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CRM (Customer Relationship Management)
By Zapier • Published March 1, 2021
CRM (Customer Relationship Management) platforms connect a thread through each sales interaction, support complaint, live chat, and marketing email making one cohesive account for each customer. That thread matters because it's exactly how your customer perceives their relationship with you: a single sentiment toward your brand based on a chain of interactions and the value you provide.
Businesses often fall short when it comes to keeping track of their customers, storing data in disparate locations that require manual updating. Customers can sense it from a mile away. Salesforce's 2020 State of the Connected Customer Report found that while 76% of surveyed customers expected that their information would be distributed across sales, customer service, and marketing, 54% said it usually feels like those departments don't talk to each other.
CRMs help you meet (and exceed) those expectations by keeping every interaction in one central platform—and automation keeps that platform up-to-date and useful.
Looking for a CRM? See our reviews for top small business CRMs.
How automated CRMs help your business
CRMs powered by automated integrations not only reduce the time spent carrying information over from one system to another, but they also make it easier for someone to do business with you over and over by storing every account detail in a hub your whole team can access.
Don't see your software here? Zapier works with thousands of apps, so there's a good chance that your tools work on our platform. Learn more about the CRM software on the Zapier platform by visiting our App Directory.
Provide better service
Repeating yourself in a call forwarding merry-go-round gets old. Free up your team to serve your customer quickly instead of asking for data you already have stored somewhere else. Customers can have a pleasant and faster interaction with your brand because each member of your team has access to the same information.
Set up some of these Zaps to make customer service more seamless:
Track sales deals
Manage contacts, track sales, and record activities in one main system to stay a step ahead of customer communication and scale your business, then use automation to keep yourself on track with sales goals. Track high-value or riskier leads more closely to ensure they receive the extra care they need to close.
Make deal monitoring easier with these automated workflows:
Learn more automated workflows to support your sales process.
Market more effectively
Store or back up customer data away from your point of sale system (like Shopify or Square) for better marketing and easier data analysis. Instead of having to manually export .csv records of recent purchases into your marketing platforms, automatically sort customers into marketing groups based on buying behavior and lifetime value.
Give yourself a marketing shortcut:
Use Shopify and Salesforce? We walk you through how to use Zapier to add customers to Salesforce.
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