B2B vs B2C CRM: What is B2C CRM and How is it Different from B2B CRM?

Customers are the lifeblood of any company. If you want to achieve long-term success, it is imperative to manage that relationship. But that does not imply that every CRM software is a wise investment. So, what do you choose and how? This blog explains everything from the ground up for you to be able to distinguish a B2C CRM from a B2B CRM, and what would work best– especially if you are an education organization looking to grow your enrollments.

What is a CRM?

Customer Relationship Management – CRM assists you to manage all of your business’s interactions and relationships with current and potential clients. It is a tool that aids in contact management, sales management, productivity, and other areas. With the aid of a CRM, you can concentrate on the relationships that your business has with specific people, such as clients, service users, employees, or learners — in the context of education organizations. This includes attracting new clients, earning their business, and providing ongoing support and other services.

What is B2C CRM?

In General Context:
A B2C Customer Relationship Management software enables you to supercharge your outreach and lead conversion efforts. It automates your busywork, unifies data sources, and allows you to track critical marketing metrics from a single platform.

As the name implies, the primary focus of CRM is the customer, and given that B2C firms often have a significantly bigger number of clients than B2C enterprises, it becomes much more challenging to keep track of each client’s history and preferences. The same goes for creating customized, targeted messaging for each candidate, a task that is practically unachievable without the intervention of a technology. Additionally, being able to emotionally connect with prospects through focused marketing initiatives can significantly affect client acquisition and retention.

In the context of Education Organizations: 
As stated above, a B2C Education CRM is more like a personalized solution for the education industry. It is more like a purpose-built solution that is exclusively built keeping in mind the nitty-gritty of the education industry. Thus, they don’t have to forcefit their requirements into traditional and generic solutions like ERP or B2B CRM. Also, it enables various teams like admission counseling, marketing, finance, and operations to come together and work in unity as the CRM perfectly caters to their usecases.

What is B2B CRM? 

A B2B CRM is a specific tool that only caters to organizations that sell to other businesses and not customers. It generally consists of dashboards and features that are common to the whole B2B industry. Designed for sales reps of the companies, a B2B CRM allows companies to upload prospect data, manage their contact, and add other relevant details about the sales deal. 

Unlike the B2C CRM, B2B CRMs are standardized and only come with a handful of features. They lack customization and cannot be personalized for any sub-industry, rather the users have to mend their use-cases and requirements to fit into the B2B CRM.  

B2B CRM for Educational Organizations: 
B2B CRMs are mainly built for organizations catering to business, yet some educational organizations use them for their enrollment purpose. Being a CRM, this one offers very limited standard features that educational organizations can use to complete their enrollment purpose. Thus, it is recommended to use the right tool for your organization and not limit your growth using traditional and non-personalized solutions like B2B CRM. 

Key Differences between B2B and B2C CRM

Now that we have an idea about a B2B CRM and a B2C CRM, let us now go through a detailed distinction between the two:

1. Complexity:  B2B sales cycles are longer than B2C, thus, the B2B CRM comes with more complex fields and domains that could be used throughout the sales journey. Hence, the B2B CRM is complex to use. On the other hand, B2C sales are more quick and straightforward, thus, require a system that comes with detailed yet industry-relevant fields. 
2. Sales Cycle: Educational organizations with shorter conversion cycles cannot fit their deals in a B2B CRM, which is meant for longer sales deals that go on for months and years. B2C purchases take place in days and in some special cases, weeks; thus, they require a special CRM that is built to cater to faster sales deals. 
3. Marketing Communication Automation: A B2B CRM merely allows one to manage the sales deals and enables them to perform activities related to sales only. Whilst, a B2C CRM comes fully equipped with features that one needs to execute and optimize marketing strategies. For businesses, that emphasize more on acquiring and converting customers, it is beneficial to have a tool that empowers them with handy marketing and automation features. 
4. Integration and Customization: For the tools catering to a large group of audience, it becomes imperative to have the flexibility of customization, like B2C CRM. To expand it’s functionality and hyper-personalize the use, integration and customization are at the core of a B2C CRM. Whereas, B2B CRM is a traditional tool that does not offer customization to its users, and is capable of integrating with a bare minimum of other tools, APIs, or ERPs.  
5. Forecasting: Be it a B2B or B2C, forecasting is an essential part of it. Businesses do shed proper light on what the actual numbers are and how would the future turn out for them. Thus, for this, it is important to have a tool that centralizes the end-to-end data and provides you with detailed insights into what’s actually going around on the business end. An advanced and purpose-built system like B2C CRM can be more effectively used for forecasting than a traditional B2B CRM.

EdTech CRM: How is B2C EdTech CRM Different from B2B CRM?

Best B2C CRM: The Defacto Choice for all – Meritto’s (formerly NoPaperForms) B2C CRM

Due to the fact that it established the current benchmark for what an Enrolment CRM should be able to perform, Meritto (formerly NoPaperForms) as long been acknowledged as the market leader in the Education Industry. Its reporting features make use of interactive and customized dashboards and data visualization so that decision-makers and other users can get the broad or narrow view of the data they need.

B2C CRM is a strong, efficient tool for enhancing customer experience, maintaining relationships, tracking data, and fostering coordination among departments. Leveraging an industry-specific CRM is the secret to B2C success, considering that customer satisfaction, contact management, data tracking, and coordination are undoubtedly the defining characteristics of any educational organization.

For Educational Organizations: 

An Education CRM is a purpose-built solution that can empower an educational organization’s sales and marketing teams to drive more student conversions. It equips teams to be more efficient and productive by allowing them to engage contextually with prospective learners and students. It is different from a B2B Sales CRM which typically involves a long and complex cycle, used mainly by sales representatives in organizations.

Our B2C Education CRM solves all these problems with its deep focus on student touchpoints and their enrolment journey. It is widely used by large call center teams & on-field sales representatives and has features like Sales Execution & Automation, Sales Tracking & Performance, Marketing Automation, and Integrated Payment Management which is a unique differentiator. It empowers sales & marketing teams to fasten deal closures and track campaign effectiveness with real-time data.

Key Distinction Factor Between B2C CRM & B2B CRM for an EdTech Business

How to Select the Best CRM for Your Business? 

Every vertical needs a different type of CRM, identifying what aligns best with your business. Between the two forms of CRM, there is a distinct difference. And given that you are now aware of all the distinctions between a B2B CRM and a B2C CRM, why would you attempt to push your organisation to use a system that isn’t designed for your market? It is evident that B2B marketers have their own software, whereas B2C marketers want a CRM of their own, one that is tailored to meet their unique requirements. 

While looking for a CRM, you should make sure to:

• Determine Your Goals: Recognize the problem that a CRM is meant to solve.
• Recognise how it is Implemented: Do not undervalue the impact of implementation as it may result in significant costs and time away from your teams’ present duties.
• Get ready for user Acceptance: Put your salespeople at rest by acknowledging that since they control the personal relationship with the customer, they are not in danger of losing or sharing their customers with others.
• Be aware of Product Mobility: A tool that can be accessible from a range of web-enabled devices is what you should look for. 
• Organise Your Procedures: You want a CRM that can expand along with your company and change with your procedures without needing to be changed.
• Review the Software Compatibility with Current Versions: Verify that the CRM system you select can communicate with other systems you already use.
• Investigate the Product Demo: Accessing a product demonstration is critical, but using the demo is even more crucial.
• Enquire Regarding Reporting Capabilities: Your wins, losses, and possibilities for progress will be highlighted by the ability to create personalised reports based on your particular data.

Every business vertical needs a different type of CRM that aligns best with their business. For an EdTech business a B2C CRM is just the right choice that brings the desired value, at its core, to streamline your collaboration with candidates on various stages.

Make the best decision for your business right away by switching to Meritto’ B2C EdTech CRM. Schedule a demo right away!

Also Read –

• What is the Difference Between Admission CRM and Traditional ERP?
• Why Do Institutions Need an Education CRM?

Start Your Journey With Meritto(formerly NoPaperForms)