hosted on Google cloud.

It has an array of effortless integrations and social plugins like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook and offers countless tasks, deals and documents even in the free version.

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Salesflare

Touted as a commendable support in task management, Salesflare magically works its way with your data from the phone, calendar, and other mobile apps and logs them in the system automatically.

Its seamless quick search, organizing, retrieval functionality, and super-fast document uploading are its main highlights. After smartly scanning all your tasks and data, Salesflare sends mobile notifications about important tasks to be completed.

By allowing your team access to your Gmail and Microsoft Outlook inbox while also letting them work, your team’s productivity is likely to improve phenomenally.

Sugar CRM

Considered amongst the top cloud-based CRM systems, Sugar CRM works with a robust army of marketing, sales, and service, steadily converting small business needs. While working on the details of a social media ad campaign, an email marketing campaign, or landing pages, Sugar CRM offers insightful SMO and SEO suggestions.

To strengthen your game, Sugar offers impactful insights from different business and social data resources to ensure your sales team is way ahead. This comes especially handy while planning sales forecasts and project management.

What refines the customer service experience is Sugar’s customer support console. Sugar also keeps a tab on SLAs and provides the latest updates on the support department.

Conclusion

As of now, the CRM industry continues to grow at a tremendous pace, and having a robust one in place is the need of the hour. Right from learning about your clients and their preferences to centralizing all information in one place for the stakeholders and maximizing sales and conversions, CRM is a one–man army for all your business needs.

[To share your insights with us, please write to sghosh@martechseries.com].