Any modern business model would fail without one crucial element — being customer-oriented and choosing the right ways and methods to create and maintain solid and long-term relationships with the target audience. But such a strategy is pretty demanding in volumes of information to analyze to keep up with the clients’ expectations and own professional goals.
The number of your current loyal customers doesn’t really matter — whether you cooperate with a hundred or thousands of people, there will always be a need to operate tons of data. Manipulating the received information right gives fuel to teams, letting both parts of interaction benefit from this relationship. Instead of manual approaches, there are innovative technologies to select to address the challenge — a CRM integration. Keep on reading to find out what is hidden behind this abbreviation. Onwards!
What Is CRM Integration?
CRM integration services are often mysterious and complicated for business owners. Even now, there are numerous sources that depict the notion under consideration in an overly puzzled manner. And who wants to work with analogs of hadron colliders but in the marketing sphere? The spread association isn’t true in this case.
In reality, the term is just an abbreviation for customer relationship management. Simply put, these are tools applied to operate information received from end-users and inner organization’s processes, as well as working on sales, profits, leads, and communication within the team and with the target audience. The system automatizes several important processes, minimizing mistake and failure risks. At the same time, it simplifies work for employees and helps maintain a solid dialogue with consumers.
If you are interested in the efficiency and accuracy of customer-related operations. At this point, whether you prefer Salesforce CRM integration or Bitrix24, this guarantees actionable insight into your performance. Without the tools these platforms provide, even a single alternation may ruin everything. If brands rely on managers’ own styles of information operation, their decision to quit will not only make you hire another person for this position.
Personalities who access core customer information won’t be able to transfer all the details to their heirs. Every time you have a meeting or a phone call with clients, this brings valuable pieces of information. CRM systems are addressed to keep such data trackable and adjustable 24/7, unlike the personnel that is no longer a member of your team.
Benefits of CRM Integration
The level of competitiveness that takes place in small and medium-sized businesses is hard to describe with a few words only. When the budget limitations don’t let interested parties apply advanced methods to entice new customers, it is especially important to create well-balanced customer value to keep as many consumers as your loyal ambassadors as possible. What is more important, this feature becomes their advantage, increasing their stand-out skills. Instead of just surviving in the market, this approach allows occupying a particular niche and living there freely and happily.
So what is the attitude of CRM systems like Bitrix24 to all those considerations? The problem is that several teams underestimate the influence of CRM integrations. The decision to abandon implementing a CRM system results in the following:
● What is CRM integration’s effect on your work speed? Having access to all the data in one storage place is more than just appreciated. This simplifies cooperation between different departments of your team and minimizes the risks of losing meaningful pieces of information. At the same time, the ease of navigation (you don’t have to scroll down myriads of webs to find what you are looking for), leads to faster and sounder performancуж
● The absence of a unified and standardized information storage system represented by Bitrix24 and its alternatives shows how careless brands are to their own development. In this case, not only the speed of work is worsened. It is much harder to monitor your employees’ diligence. The reason for that isn’t necessarily the individual’s dishonesty. Complex stages they have to overcome to include the customer-related data in their base exhaust and increases the mistake ratio.
● If you fail to manage data from users, other means that seem to be successful will fail too. For instance, the brand invests in the advertisement of a new product and attracts the attention of potential customers. But the income of loyal ones won’t be satisfactory if users’ emails, inquiries, and feedback will be left unnoticed. The managers’ inability to work with leads and keep contacts spoils the effort realized by other diligence actions.
● What is the CRM integrations’ meaning for the company’s relationship with their target audience? The complete lack of interaction with existing customers and insufficient attention to them are also caused by the absence of a universal database to manipulate customer-related information. A common misconception of service providers is to focus on new customers. They believe this marketing strategy leads to an increase in sales. The consequences are the opposite though. Such entrepreneurs aren’t capable of making clients stay with and support them.
Therefore, customer turnover rates are mind-blowing, and the efficiency factor is minimal. In fact, skillful work with the existing base of consumers can give a tangible income without additional financial costs. As practice shows and proves, it is more favorable for your budget to maintain solid customer relationships than to constantly spend resources without proper customer value management — just stranded investments and no benefits.
● When there is no unified system to work with data, employees often use several of them. Giving preference to your own methods of collecting and storing information may be favorable for the individualism of your staff. Unfortunately, it causes increased data-loss risks and failures to proceed with it in a timely manner. If you fail to react when customers expect it, they are likely to say goodbye to your brand forever. In addition, service providers don’t see the full picture, and the reliability and trustworthiness of their business predictions and tactics, therefore, leave much to be desired.
How to Integrate with other Business Software
CRM data integration systems have evolved significantly so far. Not only are there several types, but also such platforms are based on unique operational technologies, from on-premises hardware to cloud applications. Accordingly, the way of integration largely depends on the CRM format you prefer.
There are more and more offerings that guarantee seamless connectivity between your own software and third-party services. Forget about constant switching from hardware to software back and forth — CRM integrations are designed to expand your productivity and maximize your efficiency.
The major part of benefits they provide will be available with any reputable and multifunctional tool. Sticking to your business orientations will be complimentary in the choice of the desired CRM interface. In general, experts define three major varieties of it:
● Operational — such systems are fulfilled with more divergent and advanced tools to track customers’ journey within the brand’s website/application. From the very acquaintance with your platform and after the purchase is made, the automation of a vast range of tasks spares energy for creative operations. For instance, sales, service, and marketing automation takes place. The pressure on employees is drastically reduced, while access to top-notch services from the brand isn’t stopped for a single moment. If you are on the hunt for high-level observation of the client lifecycle, these CRMs are worth going for.
● Collaborative — the name is self-explanatory: these platforms guarantee you will reach out to your team members on time. Working with customers, there is no need to analyze different customer data storage sources and wait for the reply from appropriate departments. It is possible to check the required details on your own. CRM integrations of this kind promote sound relationships between sales and support team representatives with the target audience. The document, channel, and interaction management is flawless with such programs.
● Analytical — if you want to know how to cope with tons of customer information and find the right insights, analytical interfaces are at your disposal. Their goal is to let you understand clients’ behavior and reactions to your offerings faster and more efficiently. What is more crucial, this type is a key to use the maximum of details received. The analysis is automated, and your well-thought-out control over the process lets you see trends appreciated by end-users, their preferences. These tools let enthusiasts find out about consumers with the biggest lifetime value, most appreciated tools, the performance of lead funnels, and much more. Once you know such details, it is easier to find the perfect match method to satisfy customers’ objectives.
There is another subdivision of CRM systems. Described below, three ways of how CRM services can work have their own pros and cons, so defining your priorities and resources will let you make the right choice.
APIs for CRM Integrations
The abbreviation refers to application program interfaces. In plain English, this system maintains an interface from where you can reach related tools and services. The interaction with other programs is based on specialized programming protocols. Up-to-date customer information is presented through SaaS or cloud-based tools. The key thing is that if the service has its API interface, the flow of data can be organized without an additional login.
Systems, process, and experience APIs — these roles are interconnected and tier up all the program interfaces’ peculiarities. While the sender can provide their clients with shipping details via system APIs of the carriers, it is possible for them to check the customer’s purchase story due to experience interfaces. Dashboard-based analytics and sales forecasting are possible thanks to process APIs in particular.
The key tuning link here is the presence of an API — then different solutions are easily connected and integrated. Human interruption is minimized. The program will synchronize its tools and update information from other departments in the single interface. The speed of data flow is one of the most favorable and fastest with the help of API and their incredible connectivity. If your sales department finalizes an agreement, the appropriate changes will be automatically represented in your CRM domain.
Mesmerizing every word and transferring the deal’s details manually is no longer necessary. As for the number of integrated APIs, there are usually no significant limitations. But even if there are any, the present quantity doesn’t reduce your organizational and operational performance value
It may seem rather unexpected for some non-technical users, but people come across samples of APIs daily. A great example is a common system to log in using social networks like Facebook or Gmail accounts. The payment options that are present by several CRM systems also thank their existence to APIs — proceeding with money transfers via PayPal or online wallets.
A long story short, the tools under analysis promote increased brand efficiency along with streamlined staff training. The ability to access customer data in one spot reduces errors and smooths cooperation at different levels, allowing team members to provide the best services and performance.
Native Integrations
Everything is pretty simple with native CRM integrations. Here you achieve a bunch of tools released by one and the same developer. Created in-house, such technologies ensure flawless performance of all the system’s compartments. No complex installation is required — there is no need to switch between platforms since business tools are available within the original interface.
They suit best for any group of interested parties since their integration and implementation are the smoothest and the most user-friendly and intuitive processes. Unfortunately or luckily, these domains aren’t the most spread offer in the market. They are usually provided by major giants in the industry like Slack, MailChimp, Gmail, and other famous alternatives.
Here are some essential aspects of native CRM integration performance:
● Since all the tools are supported by one parent company, customers can sigh with relief — any issues or triggers in functionality will be solved in a well-equipped and accurate manner. Moreover, given the major infrastructure of CRM compartments is based on similar principles, they are intuitively perceived as one organism. So it takes less time to get acquainted with the interface and become accustomed to it.
● Another obvious benefit of sticking to native integrations is their price — no fees are demanded to access them. They are also manageable to be applied right away after implementing into your user system.
● Native integrations don’t really welcome the domains of another origin. So the list of compatible solutions may be limited.
● The availability of native integrations may turn out not so tempting and beneficial. These tools are synched perfectly but lack functionality since the parent company is either not quite specialized in the field or busy with other projects to level up the engineering of the previous releases.
Third-party Integrations
Given the number of tasks each brand has to fulfill, regardless of its size and capacity, the challenge to prepare native applications for every demand becomes Mission Impossible. That is where this-party solutions come in handy greatly. Here an original customer relationship management interface isn’t meant to provide tools for every company’s need solely. This format of cooperation allows different developers to occupy their particular niche and be in demand among businesses. While there may be just a few native integrations, the number of related services from other providers can easily exceed a hundred apps.
All things considered, Bitrix24 is one of the decent choices to start with. It is not only a system that provides seamless integration and is compatible with several third-party tools. This is what is known as an all-in-one solution. It unites features of analytical, collaborative, and operational CRM interfaces at the same time, preferring the best features only.
The option under consideration offers exclusive functionality for reports and sales pipelines, multichannel communication channels that are accessible round the clock, deals’ invoices, as well as money transactions via major payment systems and sales analytics. Naturally, these key features have numerous supporting characteristics which enable an Omni-perspective and insightful approach to online and offline business actions. Though it will take some to overcome the learning curve it demands, the process is worth it — real-time updates and notifications, project planning, calendar managing, and activity tracking are just samples of features to adore about Bitrix24.
This CRM data integration interface may seem insufficient for teams with not quite techno-savvy users, but it stands out with numerous aspects of its performance, from a couple of deployment methods to training varieties.
Final Thoughts
The notion of CRM services is pretty simple in its nature — these are tools to systematize and simplify your approach to collecting, analyzing, and storing customer data. You don’t have to know how separate features have turned out to be present in their current state. The major part of CRM interfaces is multi-operational, so the learning curve isn’t an entirely intuitive process. So it is highly recommended to look for third parties with FAQ pages, training, and tutorials.
Nowadays, good intentions aren’t enough to prove the best customer experience and keep on improving the offered customer value. The right system will not only boost up your employees’ mood (lots of processes will not require their manual guidance). In turn, it will guarantee your continual and successful delivery of the best deals to the target audience. Not sure which CRM data integration to pick up? Opt for services like Bitrix24 that offer free trials — get a test drive and hands-on experience in working with customer relationship management tools at the same time.
