Types of CRM & How to Choose the Best One for SMBs

While trying out different CRMs during my time at the agency, I discovered three main types of CRM.

They include the following:

• Collaborative CRM
• Operational CRM
• Analytical CRM

Let’s take a more in-depth approach to each CRM type!

Collaborative CRM System

First, we’ll begin with collaborative CRMs!

What Is a Collaborative CRM?

Collaborative CRM is a type of customer relationship management that focuses on enhancing inter-departmental communication and collaboration. It’s a customer-centric approach that involves collaboration among sales, marketing, customer support, and other teams to provide excellent customer service.

The objective of a collaborative CRM is to unify the customer experience by gathering customer data across all departments and using it to strengthen customer relationships.

This system incorporates tools like internal messaging, shared calendars, and centralized databases to achieve this goal. With a collaborative CRM, SMBs can improve internal collaboration and nurture long-lasting customer relationships, ultimately driving business growth.

How Does a Collaborative CRM Work?

Collaborative CRM systems work by collecting and organizing client data from all the departments in a business and integrating it into one central place. This helps the company better understand its customer’s needs and preferences.

With this data, businesses can create detailed customer profiles that contain important insights such as purchase history and interactions with customer service reps. This ensures that employees know what each customer prefers and can tailor offers when necessary.

Additionally, collaborative CRM provides many features that help businesses manage and improve customer relationships with existing and potential customers.

These features are as follows:

• Interaction Management
• Channel Management
• Document Management

Interaction Management

One of the key features of this CRM software is interaction management. With this feature, businesses can effectively manage all customer interactions from different channels such as email, phone, social media, and live chat. This helps in providing a personalized and consistent customer experience.

Additionally, interaction management helps businesses keep track of customer inquiries, complaints, feedback, and other important data that can be used to improve customer service.

Channel Management

Another key element of collaborative CRM systems is channel management, which involves tracking and managing multiple communication channels through which customers interact with a business. This can include everything from social media platforms and email to phone calls and in-person visits.

With this feature, you can ensure that your customers can reach your business through the channel they prefer, and each communication is tracked and recorded for future reference.

Document Management

Lastly, document management allows teams to store, share, and work on important documents, such as projects and proposals, together in a streamlined and organized manner, regardless of location.

It ensures everyone has access to the latest updates and versions of the same document, so there is no need to worry about the hassle of sending files back and forth via email. This reduces the risk of data loss, as documents are stored securely and backed up regularly, and promotes team productivity.

When to Choose a Collaborative CRM as a Small Business

As a small business, you should consider a collaborative CRM if you want to improve collaboration among your teams. These types of CRM software are designed to enhance communication and facilitate teamwork, which can result in better customer service and happier clients.

With a collaborative CRM, everyone in your organization can see each other’s actions, contacts, deals, and interactions in real time. This helps break down silos within your organization and create a more cohesive and customer-centric team.

Collaborative CRM Example: Copper CRM

Copper CRM is a great example of a collaborative CRM system that can help small businesses foster closer collaboration among their teams and build stronger customer relationships. It comes with a range of features that enable users to manage their sales pipelines, track interactions, and automate routine tasks.

One of the standout features of this CRM system is its seamless integration with Google Workspace, which makes it easy for teams to collaborate in real time, organize their work, and share relevant information. With Copper, SMBs can easily streamline their workflows, gain visibility into their sales performance, and deliver personalized experiences to their customers at scale.

Operational CRM System

Next, let’s go over operational CRM!

What Is an Operational CRM?

These types of CRM systems focus on streamlining day-to-day business operations, such as sales, marketing, and customer service automation. Think of it as your business’s trusty sidekick, always there to lend a hand and make things run smoother.

Its main goal is to efficiently manage client interactions and data throughout the customer lifecycle, from lead generation to post-sale support. Plus, these systems can give you a wealth of useful data on your customers, which can help you build better relationships with them in the long run.

With an operational CRM system, you can automate tasks like lead tracking, deal management, and customer support, freeing up your team to focus on building customer relationships.

How Does an Operational CRM Work?

Operational CRMs integrate data from various sources, like email, social media, websites, and more, into a centralized system, which can be accessed and shared across teams. It provides a central repository of customer data that different teams across the organization can access.

This enables quick and efficient response times to customer inquiries, personalized marketing campaigns, and better tracking of customer behavior, preferences, and purchasing history.

Operational CRM systems also come with many features that businesses can use to streamline business processes, improve the customer experience, and save time and money on repetitive tasks.

Some of these features are:

• Marketing Automation
• Sales Automation
• Service Automation

Marketing Automation

Operational CRM streamlines marketing efforts through marketing automation. With this feature, marketing teams can set up automated campaigns that will trigger emails or other types of outreach based on user behavior, such as clicking a link or making a purchase.

This can be a huge time-saver for small businesses, as it allows you to focus on more important tasks instead of spending hours on manual outreach. Plus, it can also help increase customer engagement and ultimately lead to more sales.

Sales Automation

Sales automation is another key feature of operational CRM systems, which automates sales-related activities to enhance sales effectiveness and efficiency. This can include automating tasks like order processing, billing, tracking customer interactions, and lead management.

It also enables sales teams to focus on hot leads and increase their chances of converting those leads into potential customers. By using sales automation tools, businesses can keep track of all their potential customers and take the necessary steps to move them through the sales funnel.

Service Automation

Additionally, operational CRM systems provide service automation features, which aim to improve customer service efficiency and quality by automating routine tasks and providing clients with real time customer support.

This can include everything from automating ticket creation and routing to providing quick access to customer information, allowing representatives to offer a personalized service experience, which can help businesses save time, reduce errors, and improve the overall customer experience.

When to Choose an Operational CRM as a Small Business

As a small business owner, you should consider an operational CRM to increase efficiency and streamline your customer-facing operations. This CRM is ideal for businesses that must manage their sales, marketing, and customer service processes with efficacy and efficiency.

With operational CRM, small business owners can easily manage leads, track sales, improve customer service, optimize campaigns, and streamline workflows. This makes it an invaluable tool for any small business looking to increase their customer engagement and retention or drive sales processes.

Operational CRM Example: HubSpot

One great example of an operational CRM for SMBs is HubSpot. This platform offers a range of tools for managing client interactions and automating tasks related to sales, marketing, and customer support. Plus, its intuitive interface makes it easy to use, even for those who aren’t tech-savvy.

Some notable features of HubSpot include lead scoring, contact segmentation, and integrations with various third-party apps. With HubSpot, small to medium-sized businesses can track their leads, send targeted emails, and monitor their website traffic all in one place. For more information, here is our HubSpot CRM review!

Analytical CRM System

Finally, let’s get into analytical CRM systems!

What Is an Analytical CRM?

An analytical CRM is a type of customer relationship management software that analyzes customer data to gain insights and make data-driven decisions. This CRM can track consumer interactions, purchase history, and other behaviors to identify trends.

It is great for small businesses because it helps them better understand their clients through insights gathered from customer data that can lead to increased sales and customer loyalty.

How Does an Analytical CRM Work?

Analytical CRM systems collect all kinds of customer information, including purchase history, demographics, website activity, and social media interactions, and store it in a centralized database. It uses algorithms based on this data to spot patterns to help businesses improve their performance.

With an analytical CRM, companies can use customer information to create targeted campaigns and offers based on customer preferences, identify new opportunities to upsell or cross-sell products and services, and analyze how popular a product or service is with a certain demographic through customer segmentation.

Moreover, there are several important features of analytical CRM that businesses can leverage to assist them in improving their bottom line.

Here are some of these main features:

• Customer Data Tracking
• Campaign Tracking
• Decision Making

Customer Data Tracking

Customer data tracking uses data mining and predictive analytics techniques to identify patterns and trends in customer data, which businesses can use to make informed decisions about marketing, sales, and customer service strategies.

The database then allows businesses to segment and target their customers more effectively based on their needs and behavior, which not only enhances customer satisfaction but also helps boost sales and revenue. This feature allows businesses to analyze their sales performance, identify the most profitable customers, and optimize resources to achieve their sales objectives.

Campaign Tracking

Campaign tracking allows small business owners to follow the success of various marketing campaigns, such as emails or social media ads. This information is then used to develop targeted campaigns tailored to specific customer segments.

With this knowledge, businesses can adjust their marketing strategies to improve their sales pipeline and better meet the needs of their customers. By tracking metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates, businesses can measure their return on investment (ROI) and improve their campaigns over time.

Decision Making

As previously mentioned, analytical CRMs use data mining to help businesses of all sizes make better data-driven decisions by identifying trends and patterns in customer behaviors that might otherwise have gone unnoticed.

This provides business owners with deeper insights into their target market, allowing them to create sales and marketing campaigns that are more effective and increase customer loyalty. With this data, businesses can also use analytics to inform other decisions, such as product development, sales forecasting, or pricing strategies, to improve the sales process and increase customer retention.

When to Choose an Analytical CRM as a Small Business

An analytical CRM might be the best option for small businesses looking to gather customer insights to make informed decisions. These systems are designed to help business owners make sense of each customer interaction and rely heavily on data analytics and machine learning algorithms to do just that.

You can personalize the customer experience by analyzing customer data and streamlining your sales and marketing efforts. Additionally, an analytical CRM can help you identify your most valuable customers and provide unique incentives to keep them coming back.

Analytical CRM Example: Monday.com

Monday.com is a great example of an analytical CRM that offers many handy features designed to help small and medium-sized business owners effectively manage customer relationships. The platform is widely praised for its high level of customizability and affordability, making it a versatile tool that can be easily tailored to meet the unique needs of any business.

It includes a range of analytical capabilities, including contact segmentation, lead scoring, and performance metrics tracking. Using these features, business owners can get a bird’s-eye view of their sales pipeline, track engagement with each prospect, and optimize their sales strategies accordingly. To learn more about this CRM platform, consider reading our detailed Monday.com review!