The best CRM solutions for your organization

What is a CRM?

Customer relationship management (often referred to as CRM) is essential to building successful companies and creating opportunities for your company to grow. CRM technology manages customer experience and helps with your growth team’s goals. When deciding what CRM technology to use for your company, it is essential to understand the different types of CRMs. Let's dive in!

Different types of CRMs

CRM software falls into three categories: collaborative, operational, and analytical, each serving a unique purpose based on your company's need. Collaborative CRMs allow for customer service information to be neatly accessed by various company divisions. Collaborative CRMs aggregate relevant customer information and facilitate your employees' shared knowledge of user experience. Interaction management and channel management are the key aspects of collaborative CRMs. Channel management deals with the marketing and interacting strategies your company enacts to appease customers. In contrast, interaction management deals with any employee or customer interaction, whether transactional or experiential. With collaborative CRMs, past and present customer information can be accessed company-wide to better understand a customer's needs and provide more accurate goals for all employees working together. Do I need a collaborative CRM?

If your business is customer-centric, then a collaborative CRM is beneficial. For example, a company with many customer-facing subdivisions (customer service, tech support, marketing division, etc.) can collectively utilize a collaborative CRM to create a better customer experience. Operational CRMs aid in a customer's streamlined experience with your company. Automated systems like call venters, lead sorting, and instant chat features are helpful. They eliminate tedious tasks that encumber employees. With a shared interface and organized automation, operational CRMs prove beneficial for day-to-day tasks. 

Do I need an operational CRM?

Operational CRMS are great for companies that perform many sales functions. The CRM's automated features help get guide customers from start to purchase and can continue to support your customer network with service features. Software like SalesForce is an operational CRM that helps build customer relationships and provides an efficient experience for those interacting with your company's services. Analytical CRMs are digital tools that help your company collect, organize, and analyze data about your company. Large quantities of data can be challenging to navigate, but analytical CRMs take away the stress of this essential function. Analytical CRMs utilize company data at a greater capacity with trend analysis, financial reporting, sales forecasting, etc. Analytical CRMs are vital for cultivating critical projections and using your company's valuable information. Do I need an Analytical CRM? For a company that thrives on consumer trends and preferences, analytical CRMs is the way to go. Such CRMs will help you aggregate and enforce a large amount of valuable data that could ultimately lead to increased sales, fewer customer complaints, and a more profitable business. 

Top CRM tools that are most common across companies of all sizes: 

1. Salesforce
2. Zoho CRM
3. Bitrix24
4. Pipedrive
5. Nimble
6. Hubspot

‍The good news is that Driveway overlays on top of all of the leading CRMs, which makes it easy for your team to create how-to-guides with ease to get everyone up and running, and trained on how to best use them!