Employees are required to switch between 900+ apps per firm on average, more than 1,000 times each day.
This implies that employees are wasting a lot of time switching between apps, which is easily a distraction from crucial responsibilities. Additionally, data that is copied and pasted between different systems has the potential to be permanently deleted.
The purpose of apps is to increase our productivity and efficiency. And they are still. Your team is held back because the apps are incompatible with one another, not because the apps themselves are the problem.
How then can you make your sales representatives more productive?
Now, let’s integrate CRM. Your data will remain in sync thanks to the proper integrations, which produce a seamless digital transformation.
Additionally, you’ll develop and enhance your relationships with customers, which is a win-win situation.
But what exactly is CRM integration, and how can you use it in your company?
This manual will define CRM integration, describe the many kinds, and offer other useful information to assist you advance your enterprise resource planning, business productivity, and customer relationships.
Explanation of CRM Integration
Let’s start by defining CRM. Customer relationship management, or CRM, is a term commonly used to describe a technology that efficiently manages interactions and relationships between your business and both present and potential customers.
Additionally, it assists in streamlining various corporate operations, such as the sales process, which can help raise overall productivity.
CRM software essentially assists you in concentrating on developing relationships with certain people, such as clients, coworkers, suppliers, or service users. This may result from acquiring new clients or pursuing fresh prospects, sealing the deal, or rendering assistance and other services over the course of the partnership.
Where then does integration fit in?
CRM integration, as the name suggests, links your CRM platform with other external programs you use at work.
Therefore, any changes you make to a CRM or one of your connected applications will be reflected and have an impact on the CRM data in all of the other apps running on the same system.
Integrated CRM can take on a variety of shapes and sizes depending on the kind of business. It can occasionally be as easy as connecting your CRM software to a few features on a business website, such pop-up windows, live chat, and forms.
Some people might require the CRM platform to integrate with other apps like social networking or email services that might streamline their business procedures.
Then, how does this operate? We won’t get too technical, but the majority of CRM integrations call for an API connection (application programming interfaces).
Others might need an instrument known as “integration platform as a service” (iPaaS), which is in charge of information sharing with other systems.
In short, integrating a CRM with your other apps can significantly improve business productivity while saving you time because you won’t have to switch between them.
11 CRM Integration Case Studies and Techniques You Need to Know
Now that you are aware of what CRM integration is, let’s explore the various forms of integration that can help improve customer connections and bring processes within your business into alignment. Here are a few examples:
Combining emails
Email is a crucial form of communication for all businesses, small and large. In actuality, approximately 50% of people have an email address. This implies that email would also be one of your main avenues for reaching out to your customers.
The benefit of email integration is found here. In this case, the advantages of CRM integration enable multiple departments within your business, such as sales, marketing, HR, customer service, and others, to integrate their email (regardless of whether it comes from Microsoft Outlook or Gmail) into your CRM system.
This enables businesses to automate their emails for various scenarios and access all of their resources in one location.
For instance, without the need for additional software tools, your sales staff may construct templates and sequences and view all of their customer data.
This kind of integration can help your marketing team construct successful email marketing strategies and a range of email campaigns.
Integration of social media
With at least 100 million subscribers, there are more than 100 social media platforms. As of Q3 2022, there are 2.96 billion active Facebook users per month. You need to be present on the platforms where your customers are actually interacting if you want to reach as many of them as possible.
This implies that using many apps is required to enable this integration technique. Thankfully, social media interfaces are available in CRM systems, reducing the need to switch between different social network programs.
Additionally, you can learn a lot about your audience when you link your company’s social media accounts to your CRM. This information covers the content they connect with and share most frequently as well as their typical times of account interaction.
In addition, social media integration streamlines and automates publishing, removing the need for human content uploading at the precise moment that it is required.
What’s best?
Most CRM applications are integrated with well-known platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Examining potential software integrations
Prospecting apps are used by a successful sales team to find and connect with prospects. The team must alternate between using this type of app and others, like email platforms, if the program is not connected into a CRM system.
Especially if you have a CRM at your disposal, this is laborious and unneeded. A better approach would be to combine your prospecting system with your present CRM. You can interact with leads inside your CRM by doing this.
Integrating the calendar
Meetings are necessary for businesses to operate, whether they are internal or external. However, if you’re managing multiple apps, it may be challenging to synchronize your schedule in a single location. Okay, not any longer.
You can quickly view all of your schedules in one calendar by integrating your CRM with Google or Outlook. Some CRMS even let you log a meeting over a webinar, make meeting announcements, and send meeting invites via email.
Others even offer a function that lets potential clients schedule a meeting based on your availability, doing away with the need for back-and-forth communication.
Integration of Connectors
Your CRM might not always have every integration you require. However, using connector integrations, you can still get all you require on a single platform.
By setting up automated workflows, this kind of connectivity enables you to support a number of jobs. Zappier, for example, is a platform that enables data transformation between your CRM and more than 1,000 third-party apps, such as various project management tools, accounting apps, and payment apps.
Integration of Communication
CRM integrations can enhance team communication and accessibility in addition to enhancing customer satisfaction and business productivity.
By enabling you to incorporate numerous messaging and communication tools in your CRM, communications integrations help streamline your internal communication process. This implies that you don’t have to go between apps in order to speak with your teammates using your CRM.
Additionally, communication integrations can facilitate communication between you and your salespeople and clients and prospects.
The call data and contact information, for instance, would always be accessible if you connect Zoom into your CRM system.
Integration of Forms and Data Collection
Depending on how you automate this process, lead creation might be simple or time-consuming. You can do away with the necessity for a middleman between your papers and client data storage by integrating forms and data gathering.
This kind of CRM integration enables you to gather and save customer data in one location so you can quickly get in touch with them when necessary. The data can be synchronized into your CRM right away when using custom forms and surveys.
All the consumer information you gather can be found in one location thanks to this integration.
Integrations for Customer Support
This CRM integration might assist your team become more aligned with the customer care staff if your company has one.
For instance, the information from your customer’s help ticket can be synchronized with the data in your CRM about them. Before a different team contacts them for any unrelated reasons, all other organization members can then determine whether any outstanding issues need to be resolved.
Understanding the client journey and the correct demographics of the people you are servicing are crucial.
Integration of live chat
Making it simple for your clients to contact you when necessary is one of the best ways to demonstrate your concern for them. Additionally, it enables potential buyers to interact with you before making a purchase.
Using a chatbot makes it simple to save any conversational data to your CRM, making it much simpler to follow up when you need to close leads or re-engage past clients.
This streamlines customer contacts and eliminates those boring, repeated tasks, allowing you to focus on more crucial duties like scheduling the delivery of your sales mailings!
Integration of E-Commerce
Understanding your consumers is essential, especially for sales representatives. Information like purchases, order frequency, contact details, and purchasing habits are all important.
You may get access to this information whenever you need it by linking your CRM with e-commerce platforms like Shopify. With the help of this information, you may strategically plan your marketing campaigns and automate several tasks.
For instance, anytime a consumer abandons the checkout process, you can start an abandoned cart email sequence.
Additionally, e-commerce CRM integration enables you to immediately save new contacts who receive price estimates if your business accepts online payments. Customers will find it simpler to pay their bills and purchases thanks to the elimination of pointless back and forth.
Integration of video
Do you aware that people prefer watching videos over other types of content? This implies that your sales and marketing team should incorporate video into their plan.
Integrate your CRM with any streaming services or video platforms you use, such as YouTube, to maximize its effectiveness and gain access to useful information.
This information may include the most popular videos, the time they are seen, and more. Your team will simultaneously have access to all the data required to develop a successful sales process without switching between tools.
Benefits of integrating CRM systems
We already know the CRM interfaces you employ to optimize your operational procedures. However, how do these integrations impact your company?
The following are important advantages to know:
Data accuracy is increased and the possibility of human error while manually entering data is decreased by linking your CRM with all of your other platforms and systems. This also implies that all of your records are synced in real-time with the data in a single, central system.
As a result, all platforms will automatically update data rather than requiring numerous manual or multiple data entry points. Accurate data is important, not simply nice to have. It can have positive knock-on implications for the whole company.
Efforts to maximize sales and marketing
Since CRM integrations can offer in-depth customer insights, your marketing and sales team can use them to comprehend client behavior to build the ideal sales funnel.
In other words, based on client profiles and behavioral triggers, companies can utilize the data to develop highly targeted automated sales and marketing programs.
Enhanced Effectiveness
Unnecessary and routine work can be removed thanks to the integration of all the platforms and systems that your departments utilize into a single, central hub. Your staff will be able to concentrate on projects that will have a more significant influence on your business, increasing profitability.
For instance, using email sequences in marketing automation software like Mailchimp may ensure that your sales staff won’t ignore possibilities if they are juggling various platforms.
Shortened training period
You may train your staff to utilize simply your CRM, where all the information they require is available, rather than simultaneously teaching them how to use multiple systems.
This not only saves you time, but also potentially costly recurring training expenses. They can only concentrate on studying one tool at a time, which will enable them to succeed and become proficient with it more quickly.
Boost Sales
Your team can manage and access all the data they require from many platforms in one location thanks to a centralized database. By analyzing previous transactions, this enables your sales and marketing staff to ascertain what your clients want and need.
The data can be used to identify holes that need to be filled and to provide chances to boost revenue.
Do you want to boost sales productivity? Starting With CRM Integration
You should utilize CRM connectors as strong tools to assist your company save time, effort, and money. It increases overall productivity and efficiency while reducing manual effort that can compromise your clients’ data.
With a powerful CRM like Close at the heart of your company, you can design efficient workflows and integrations that let you concentrate on what really matters.
Keep in mind that anything that can be measured can be done. You may use the information your CRM collects to create effective sales tactics and provide better customer service.
