CRM Integrations: Definition, Types and Benefits
Definition, types, and benefits of CRM integrations. Learn how connecting your CRM with other systems improves productivity, decision-making, and customer satisfaction
Having a CRM system is not enough for most businesses, even if they use sophisticated software. In fact, there is always a need for some extra functionality, regardless of the type or size of your business. In other words, you will most likely need to integrate other tools into your customer relationship management system. So, in this article, we will talk about CRM integration and how it works.
What Is a CRM Integration?
Most customer relationship management systems have great functionality, yet they still lack some features, such as chargeback prevention alerts, for example. Thus, CRM system integration is a much-required thing. But what is CRM integration? Customer relationship management software integration is the process of connecting your CRM with other tools and systems required for your business. CRM integration allows customer data to flow between different services and applications, allowing you to get a comprehensive picture of your customers and how they interact with your business. This process enables various departments to obtain required data and increase their productivity and quality of work.
CRM Software Explained
A customer relationship management service, or simply a CRM platform, is software designed to manage a company's interactions with its customers. Most modern CRM systems help organize customer data, automate certain tasks, assist in marketing campaigns, improve the work of the customer support team, as well as enhance overall customer satisfaction.
Believe it or not, most businesses, including offline ones, just cannot operate and provide their services without a CRM system simply because it’s the only tool that allows them to keep track of customers and all the data regarding their orders, visits, support tickets, etc. Yet still, CRMs aren’t perfect, and there are some features they lack. Fortunately, most CRM software allows integration with other services and tools, so let’s talk about that in a little more detail.
How CRM Integration Works
CRM software integration seems pretty simple at first sight, and it is indeed not a particularly difficult process, yet there are some details you still need to know. So, here is a breakdown of how CRM data integration works:
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Connecting CRM with other systems
Customer relationship management integrations link your CRM system with other services and tools, such as chargeback prevention alerts, customer support systems, email marketing tools, social media platforms, accounting software, etc. That allows the data to be synchronized between different systems and departments of your business, eliminating the need for manual entry. -
Data synchronization
CRM integration provides customer data synchronization across all systems. For example, when changes are made in one system, they will automatically reflect in all the other connected systems. -
Automated workflows
Finally, CRM integration allows you to automate various tasks and workflows, which results in improving your business processes. For instance, when a new lead is generated, it can automatically be added to your CRM system and assigned to a sales representative.
Certainly, CRM integration has a great influence on various business processes, making them simpler and faster, as well as significantly enhances customer experience, which is why CRM data integration is always a good idea.
Benefits of CRM Integration
You might have already guessed that CRM software integration with other systems has a wide range of benefits, so let us take a brief look at the most significant ones:
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Improved efficiency
CRM integration allows businesses to automate a wide variety of tasks, especially those concerning customer data. This results in reducing manual work, saving time, and increasing the efficiency of your business processes. -
Better decision-making
Full access of various departments (especially marketing) to comprehensive customer data and the ability to quickly and easily analyze it enables you to make data-driven decisions for your marketing (and not only) campaigns. -
Enhanced customer experience
Integration with customer support systems, marketing tools, social media, etc., will allow you to find a personal approach to every client and improve the overall customer experience. -
Productivity growth
CRM integration allows all departments to have access to all the customer data, making the business processes faster and easier and resulting in higher productivity. -
Easy collaboration
Lastly, CRM integration eases communication between different teams and fosters collaboration between various departments.
The benefits of CRM software integration are undeniable. Moreover, these aren’t just benefits — these are the vital things without which a lot of businesses simply cannot operate.
Types of CRM System Integrations
There is more than just one way of integrating your CRM software with other services, yet there is no best or worst way to integrate your CRM data into other systems. Each way is different and serves slightly different purposes, so let’s talk about them in more detail.
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Pre-built integrations
A wide variety of modern CRM services offer pre-built integrations with popular software applications, meaning you don’t have to install certain functionality since it already comes with the CRM system.
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API integration
This type of CRM integration focuses on using application programming interfaces (aka APIs) to connect CRM with other systems and services. -
Custom integration
Due to the specifics of the work of some businesses, they have more complex integration needs. In these cases, custom integrations can be developed.
These are the main CRM system integration types that are used by most businesses today. Of course, there might be some nuances and exceptions to the rule, but in most cases, either of the above-mentioned methods is used.
How to Integrate Your CRM System
Integrating your customer relationship management system is certainly a good idea since it will help you boost your business processes and enhance customer experience. Yet how to do it correctly? Well, below are some tips and tricks for you.
- Set your goals. First of all, you need to clearly determine your goals since that will help you make the right choices in the further stages. We recommend focusing on increasing customer experience, automating certain workflows, enhancing the work of the marketing team, establishing better customer data organization, and improving your customer support service.
- Access system compatibility. Once you set your goals and know what services you need to integrate, you have to make sure that your CRM system and the other tools you want to integrate with are compatible. Thus, you need to check for API availability or pre-built integrations offered by your CRM system and the tools you want to install.
- Choose the best integration method for your business. Select one of the three ways to integrate customer data into your systems. You can go with either API, pre-built, or custom integration. The choice depends on the size of your business, the amount of customer data, the specifics of workflows, as well as your technical and financial abilities.
- Design the integration architecture. As soon as you are done with the previous steps, it’s high time to determine how the customer data will flow between the systems. Additionally, you need to decide what frequency of customer data updates you need and set synchronization rules. Finally, consider taking reliable security precautions to protect sensitive customer data.
- Integrate the data. Finally, it’s time to integrate your customer data into all your systems. We strongly recommend you follow the instructions provided by your CRM platform and/or the tools you are going to install. If possible, hire a professional for that. Once the integration is completed, test it thoroughly to ensure customer data accuracy and functionality of the entire system.
- Monitor and maintain. Make sure to monitor how your integrated CRM works to find and deal with any issues or errors, if any. Apart from that, keep up with all the updates as both your CRM and the services you integrate evolve.
This is basically how you integrate your CRM with other services. But before we wrap up, we would like to give you a list of the things to consider before integrating your customer relationship management system with other services:
- Make sure all the systems are compatible
- Provide reliable customer data security
- Consider the complexity of the integration and the resources required to implement it Select a CRM vendor that offers integration support
- Use these tips, and your CRM integration will go smoothly and completely stress-free.
Either Mastercard, American Express, or Visa chargeback arbitration procedures are pretty similar and have the same goals. Yet, we still want to emphasize that, in any case, it is still better to prevent chargebacks, even if you end up winning after the arbitration chargeback.
Conclusion
CRM integration is a rather sophisticated process, yet it’s much needed for the optimization of workflows and increasing customer satisfaction. We hope that this article helped you deepen your knowledge of how customer relationship management systems integrate with other services and tools, and now you have a better understanding of how to integrate your CRM with the services you need.
