Features and functions that a CRM should have

By Anaraya Albornoz

Published: 4 May 2025

Business management provides the clues and information that enable managers to make strategic decisions. This is why CRM features are so important. In business management, acquiring a new customer is approximately 5 times more costly than investing in retaining existing customers.

This is one of the objectives of CRM: to optimise the strategy to achieve customer retention. Let's find out what to consider when making your choice.

See all software Customer relationship management

What is CRM?

In its simplest definition, a CRM refers to all the tasks related to the company's commercial activity:

Centralising communication with customers.
Automate the flow of sales.
Tracking the evolution of stock.
Quickly access customer or supplier information.

A CRM that is well integrated into sales processes centralises customer data, exploits sales opportunities and improves business processes. A CRM with the right functionality drives sales actions more effectively and improves customer insight.

[TOP 9] CRM features

But what are the essential characteristics of a CRM? A good CRM must meet the specific needs of your business. Discover 9 fundamental characteristics that your customer relationship management solution must have.

1. Ergonomics

The tool must be easy to use. Any user must be able to understand how it works without the need for prior training or simply with tutorials or online training, webinars, synthetic and clear. In short, an intuitive CRM solution .

2. Customer relationship management

Among the functions that a CRM system must integrate, the following are essential:

good contact management,
the history of actions per customer or prospect,
customer segmentation,
the most basic webmarketing actions, such as sending e-mail campaigns.

3. Reporting and reports

Since a CRM centralises all the information about your sales in real time, this software becomes the key tool to know and identify the most successful lines of business and the most effective campaigns.

A good CRM should include reports that synthesise all this information and have clear, simple, graphical and relevant dashboards that can be configured according to your indicators and objectives.

4. Integrations

The CRM solution must be able to integrate or retrieve information from the programmes that your company already uses for other activities such as accounting, invoicing, e-mail management, lead generation, etc.

5. Services

In addition to contact management and sales process tracking, every good CRM includes a customer support and maintenance service. Another very important factor to take into account is the security and storage of data.

6. Support and customer service

Make sure you hire a software publisher that is available and listening. It is important to be able to count on the support of your provider during the implementation of the new tool, as well as in case of questions, irregularities or problems.

7. Recommendations and evaluations

Thanks to advances in technology and the internet, it is nowadays very easy to get an idea of the reputation of companies. It is best to hire solutions that have positive reviews and evaluations from other users.

8. SaaS mode

There are basically two ways to store and use CRM software. Until a few years ago, most companies used software solutionsthat had to be stored on the company's servers and/or computers. Although this type of hosting offers great advantages in terms of data security, it is an inflexible and generally limited solution. Nowadays, companies prefer SaaS (Software as a Service) or online software solutions.

9. Collaboration

CRM tools in the cloud are much more versatile and allow you to work from anywhere, on any device, at any time. Good CRM software should allow you to synchronise the information managed and integrated by the members in real time and facilitate collaboration between the different teams. Moreover, if you have user rights management among the available options, you can configure each module or action so that it can be visible/modifiable by all or only some members.

Advantages of a CRM

Centralise and share all customer data.
Structure the information and sales process for better customer management.
Maintain customer relationship history and reports.
Optimise commercial actions with more reactivity and better opportunity management.
Save time by automating recurring tasks.
Increase the sales force according to prioritised customer and prospect targets.