Both customer relationship management (CRM) software and ticketing systems are important tools for managing interactions with customers. However, they serve different primary purposes.
What is CRM?
CRM stands for customer relationship management. A CRM system is software that helps businesses manage relationships and interactions with customers and potential customers. The main goals of CRM software are to:
- Improve customer retention
- Drive sales growth
- Enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty
- Streamline and automate customer-facing processes
CRM systems organize and manage all the company’s relationships and interactions with customers and prospects. This includes activities like:
- Marketing automation
- Sales pipeline management
- Customer service and support
- Field service management
- Digital commerce
- Marketing analytics
Key capabilities provided by CRM platforms include:
- Contact management: Organized contact database for collecting customer info like profiles, emails, addresses, and phone numbers.
- Opportunity tracking: Manage and track potential sales opportunities in the pipeline.
- Activity tracking: Log all communications and activities related to an account.
- Ticket or case management: Track, prioritize, and resolve customer inquiries and issues.
- Workflow automation: Automate repetitive tasks and business processes.
- Reporting and analytics: Create reports on sales performance, pipeline forecasting, support metrics, and more.
Some popular CRM platforms and tools include Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho CRM, Pipedrive, and Microsoft Dynamics 365.
What is a ticketing system?
Ticketing systems are software programs used for managing, organizing, and responding to customer support tickets or issues. They allow customer service teams to track requests coming in from multiple channels such as email, phone calls, live chats, and social media.
Ticketing systems are designed specifically for customer service and help desk use cases. The core capabilities include:
- Ticket management: Log, organize, assign, prioritize, and track status of incoming support tickets.
- SLA tracking: Ensure support teams respond to and resolve tickets according to service level agreement (SLA) timelines.
- Agent collaboration: Teams can collaborate on ticket replies and share information.
- Knowledge base: Searchable knowledge base or FAQ section to find answers to common questions.
- Reporting: Generate reports on support metrics like response times, ticket volumes, resolution rates, common issues, etc.
- Multi-channel support: Accept tickets from multiple channels – email, social media, web forms, chat, etc.
- Automation: Auto-responses, ticket routing rules, notifications, and workflows.
Some examples of popular ticketing system software include Zendesk, Freshdesk, Help Scout, Jira Service Desk, and Zoho Desk.
Key Differences Between CRM and Ticketing Systems
While CRM and ticketing systems have some overlapping capabilities like tracking customer issues and activity history, they have distinct differences.
Here are some key ways CRM and ticketing systems differ:
CRM | Ticketing System |
---|---|
Focused on managing ongoing customer relationships before, during, and after sales | Focused on quickly resolving incoming support tickets and issues |
Organizes data and history for known leads and customers | Tracks details of individual customer issues and requests |
Follows up on sales opportunities | Documents resolution and communication history of support tickets |
Analytics for sales, marketing, and service processes | Reporting for support and service performance (response times, resolution rates, etc.) |
Workflow automation for cross-team processes like lead assignment and opportunity management | Routing rules and automation for tickets and requests |
Data focused on contacts, accounts, leads, deals, cases | Data focused on individual support tickets |
Used cross-departmentally by sales, marketing, service, and customer success teams | Used primarily by customer service and support teams |
When are CRM and Ticketing Systems Used Together?
While CRM and ticketing fulfill different primary functions, they are very complementary systems that are often used together. Here are some common ways they are integrated:
- The CRM stores master customer profiles while tickets are linked to contact and account records for history.
- Tickets are logged in the ticketing tool and synced to associated accounts and contacts in the CRM.
- Tickets are opened and managed in the CRM system itself instead of a separate tool.
- Support agents access customer information from the CRM when working on tickets.
- Reporting in the CRM aggregates data across both customer accounts and service tickets.
Integrating the two systems provides the full context of a customer’s sales and service history within one platform for a complete view of the relationship.
Conclusion
In summary, the main differences between CRM and ticketing systems are:
- CRM software focuses on managing ongoing customer relationships, while ticketing systems focus on resolving individual customer issues and requests quickly.
- CRM organizes and analyzes data on overall customers and sales opportunities, ticketing systems track details of support cases.
- CRM supports cross-departmental processes like marketing, sales, and customer success, ticketing systems are used primarily for customer service.
- While their purposes differ, CRM and ticketing tools work very well together by integrating their data and workflows.
The right CRM manages the big picture of customer relationships before, during, and after sales. Ticketing software resolves day-to-day service issues efficiently. Used together, they provide businesses with an end-to-end view of the customer across sales and service touchpoints.