The Role of CRM in eCommerce: Building Stronger Customer Connections Online

Along with resource optimization, people collaboration, and process automation, you cannot avoid the customer acquisition part.

Certainly, when your business is at the growing stage, steadily building stronger connections with your customers is your core liability and imperative indeed.

You could be running your eCommerce practices using eCommerce platforms such as Shopify, BigCommerce, NopCommerce, etc. Further to managing your customers and handling their support part, you might be using CRM software or seeking the same to implement.

But do you know how integrating the CRM in ecommerce system can empower your business capabilities and help you build stronger customer connections online?

Yes, going for eCommerce CRM integration can impact your customer experience and retention rate along with operational effectiveness and improved efficiency levels.

Since CRM offers a multitude of business capabilities, it’s being adopted by different business domains to carry out different business purposes, and to achieve unique business goals. To have visual clarity, we are depicting the image below sourced from Gartner.

Data Source: Gartner Website

Understanding CRM in eCommerce

With continuously increasing customer expectations and rising competition for serving lucrative deals to customers, it becomes crucial to upgrade your system capabilities with CRM (Customer Relationship Management) solution.

When it comes to an integrated CRM and ecommerce system, it allows you to drive, manage, and improve your customer interactions across the customer stages or lifecycle. With the inclusion of CRM in ecommerce system, you can identify your customers' behaviors, preferences, and their future expectations.

Leveraging this information, you can improve or level up your customers’ buying experience, which in turn helps to foster long-lasting customer relationships.

According to Gartner forecasting, the CRM market is anticipated to register double-digit growth annually over 14%, through the year 2025.

Another insight by Gartner reveals that CRM software is used by over 80% of business leaders associated with different industries. The source image by Gartner reveals the rest of the story.

Data Source: Gartner Website

Thus, it is clearly seen how CRM software is rolling out in demand and has been reserving its market scope for now and in coming years.

Now, let’s elaborate on how CRM can help build stronger customer connections online.

Role of CRM for eCommerce

While managing your ecommerce operations, monitoring your customer experience and serving them as per their anticipation requires integrating your ecommerce system with CRM solution. So, let’s have an overview and understand the role of CRM in ecommerce and how it can help you develop stronger customer relations online:

Personalization in Customer Experience

The amalgamation of CRM and ecommerce can benefit you in both quantitative and qualitative terms. Leveraging this, you can personalize your potential customers’ communications, to serve them improved experience and drive uplifted sales.

You can make effective use of customers' transaction history and know their purchase patterns which can be utilized further to send personalized emails or marketing messages to the customer.

When integrated with ecommerce, CRM enables you to deliver individual customer-specific solutions to your customers by analyzing customer data in terms of their specific needs, preferences, and interests they revealed in your products.

Further, utilizing this information, you can develop individual-specific interaction strategies, personalize product recommendations, generate customer-specific offers, etc., enabling you to increase the overall customer experience while encouraging you to build stronger customer connections online.

Personalized Marketing Campaigns

Customer segmentation is one of the crucial aspects today when it comes to individual CRM personalization. However, segmentation strategy may vary from business to business depending on your marketplace, product specification, costing, etc.

Inclusion of CRM capabilities in your ecommerce system allows you to effectively segment your customers based on various associated factors including their purchase history, demographic area, preferences, and more.

Now, this segmentation can help you drive more targeted marketing campaigns. Leveraging CRM features in your ecommerce, marketing personnel in your organization can drive marketing campaigns using marketing emails, interacting through social media, or leveraging omnichannel facilities.

When we talk about LionO360 ecommerce CRM integration, our CRM is equipped with generative AI capabilities that allow you to automatically generate emails to your customers. Thus, enabling you to effectively connect and interact with your targeted customers, which in turn establishes improved customer connections.

Leverage Customer Data and Sentiment

Using a standalone eCommerce system to serve your customers won’t help you accomplish your sales goals the way you want. Once you connect your CRM to ecommerce system with a customer relationship management solution, it can help you gain your customer perspective using customer sentiment.

Yes, customer sentiment can help you exhibit your customers' emotions or level of satisfaction throughout your communication which in turn helps you strengthen brand image and elongate customer loyalty.

While using LionO360 CRM, you can make effective use of sentiment analysis as our CRM is configured with AI and NLP algorithms that allow you to identify customers’ overview of your brand, product, and services. Further, this information can be leveraged to improve each and every customer’s experience distinctly.

Focusing on Content is Pivotal

Customizing and focusing on the content part can help you send tailored-made messages to your customers. These personalized messages help to drive effective marketing campaigns, support lead-generation, and make conversions easier.

Since every customer is different and looks for different solutions curated specifically and initially, you need to embark on personalized content delivery to your potential customers’ base. However, addressing or greeting your customers by their first name is just the very first step now.

To serve personalized content to your users, you need to analyze their choices, preferences, past shopping experiences, wish-listed items, recently performed searches, etc. on your business platform. And this can be made possible by integrating your eCommerce system with the CRM platform.

Improved Customer Service

Building a stronger connection with your customers and ensuring their retention requires serving them timely and seamless customer service and support.

To ensure this, your support team needs to have comprehensive information about your customers in hand wrapped with stats and facts helping them to address their queries or concerns effectively and efficiently.

Here, a combined solution like eCommerce CRM software can enable your support executives to provide personalized support and services to the customers.

Informed Decision-Making

Using standalone eCommerce software, you can definitely ensure selling to your customers. You can still make decisions but with CRM, you can make informed decisions reinforcing your business outcomes while attaining customer trust and loyalty.

All you need is to adopt an eCommerce CRM solution. Once you become aware of the benefits of CRM for Ecommerce, you will never deny this system collaboration.

Leveraging CRM integrated with your eCommerce solution, you can gain insights to ensure improved decision-making. Such decisions can be made in terms of product offerings, promotional strategies, marketing campaigns, and more.

Thus, using this data-driven tactic, you can serve as anticipated by your customers and can continue building sturdy connections with your customer base.

The Future of CRM and eCommerce

The world of online shopping is changing fast. Today, a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system does much more than just store phone numbers. It helps businesses predict what people want, handle tasks automatically, and connect with customers right when it matters.

Here is a look at where these tools are heading:

Smarter Customer Insights

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is changing how stores understand their shoppers. AI-driven CRM systems can now guess what someone might buy next, suggest the right products, and send personalized texts to multiple people at once.

Faster Work with Automation

CRM Automation tools take care of the repetitive work. They can send a quick reminder if someone forgets items in their cart or manage a rewards program for loyal shoppers. This saves time and helps the business grow.

Keeping Customers Happy

Data helps businesses find their high-value customers. By looking at real numbers, companies can see who shops with them the most and figure out the best ways to keep those customers coming back.

Flexible Cloud Systems

Cloud-based tools allow a business to grow without any tech headaches. They are easy to use from anywhere, making them ideal for growing eCommerce businesses.

Build Stronger Customer Relationships with LionOBytes

Today serving personalized customer experience is inevitable for modern businesses and thus, the importance of CRM has become an hourly need. And if you are running an ecommerce business, it becomes crucial to implement Ecommerce CRM integration to understand your customers and serve them accordingly.

At LionOBytes, we ensure seamless configuration for eCommerce CRM software enabling you to build stronger customer relationships along with their long-lasting retention. To implement such or to know more, connect with us.

Also Read:
How CRMs Are Using AI to Improve Customer Relationship Management

Frequently Asked Questions

1. How does CRM and ecommerce integration benefit businesses?

2. What is CRM in ecommerce?

3. Why is CRM important for ecommerce businesses?

4. How does CRM and ecommerce integration improve sales?

5. What features are important in CRM for ecommerce?