CRM Analytics: Definition & Proven Benefits

Customer relationship management (CRM) analytics offer insights into areas like sales performance and customer service to show how a business is performing. Most CRMs offer automated analytics tools that helpfully aggregate data into meaningful reports instead of trying to sort through spreadsheets of cumulative data.

Benefits of CRM Analytics Tracking

The customer interaction data produced by CRM analytics helps businesses make more informed decisions around sales, service, and marketing activities. These analytics cover a wide area and include data like deal win-loss ratios, email open rates, number of calls made, project tasks overdue, and open service requests.

When aggregated into meaningful reports, metrics like these can help businesses improve sales forecasting and take the guesswork out of opportunity identification. However, the accuracy of CRM analytics is as important as collecting the data in the first place. According to a 2019 Duke University/CFO Global Business Outlook survey, 40% of companies change hiring plans and 36% adjust expenditures when sales forecasts go awry—situations no business owner wants to find themselves in.

How CRM Analytics Tools Work

Analytics reports are among a CRM’s most important features. They work by tracking customer data points like product sales and prospect engagement, and compiling that data into reports that help managers and teams recognize trends, interpret what they mean, and take action. Instead of manually tracking data and creating reports, CRM software programs often also allow you to click a few buttons to create reports and dashboards without leaving the interface, saving you time.

Many CRM software platforms also use built-in software integration to track external customer data like website visitor and product engagement data. For example, it can track which customers are signed up for your newsletter or which ones have a product demo account, making quick work of segmenting these customers and creating sales campaigns based on their activity.

For example, if your data shows that 80% of your prospects who sign up for a product demo ultimately make a purchase, but only 10% of your prospects sign up for a demo, you may want to create a product demo campaign to capture the attention of prospects and leads.

Insights offered through CRM analytics show business owners where to invest their time and money by using data to illustrate where problems lie. Directing time, money, and other resources to areas in the business that need it most will help prevent problems from getting worse. These insights can also signal trends and opportunities which, when properly acted upon, can give you an advantage over the competition.

What to Measure With CRM Analytics

To gain the most from CRM analytics, there are two major categories of customer relationship engagement activities you should measure: presales engagement and post-sales engagement. The former measures interactions that take place before the sale, such as product demos, while the latter measures activities that occur after the sale, like product activation or project status.

Presales Engagement

Measuring presales engagement activities can help you become better at closing deals because it gives you a way of identifying the activities that most resonated with your prospects. This includes measuring sales interactions and marketing campaign effectiveness. There are several presales activities to consider measuring with your CRM’s analytics tools.

• Prospecting: Assess your sales team’s ability to identify new leads and fill the front end of the pipeline by measuring things like the number of prospecting calls made, new leads acquired, or cold emails sent during a given time period.
• New opportunities: The health of your sales pipeline depends on the number of new opportunities added, so a CRM should track associated activities such as the number of calls made and the number of proposals sent, opened, acted upon, and approved.
• Product demos: Measure the number of product demos by sales rep and also the total number of product demos that yield sales to help set future goals for your team.
• Special event invitations: Track metrics to customer relationship-building events, including the number of RSVPs, email invitation opens, attendees, follow-up calls, and sales.
• Meetings and calls: Closed deals often occur because of meaningful one-one-one customer interactions with sales agents, so be sure to track activities like number and length of phone calls, frequency of in-person or online meetings, and post-meeting engagement like the number of free trial sign-ups.

Post-sales Engagement

Monitoring post-sales trends is important for improving customer retention and involves measuring interactions and activities that take place after the sale. These include tracking activities like billing patterns, number and types of calls to customer service, and project status. Indeed, there is a wide variety of post-sales engagement activities worth tracking.

• Billing: Patterns in customer billing offer valuable insights, such as likelihood to cancel or keep a product or service based on payment history.
• Service tickets: Customers that generate a high number of tickets may be at risk for cancelling your product, so monitoring the number of tickets a customer files with your service department allows you to take preventive measures to avoid losing them for good.
• Project management: Tracking overall project status and the status of milestone activities allows sales teams to take actions that prevent project status and timelines from slipping.
• Cross-sells and upsells: Monitoring cross-selling and upselling opportunities helps sales professionals plan campaigns based on purchase activity.

CRMs That Offer the Best Analytics

The best CRMs with advanced analytics allow sales managers and business owners to quickly create analytics reports and dashboards with the click of a few buttons instead of assembling them manually. Fortunately, there are a number of customer relationship management solutions with built-in analytics tools.

Freshworks CRM

Freshworks CRM’s customizable dashboard
(Source: Freshworks CRM)

Freshworks CRM features tracking tools related to sales activities, including event attendance, website interactions, and product engagement. It also offers robust reporting and dashboards to help track deal velocity reports, sales trend reports, and aged deal reports for extra insight into your sales funnel. Freshworks CRM offers a free service plan for unlimited users, while paid plans range from $12 to $49 per user, per month.

Visit Freshworks CRM

Zoho CRM

Zoho CRM’s customizable dashboard
(Source: Zoho CRM)

Zoho CRM features advanced analytics tools for sales and operations, allowing teams to gain insights from both presale and post-sale interactions. Create a dashboard to learn at a glance the number of new deals created, number of support tickets resolved, and number of deals won or lost. Zoho CRM offers a free plan that supports up to three users and paid plans ranging from $12 to $20 per user, per month.

Visit Zoho CRM

Insightly

Insightly’s opportunities dashboard
(Source: Insightly)

Insightly CRM offers advanced CRM analytics tools that allow you to create reports and dashboards with insights on pre- and post-sale activities, from prospect interactions through customer interactions during projects. Users can create reports with just a few clicks for insight into what’s happening during each phase of the customer journey. Insightly offers a free plan that supports two users and paid service plans ranging from $29 to $49 per user, per month.

Visit Insightly

Bottom Line

CRM analytics reports and tools help you quickly gain insights from your business. Instead of creating analytics manually, CRMs allow you to create them automatically through point-and-click or drag-and-drop functionality. These tools save time and allow you to focus on using the information to increase sales and improve customer relationships.

When it comes to reporting on CRM analytics, Freshworks CRM is a smart choice for small businesses. Its built-in reporting features as well as a comprehensive suite of powerful customer relationship management tools make Freshworks CRM a worthwhile and affordable solution for tracking the performance of your sales team and overall business health.

Visit Freshworks CRM