If you want to have a thriving business in the B2B sector, customer success must be a top priority. Ensuring your customers are happy and getting the most out of your products or services is essential. Just consider these stats from an article by Outbound Engine:
- Acquiring a new customer can cost five times more than retaining an existing customer.
- Increasing customer retention by 5% can increase profits from 25-95%.
- The success rate of selling to a customer you already have is 60-70%, while the success rate of selling to a new customer is 5-20%.
While the importance of customer success is easy to see, maintaining a strong base of successful customers is challenging. You need to understand the unique requirements of each and every customer and be proactive in helping meet those needs. Fortunately, there are tools to help.
The two most prominent tools used by customer success teams are CRM and CSM. While both of these powerful toolsets are capable of improving nearly every aspect of your customer success efforts, it can be difficult to determine which one is right for your business.
In this article we will explore the benefits of both CRM and CSM to help you find the solution that fits your business best.
What is CRM?
A CRM (customer relationship management) platform is a software toolset that assists businesses with managing their people (customers and employees), work processes, products, and projects on a day-to-day basis.
Once thought of primarily as a customer engagement tool for the sales team, modern CRM software has evolved to address the needs of many different business aspects, including marketing, customer support, customer success, and HR.
Through the use of advanced automations tools and data centralization, a CRM system can help businesses improve communication (both internal and external), work more efficiently, and track performance.
What is CSM?
A CSM (customer success management) platform is a software toolset that helps customer success teams engage with customers and help them achieve their desired outcomes while using a product or service.
With a focus on post-sales activities such as onboarding, training, and support, modern CSM also enables proactive outreach and customer advocacy. By leveraging data analytics and customer feedback, CSM systems enable businesses to address customer needs, increase retention rates, and drive overall satisfaction.
CRM vs. CSM: Which one is right for your business?
CRM platforms are generally considered superior to CSM due to their comprehensive list of capabilities that extend across multiple aspects of customer engagement, sales, and marketing.
While both systems have their strengths, CRM generally provides a broader scope of functionalities that support key business processes, making them a more versatile tool for work management overall.
The ability to manage sales pipelines and execute targeted marketing campaigns also makes CRMs more valuable from an ROI perspective, especially early on. As time goes by however, keeping customers longer and expanding existing usage becomes more and more valuable, and that is when CSM becomes a very strong consideration.
For most businesses, the answer is CRM first and CSM later, but the truth is CRM and CSM are better, together.
CRM and CSM: Better together
When used in tandem, CRM and CSM significantly enhance your ability to manage and grow your customer relationships.
A CRM enhances pre-sale support by tracking and managing all customer interactions, sales activities, and marketing campaigns as well as providing access to a comprehensive view of all customer related data.
A CSM focuses on post sales support, ensuring customers achieve their desired outcomes with the product or service while building trust, loyalty, and advocacy.
This seamless flow across all the different stages of the customer journey allows sales teams, marketing teams, and customer success teams to create aligned engagement strategies that optimize every single interaction.
FreeAgent CRM is the best CRM for customer support
FreeAgent CRM is a modern work management platform that provides top-of-field software tools for organizations of all sizes and technical proficiency.
FreeAgent is the best CRM for customer success because FreeAgent is:
- Easy to use- FreeAgent’s modern user interface is quick to learn and easy to use, encouraging teams to work within the platform. This enables you to maintain a comprehensive catalog of every sale, support ticket, and customer interaction.
- User-configurable- With FreeAgent, the power is in your hands. You can customize and personalize FreeAgent to fit the specific needs of your business and teams without external support.
Plus, FreeAgent offers:
- Robust integration- FreeAgent’s flexible toolset and extensive integration library support teams and businesses of all types and structures.
- A mobile CRM tool- FreeAgent’s mobile app allows team members to access the FreeAgent platform from anywhere, at any time.
- Generative AI- Uplift your work with Generative AI-powered features. With FreeAgent, you can access AI across any app, allowing you to get the information you need faster.
With FreeAgent, it’s really that simple.
To see FreeAgent in action, get a demo, and discover for yourself how we are leading the way to a better workday.
