Top CRM Features and Functions for Businesses

If businesses have a universal “holy grail,” it can only be “know thy customer.” The linchpin for any business that really wants to know its customers is customer relationship management (CRM) technology, which can simultaneously optimize customer interactions from both the customer’s and the business’s points of view. CRM systems enable business teams to understand individual customers’ preferences and interaction history, which enhances the customer’s experience, and they enable data collection at every customer touchpoint, which helps to build the organization’s customer insights.

This article discusses the many features and functions of CRM software — what they are and how they contribute to optimizing customer experiences while significantly enhancing business operations and the bottom line.

What Are CRM Features and Functions?

Features are a CRM system’s distinct, hands-on capabilities — the elements with which its users interact, such as contact management or reporting. Functions, which are broader, may encompass both visible features and underlying processes. They’re the operations you can perform with a system, such as manage a project, access features through mobile devices or even improve customers’ ecommerce experience. Taken together, CRM features and functions become critical tools to help business managers understand customers better, focus and automate sales and marketing workflows and effectively guide prospects through a company’s sales process.

Key Takeaways

• CRM systems provide a unified view of customer data that is essential to a business’s understanding and optimizing its customer interactions.
• Key CRM features, such as contact management, lead management and workflow automation, work together to streamline business processes, making sales and customer service more efficient and proactive.
• CRM functions, including AI capabilities and advanced analytics, offer predictive insights that enable businesses to personalize customer interactions and make data-driven decisions for market segmentation and campaign strategies.
• Integration capabilities give businesses seamless operation across their CRM systems and other business-critical functions, such as inventory management, order processing and accounting.
• Investing in a CRM system with a robust set of features and functions can help businesses create a customer-centric culture.

CRM Features and Functions Explained

A well-rounded CRM system, integrated with key business processes, such as marketing, sales, customer service and accounting, gives all those groups a single, unified view of customer data. This foundational “single source of truth” about a company’s customers is made possible by CRM’s contact management feature. Access to such customer data can make sales and customer service people more proactive. Also, configured with workflow automation features, those two business processes, along with marketing and accounting, become far more efficient. Improved efficiency on the business side typically translates into increased customer satisfaction and loyalty, as customers feel company interactions are fast and expedient.

Meanwhile, CRM functions, such as artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, help organizations process large volumes of customer data swiftly and accurately. This raises the business value from CRM systems by enabling companies to segment their customers in more detailed and useful ways, to improve personalization of advertising and customer service, and to use predictive analytics to improve demand forecasts. Another vital CRM function, customization, lets businesses mold their CRM systems to fit their specific needs, providing a more tailored approach to customer interactions. In other words, greater customization leads to improved customer communications and better business efficiency.

Why Do Businesses Need a CRM?

The practical magic of a good CRM system is that it optimizes a business’s customer interactions. The word “magic” is justified because the same features and functions that drive a business’s operational efficiency also create value in customers’ eyes, and that’s no easy feat. Often, streamlined business operations leave customers feeling like just another face in the crowd. But CRM systems optimize interactions from the customer perspective by equipping sales and customer service people, for example, with data-driven customer insights enabling them to deliver better customer experiences. CRMs also optimize customer interactions from the business’s perspective because they collect data from every customer touchpoint and pool it together in that single unified database. There, it can be used for aggregate analysis that provides overarching strategic insights, as well as for analysis of individual customer behavior for personalization.

8 Main CRM Features

CRM features are individually useful but not meant to be used individually. They’re interconnected parts of a larger system, each contributing to the business’s efficiency and effectiveness. For instance, contact management’s customer data records feed into lead management and interaction tracking; then, as those features generate new data about customers, it is stored in those contact management records. Workflow automation can tie into one or all of the other main CRM features, depending on the business process being automated. And reporting and analytics stand on the data gathered from all the other features, enabling business managers to gain insights that loop back into improving various other aspects of the CRM.

So, while reviewing the following eight CRM features, think of them as an interconnected ecosystem, where each feature complements and enhances the others, leading to a more cohesive and effective approach to managing customer relationships.

1. Contact Management

The foundation of a CRM system, contact management stores customers’ details and interactions in a searchable database. When you hear CRM proponents talk about having a single source of truth for customer data, this is where it lives. The contact management feature not only records customers’ basic information, such as name, title, phone number, address and social media handles, but also houses data about customer interactions captured by the lead management, interaction tracking and campaign management features. The resulting comprehensive view of the customer paves the way for personalized interactions based on a customer’s history, needs and preferences.

This feature is critical for customer-facing personnel and marketing teams because it helps them ensure a consistent and personalized approach to each customer, avoiding repetition and enhancing customer experience. For example, salespeople can quickly pull up a client’s past purchase history and tailor their upsell approach accordingly, making the conversation more engaging for the customer and more productive for the company.

2. Interaction Tracking

This feature records all customer interactions across different channels, whether inbound (say, a customer clicking a link) or outbound (such as a sales call or a marketing email). At a basic level, keeping tabs on interactions can make communications with customers more consistent and informed, reducing potential conflicts or confusion. At a level up, analyzing customer interaction data can provide insights into customer behavior and needs that facilitate tailored marketing and sales strategies.

But wait — there’s more. Look at those same customer interactions inside out and you’ll usually see a business employee — a salesperson, a customer service rep, an email marketer. So, interaction tracking can also provide a sales manager, for example, with valuable data to understand the behavior of their salespeople, learn what behaviors are more productive and share what’s working with more team members. Techniques like that can boost an entire sales or customer service team’s productivity.

3. Email Integration

Email integration may sound simple, but it’s actually multidimensional — and a robust CRM system’s email integration feature should encompass every dimension. Most CRM systems include at least some basic email functionality, such as the ability to send simple marketing emails. In addition, however, CRMs must integrate with external email platforms that are capable of more sophisticated email customer nurturing processes through marketing automation systems like Eloqua. Those email integration features should include templates that simplify a sales or marketing person’s repetitive customer interactions. At the same time, it should allow tracking of customers’ email interactions with the company. Ultimately, what email integration makes possible is the orchestration of an automated workflow such that each time a customer engages with an email, subsequent emails and offers can be tailored, essentially creating a customized nurture stream. That kind of email integration touches workflow automation, contact management and document management.

4. Document Management

As the name implies, a CRM’s document management feature stores documents and coordinates with other features so that, for example, automated CRM processes can determine what documents have been accessed by a given customer. A customer’s proposals, quotes and contracts, for instance, can be associated with that customer’s record in contact management, making workflows more seamless and efficient.

Moreover, companies that use configure, quote and price (CPQ) processes can have salespeople use a CRM’s document management feature to access blank CPQ documents with fillable forms. Salespeople can use the forms to support customer conversations, or the CRM system can use historical customer information to populate the form automatically. Overall, document management streamlines document handling, reduces errors and improves response time to customer inquiries.

5. Workflow Automation

Workflow automation reduces manual processes, increasing efficiency and allowing a business’s marketing, sales and customer service teams to focus on high-value tasks. For CRMs that are part of larger enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, integrations with inventory and accounting systems, for example, can even automate otherwise manual inventory updates and customer billing processes. By automating repetition-heavy tasks, CRM systems minimize the chances of human error and save valuable time — time that can be redirected to tasks requiring a human touch.

One useful way to view the eight CRM features on this list is to consider the first four as enablers of fifth feature, workflow automation, and the two that come after — lead and campaign management — as workflows that a CRM can automate. Of course, the eighth, reporting and analytics, gives business managers a bird’s eye view of all of this activity.

6. Lead Management

The lead management feature is an automated workflow that tracks the progress of potential customers through a company’s sales process. It records the source of the lead for accurate marketing campaign attribution, ranks and qualifies leads and automates their routing to the appropriate salesperson. It ensures that no lead slips through the cracks. It interrelates closely with contact management and interaction tracking, among other CRM features. This integration nurtures leads and enables more informed marketing initiatives. It generates value for the business by contributing to quick response times and better tracking of marketing campaign effectiveness.

7. Campaign Management

Depending on a business’s preferences, a CRM’s campaign management feature can provide multiple workflows that automate some or all of the organization’s marketing campaigns, sales campaigns or both. For instance, consider a company that has three campaigns — one for a product upsell, one for a new service offering and one for an upcoming holiday. It has segmented customers to receive promotions for none, one or two of these, depending on specific criteria. It has also segmented customers for approach by salespeople for the related sales campaigns.

With appropriate campaign management workflow automation, the company can operate all these campaigns in parallel. With real-time visibility into campaign performance, marketers can adjust promotional material or customer segments to improve outcomes. Salespeople will see improved productivity because the campaign management feature will help them group their time by campaign activities — for example, prioritizing outreach to customers targeted for product upsells. They can also respond quickly to high-value inbound inquiries, such as customers reacting to the holiday promotion, thanks to automated campaign management workflows that route opportunities to salespeople using established prioritization rules.

As these examples make clear, campaign management empowers sales and marketing managers to create multitargeted, multiasset campaigns integrated across many channels. By facilitating targeted marketing efforts, this feature ensures that marketing efforts are aligned with customer segments, which improves campaign effectiveness.

8. Reporting and Analytics

Finally, a CRM’s reporting and analytics features give different managers a rapidly digestible view of all the data that matters to them in a visual dashboard. Different role-oriented CRM dashboards for sales and customer services managers, for example, enable them to see at a glance how their organizations are performing against their goals as a group, as well as how individual staffers are performing. Dashboards can be customized to display different key performance indicators, depending on the organization’s focus and targets, from lead to sale conversion rates per rep for sales managers, to customer satisfaction and net promoter scores for customer service managers. Marketers’ dashboards let managers see how different campaigns are performing, including the contributions from different marketing channels, cost per customer acquisitions (which may also be broken down by channel) or lead conversion rates by channel.

Not only do CRM reporting and analytics empower managers to make rapid, real-time decisions, but they also fuel higher-level analyses that help businesses align their overarching strategies with evolving customer behaviors and preferences.

8 Key CRM Functions

Don’t think of the following CRM functions as a collection of independent tools; they’re really a suite of functions that work together to enhance a CRM system’s ability to drive higher customer satisfaction and business efficiency. In many cases, they raise the quality produced by one or more of the CRM features just discussed. They also enable businesses to streamline operations and achieve higher-value customer interactions.

1. Artificial Intelligence (AI) Capabilities

AI transforms CRM systems into dynamic engines of customer insight by raising the quality and speed of data analyses across all facets of the system. That could include continuously improving the quality of lead scoring, augmenting sales strategies with personalized interactions, boosting the efficiency of marketing campaigns and alerting a customer service rep to the changing emotions of the customer with whom they’re interacting. AI can analyze customer purchase history and social media engagement in real time to predict future buying patterns, allowing a business to proactively tailor marketing campaigns by suggesting complementary products based on a customer’s past purchases.

To illustrate where value comes from when using AI capabilities, consider that businesses whose CRM systems lack AI do predictive lead scoring by programming rules based on business managers’ hypotheses about which customer behaviors would suggest that a customer is ready to buy. Instead, AI functions analyze data about actual customer interactions, observe the behaviors that precede purchases and use those learned patterns to score subsequent leads. Moreover, the AI system never stops observing and learning from customer behavior data, so it continuously improves the accuracy of its scoring model. Not only is the AI’s scoring more accurate, but it also automates what is otherwise a labor-intensive process in which business managers create rules and then observe results and adjust the rules, through many rounds, to get them right.

2. Integration Capabilities

Integration is a critical function that connects the CRM system with other business applications, allowing them to share the CRM’s view of customer data. For example, integrating CRM with an ERP system enables sharing customer data among sales, finance and support teams, giving everyone access to the most up-to-date information. This can improve order processing, sales forecasting and even inventory management. With the needed integrations in place, a business could automate its entire order-to-cash process, connecting sales orders directly to inventory management and accounting so that sales quotes are accurate and up-to-date, and inventory levels adjust automatically with each sale.

Moreover, integration with email platforms and document management systems can streamline communication workflows. When a sales rep sends a proposal through the CRM, it can automatically track whether the document is opened, enabling timely follow-ups. Integration with marketing automation platforms can automate the lead nurturing process, moving leads through the sales funnel without manual intervention.

3. Customization

Customization tailors a CRM to the unique needs of a business and the specific roles within it, allowing businesses to adapt their CRMs to their operational processes and industry-specific requirements. For instance, a manufacturing company might customize its CRM to track production workflows, supplier interactions and quality control measures. A trade show company might customize its CRM to help manage intricate floor plans and detailed exhibitor profiles, integrating with event management software to track booth sales, attendee registrations and session attendance. This level of customization would support the trade show company’s ability to handle the complex relationships and logistics inherent in organizing large-scale events.

Within an individual business, CRM customization extends to role-based views and access controls. Sales managers, for example, can have dashboards that provide a comprehensive view across all sales activities and team performance, while sales representatives might only see information pertinent to their individual customers and leads. Marketing teams can customize the CRM to track campaign performance and lead generation activities, while customer service representatives might use a customized interface to manage support tickets and service histories.

This dual dimension of customization — across the business and within specific roles — ensures that each employee and manager has the information and tools needed to perform their job effectively, while also aligning with overall business strategies and goals.

4. Social Media Integration

Social media integration allows businesses to engage with customers on the platforms they use most. It lets companies monitor social interactions, connect with customers and gather data that can inform marketing strategies and customer service approaches. For example, a CRM system integrated with social media can track mentions of a brand, allowing customer service teams to respond promptly to emerging customer issues. It can also capture customer sentiment and feedback to use for improving products and customer experiences. For example, if a customer or prospect frequently engages with social media content about sustainable products, the CRM can flag this interest and respond with information about the company’s eco-friendly product line.

Overall, a CRM’s social media integration function provides a direct line to the customer’s voice, enabling businesses to stay connected, responsive and informed about their market’s changing preferences.

5. Mobile Accessibility

Mobile accessibility is a straightforward yet vital function that empowers sales and customer service teams to access and update customer information from anywhere, at any time. It’s particularly useful for salespeople who spend a lot of time out of the office meeting with clients or prospects. With mobile CRM, they can immediately log interactions, update contact details and even process orders directly from their smartphones or tablets.

Furthermore, mobile CRM can provide alerts and notifications, keeping teams informed about important updates or required actions, such as an urgent customer service request or an approval needed for discounts or contracts. The immediate flow of information helps businesses seize opportunities and address customer needs faster, which is essential for high customer satisfaction and loyalty.

6. Ecommerce Integration

Integrating a CRM with an ecommerce system aligns online shopping behavior with comprehensive customer management, creating a dynamic and responsive customer experience on a company’s website. For instance, when a customer logs into an ecommerce site, an integrated CRM system can leverage the customer’s purchase history and browsing behavior to recommend products, predict when they might need to repeat past purchases or offer personalized promotions. This integration is crucial because, according to McKinsey & Co. research, customers increasingly expect personalization that eases their site navigation, tailors messaging to their interests and makes relevant product recommendations.

A CRM ecommerce integration can also extend to back-end functions. It can automate the entire order-to-delivery process, linking ecommerce activity to inventory management, accounting, shipping and customer service systems. When a customer places an order, an integrated system can update the customer record, adjust inventory levels, prompt the warehouse for delivery and follow up with the customer for feedback — and record it all within the CRM. By leveraging the data collected from these interactions, businesses can make better-informed decisions that resonate with their customers’ preferences and behaviors.

7. Advanced Analytics

What sets advanced analytics apart from traditional data analysis are more sophisticated analytical techniques that go beyond understanding what has happened and make it possible to predict what will happen. In CRM systems, advanced analytics extract actionable insights from customer data, enabling businesses to anticipate future trends and customer behaviors with greater accuracy. Analytical techniques, such as machine learning, process both structured and unstructured data, revealing patterns and predicting outcomes. For example, a CRM equipped with advanced analytics can analyze customer interactions across multiple channels to forecast sales trends, identify the most effective marketing strategies and optimize inventory levels based on predicted demand.

Advanced analytics can also help a company personalize customer experiences by identifying and acting on their preferences. A CRM system might use regression analysis to determine which products to recommend to a customer, or sentiment analysis to gauge customer satisfaction from social media interactions. By integrating these advanced analytical tools, businesses can use their CRM data to fuel innovation and competitive advantage. Plus, a CRM’s ability to present these analyses through visual dashboards and reports makes it more accessible to business users, facilitating data-driven decisions that can lead to increased efficiency and revenue growth.

8. Project Management

Project management is not really a function within a CRM system; it’s more a process that smart business leaders can overlay on a CRM. Because CRMs are the central repositories of customer data, their capabilities provide utility to nearly all corners of a business. Therefore, project managers can use a CRM to help orchestrate any customer-facing initiative.

Here’s a real-world example of how one project manager used a CRM system as the linchpin for a new-product development initiative. A trade show company with a successful event in power technology saw a possible opportunity to spin off a new event. The first thing the project manager did to explore that possibility was to use the CRM to identify sponsors and exhibitors of the existing event to interview and survey for their insights about the new event. Based on that research, the trade show company made a “go” decision. The project manager then used the CRM to segment the existing event’s sponsors and exhibitors and create marketing campaigns to alert them to the new show and the content behind it. The CRM tracked their engagement with that initial content to help inform future marketing pieces. She then added prospective speakers and presenters to the CRM database and created records for each one to track engagement with them and, eventually, their participation at the event.

Salespeople, meanwhile, began receiving automated leads from the marketing efforts and built prospect lists for sales campaigns. Each salesperson had a separate workflow view that was specific to their prospect list. Sales managers could see from their dashboards how much effort was being spent on the new launch relative to existing events, and evaluate whether there were enough resources to keep up the activity level needed for the new event to be successful or if more resources were needed. As a result of the salespeople’s efforts in nurturing their opportunities toward actual sales, the CRM had a pipeline of opportunities from which to build forecasts. The project manager used the sales forecasts to inform the size of her commitments to the exhibit hall, conference space and catering orders.

By leveraging its CRM for project management, the trade show company improved its efficiency, enhanced customer satisfaction and drove a successful project outcome.

Streamline the Marketing and Sales Process With NetSuite CRM

Small businesses often face numerous challenges managing customer relationships, such as balancing limited resources, tackling a broad range of customer demographics and continually fostering healthy customer rapport. As a comprehensive solution for sales, marketing and operations, NetSuite Customer Relationship Management equips businesses to manage interactions with prospects, customers, partners and suppliers across the entire customer life cycle. Customizable sales, marketing and customer service workflows leverage real-time data to deliver consistent and relevant customer interactions, from lead inquiry through quote and order management.

NetSuite CRM is natively integrated with the entire NetSuite ERP platform, which means that NetSuite’s sales force automation, customer service management and marketing automation seamlessly share data and interact with order and inventory management, ecommerce and financial management modules. That integration facilitates high-value interactions, such as intelligent product recommendations, and provides business stakeholders with real-time, role-driven dashboards to spot opportunities and track trends.

CRM systems are indispensable to businesses navigating the complexities of customer relationships in the context of a multichannel, digitally networked market. CRM features and functions can guide companies to better use of their customer data, transforming it into actionable strategies that drive growth and customer loyalty. Investing in a CRM with the right mix of features and functions is about more than automating sales and marketing processes — it’s about fostering a culture of customer-centricity that resonates through every interaction and business decision.

CRM Features and Functions FAQs

Why is CRM important for marketers and sales teams?

Customer relationship management (CRM) systems equip businesses to create workflows for marketing and sales team members to capture and share all customer interactions. This fosters alignment between the two teams, which can drive better customer experience, a catalyst for increased customer satisfaction and retention.

What are the components of CRM?

Customer relationship management (CRM) systems include a contact database, tools to automate workflows across customer touchpoints, reporting and analytics dashboards and, commonly, integration tools that enable linkages to other business-critical applications, such as finance and inventory management.

What are the main features of a CRM?

Customer relationship management (CRM) systems house all customer profile and interaction data within a single repository. Features designed to automate common sales activities include lead capture and routing, opportunity pipeline management and sales team activity tracking. CRMs also feature tools that automate and measure marketing campaign performance, including email sequencing, lead attribution and conversion tracking. Integrated email templates, document management and support for mobile access help accelerate business workflows.

What are the 3 basic CRM functionalities?

Customer relationship management (CRM) systems position businesses to combine data, process and insights to deliver superior customer interactions in three basic ways:

1. By unifying customer data into a single database, CRMs help businesses improve data quality and security.
2. CRMs provide automated workflows to streamline repetitive tasks for sales, marketing and customer support teams.
3. The data generated with these workflows is captured and presented in customizable views to provide business stakeholders with real-time insights.