CRM interview Questions and Answers

1. What is CRM?

Answer:

CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. It is a tool which helps you to foster the relationship with your customers and contacts. The various entries you make in the system about your customers are - Name, contact details, personal information, product they bought, any complaints and issues they might have had and their status etc. Almost everything that helps you know and serve your customers better.

The ultimate aim is to increase your sales and revenue by serving your customers well and staying connected with them.

Video : CRM Interview Questions and Answers

2. What are the benefits of using CRM?

Answer:

Here are some of the important advantages of CRM:

i.) Stores vast information in an organized way, properly categorized for future reference.

ii.) Task tracking: Lets you fix appointments and alerts you about the upcoming task. Allows synchronization of data with calendars for timely reminders.

iii.) Efficient management of employees' performance, progress assisting you with recognizing training needs.

iv.) Selling opportunities: With information about customer's likes and preferences you get more selling opportunity.

v.) Helps in analyzing data:It can prepare automatic reports which saves a lot of time.

vi.) Improves efficiency of teams: Stored information can be easily accessed by different teams. Each team can get valuable information improving its efficiency and productivity.

vii.) Improves customer service: Information about customers buying habits, preferences, and history allows you to easily find solutions to the customer's problems. Check the database for potential issues and providing a solution helps in improving customer experience.

viii.) Customer retention:Better customer service implies improved customer retention

The analytical CRM helps you in analyzing the data and generating various kind of reports which assist in making the futuristic decisions for your customers in terms of the product and services both.

The system also helps you in managing the performance of your employees efficiently and identifying their training needs.

3. Are there any disadvantages of using CRM?

Answer:CRM helps to keep a track of customer information. It has a lot of advantages but there can be a few disadvantages, if the system is not paid sufficient attention to. They are:

i.) Transition from manual to automatic processes may be cumbersome.
ii.) Keeping the backup of information becomes expensive.
iii.) In large companies, you need to have specialized training for employees. Training for managers differs from the training provided to the regular staff as there are specialized functions for managers. Training can take up a few days and rolling out schedules at times is difficult for large companies.
iv.) If the CRM application is not stable, sometimes it can result in loss of data and retrieving records becomes difficult.

4. Why should a company use CRM?

CRM is a tool which helps in analyzing the interactions with your customers. It helps to make your business more efficient and increases the productivity of employees. Here are a few reasons why you need CRM for your business.

i.) Effective reporting :CRM helps you to understand the activity of every executive. This will help you to identify if there are any loopholes in your processes or any sales executive needs help.
ii.) Helps to grow business: CRM helps to identify new product requirement in the market. It can be used by the employees to cross sell and up sell.
iii.) Ensures best sales practice: CRM helps you to provide consistently high quality service to the customers.
iv.) Helps to understand customers better: CRM captures information about customer's behavior, their likes, and dislikes, preferences, and needs.
v.) Reduces workload and overhead costs: Most of the work is automated which reduces the administrative overhead cost and the work is performed faster.

5. How do you know the buyer's persona?

Answer:

The buyer's persona helps you to target the desired customers, make product improvement and helps to understand the real needs and concerns of the customers. It also helps you to create content that you can be used towards your prospects.

In order to know your buyer's persona you need to keep in mind the following:

i.) Identity your buyers: Use demographics such as their age, gender, etc.
ii.) Know what they need: Try to understand the challenges they are facing and how your product or service help them.
iii.) Identify what is important to them: When selecting a leader what do the buyer looks for- expert advice, technology leaders, etc.
iv.) Identify their source of information.
v.) What are their goals for making the purchase decision?: It can be price, support, service etc.

6. How will you improve your CRM strategy using Social Media?

Customer relationship management is high priority for most of the companies but most of them are leaving behind social media. By using social media CRM tools you can provide a better experience to your customers.

Here are a few ways through which you can improve your CRM strategy with social media:

i.) Keep an open eye on your customer's journey and try to know the engagement metrics which helps to build a long-term relationship. Connect with your customers at each step of the journey. Connect so they remember your brand.

ii.) Do not neglect the negative comments.A CRM strategy needs to understand the buyer's journey at all stages.

iii.) Have a powerful Social CRM tool that allows your brand to get all the information about the customers and the conversation history every time you reply to a complaint.

iv.) Look for keywords and hashtags which will help you get more potential customers who you might not have come across while using traditional sales funnel.

v.) Keep a consistent brand experience across all your social channels. Make sure you maintain your brand voice on all the channels.

7. What are the different types of CRM?

Answer:

There are three types of CRM:

i.) Operational CRM: Operational CRM helps in the efficient running and streamlining of business processes. These processes include sales automation, marketing automation, and service automation. The main focus of operational CRM is to get leads and convert them into customers. It also ensures that you capture all the customer details and provide a good service throughout the customer life cycle.  

Call centers, Data aggregation centers, Web forms are some of the examples of operational CRM.

ii.) Analytical CRM: Analytical CRM application helps to determine the best way to serve customers. In this application, the main focus is on data analysis. It analyzes the data that helps the management to make better decisions. It helps to strengthen your customer relationship by helping you improve your business processes.

iii.) Collaborative CRM: This application enables an organization to share customer's information among various teams such as sales, marketing, etc. This is also known as Strategic CRM. The aim of this CRM application is to get the information given by one team to be used by another.

For e.g. have you noticed while talking to the support guys at your bank, if you mention a requirement for a personal loan, they mention it in the system and very soon the people from loan department get in touch with you.

This is nothing but collaborative CRM function.

The ultimate aim of all the activities here is to increase sales by acquiring new customers and maximizing the existing one by gaining their loyalty.

8. What do you understand by On-premise CRM and Cloud CRM?

Answer:

On - premise CRM is the case where the CRM application is hosted and run by the systems within the company.

In Cloud CRM, the software and data are both hosted on Cloud. They are outside the organization.

The main advantages of Cloud CRM are:

i) Faster deployment – The technical expertise lies with someone else and you get the system working for yourself very quickly.

ii) No efforts and expenses on software updates – All the activities are taken care of automatically by the vendor.

iii) Easier to add more users – You can start from the minimal number of users and scale up as the business grows and requirement increases.

iv) No effect of location and device - Online information means that everyone has the same information.

v) Better collaboration among teams – Teams at different locations can easily collaborate, share information and work together.