CRM analytics tools have become indispensable for businesses. Just like having a screwdriver at hand when assembling new furniture, your CRM can piece together the insights you need to build your customer relationships. These powerful tools – such as Zendesk, Salesforce, and HubSpot – can help a business proactively anticipate a customer’s needs, rather than waiting for feedback to make key decisions.
In this page, we’ll look at:
What are CRM analytics?
CRM analytics refers to the programming that crunches your customer data into analysable insights so you can make informed business decisions. Analytics tools have become a key proponent of CRM software as customers increasingly demand quicker, and more personalised services from businesses. By examining customer behaviour, sales trends, and marketing effectiveness, a business can get evidence-based data to make the decisions to meet those demands.
CRM analytics are often natively built into CRM software and can produce customer behaviour reports, sales forecasts or ROI analysis of marketing campaigns.
There are three main types of CRM analytics: collaborative, operational, and analytical.
- Collaborative CRM: focused on customer behaviour, this establishes a centralised customer database accessible to every department, fostering visibility into customer communications, purchase history, and service requests.
- Operational CRM: focused on sales trends, this automates processes by providing a comprehensive overview of customer interactions, aiding in tasks such as sales forecasting and prospect identification.
- Analytical CRM: focused on marketing effectiveness, this operates discreetly in the background, analysing the sales data collected by operational CRM applications. It also tracks various performance metrics to provide actionable insights into customer behaviour. This type of CRM analytics empowers organisations to make informed campaign decisions, optimise marketing strategies, and enhance overall customer satisfaction.
Benefits of CRM analytics
You don’t need to be an Excel enthusiast or a data dork to appreciate the huge benefits that integrating CRM analytics can afford your customer relations. Here are the main ones to keep in mind:
- Enhanced productivity: one of the standout benefits of CRM analytics is its seamless integration with other tools, consolidating various tasks into a single interface. This not only simplifies workflow but also boosts productivity by enabling you to perform multiple functions effortlessly. CRM analytics also help you get rid of mundane tasks by automating them, giving you more time to do things that really matter. For instance, rather than having to sit in front of an Excel sheet doing calculations and crunching numbers, you can spend time analysing exactly why our churn rate is so high.
- Tailored personalisation: understanding your customers is pivotal for success, and CRM analytics excels in this arena. By meticulously recording and tracking customer analytics, businesses gain comprehensive insights into individual preferences and behaviours. This wealth of information empowers organisations to tailor their approaches, ensuring personalised interactions that resonate with each client. The result is a more engaging and satisfying customer experience, ultimately fostering loyalty and brand advocacy. For instance, CRM will tell you what that new prospective client prefers and how to best reach out to them, whether that’s by phone or email.
- Amplifying sales opportunities: CRM analytics prove to be an ace up your sleeve to boost your sales. By analysing sales trends and identifying opportunities, your business can fine-tune its strategies for maximum impact. Armed with this foresight, sales teams can create targeted strategies that resonate with their audience, leading to increased conversion rates and revenue growth. For instance, your CRM might give you insight into the preferences and behaviours of certain age demographics, making it easier to understand how to give a sales pitch to a Gen Z customer versus a Boomer.
- Data-driven marketing success: in the era of digital marketing, data reigns supreme. CRM analytics evaluate the effectiveness of marketing campaigns by delving into comprehensive data sets. This analysis allows businesses to understand what works and what doesn’t, helping to tailor marketing strategies based on data-driven insights. The result is impactful and targeted marketing campaigns that resonate with the intended audience.
Exploring Zendesk analytics
💪 Best for: easy-to-navigate interface
🔑 Key features: lead generation, prospecting tools, sales forecasting, performance metric, pipeline management
On the analytics front, Zendesk offers businesses Zendesk Sell as a package of streamlining products designed to boost efficiency and growth. The CRM dashboard, contact database, and sales automations seamlessly integrate, providing a unified platform for managing customer relationships.
A standout feature of Zendesk Analytics is its user-friendly interface, complete with pre-built charts and dashboards based on industry best practices. This simplifies data interpretation and decision-making. Small businesses can easily customise the reports to align with their unique needs and share crucial insights internally within the platform.
The diverse range of features includes lead generation, prospecting tools, sales forecasting, performance metrics, and pipeline management. This empowers small businesses to optimise their sales processes, make informed decisions, and foster sustainable growth through a data-driven approach.
Tesco has trusted Zendesk with its CRM analytics, and has helped the grocery giant handle more than 40,000 internal tickets each week, of which 79% are resolved at their first attempt.
Salesforce analytics in action
💪 Best for: understanding data-driven insights
🔑 Key features: chatbot, predictive analysis, sales forecasting, automated contacts, and calendar and email syncing
Reigning in the power of AI, Salesforce’s Einstein CRM analytics tool is a great tool to leverage to foster empathetic and highly personalised customer relationships. Salesforce Analytics simplifies data management by automatically syncing information into the Salesforce CRM, creating a centralised hub for all customer interactions. The tool goes beyond basic analytics, providing actionable recommendations with clear explanations, enabling you to comprehend the data-driven insights.
Noteworthy features include a chatbot, predictive analysis, sales forecasting, automated contacts, and calendar and email syncing. For marketing analytics, Salesforce proves invaluable in measuring return on investment (ROI). The platform’s customer journey analytics maps the entire customer experience, providing a clear understanding of user interactions.
By using Salesforce’s Einstein analytics, Cpl, a recruitment company, unlocked €1 million worth of business value through smarter processes, improving recruitment efficiency by 75%.
HubSpot analytics unveiled
💪 Best for: marketing teams
🔑 Key features: interaction tracking, email management, pipeline management, activity dashboard
HubSpot Analytics, structured around five hubs catering to marketing, sales, service, content management, and operations, is a powerful small business tool. Each hub meticulously collects and analyses data from its dedicated processes, providing a 360 view of the entire customer experience.
HubSpot Analytics uses AI-powered technology to capture details from customer calls, enabling the analysis of representative performance and offering valuable coaching opportunities. This feature contributes to improved customer interactions and boosts retention.
The Operations Hub within HubSpot Analytics is a key component, generating data reports specifically tailored for marketing and sales. Its robust features, including interaction tracking, email management, pipeline management, and an activity dashboard, empower small businesses to enhance processes, monitor performance metrics, and make informed decisions.
As an example, Ceros, a software company, used HubSpot to achieve 180% deal generation growth through smarter prospecting, leveraging data-driven insights to make informed business decisions.
Conclusion
CRM analytics tools like Zendesk, Salesforce and HubSpot help you translate numbers on a spreadsheet into actionable data-driven insights. With them, you can make informed business decisions, keep customers happy, and give your growth a boost.
- Is CRM analytics worth it?
Definitely! By leveraging data-driven insights taken from your customer behaviour information, you’ll be able to better cater to the needs of clients and promote business growth.
- What is an analytical CRM?
Analytical CRM is a system that manages and analyses customer data to help businesses improve their internal operations to better please clients.
- What is the difference between CRM and analytical CRM?
Regular CRM or operational CRM software is focused on customer-facing processes like complaint tickets, while analytical CRM is more about fine tuning your organisation’s systems based on insights drawn from customer data.
