CRM

What is CRM?

There are three aspects of CRM(Customer Relationship Management) which can each be implemented in isolation from each other:

• Operational - automation or support of customer processes that include a company’s sales or service representative



• Collaborative - direct communication with customers that does not include a company’s sales or service representative



• Analytical - analysis of customer data for a broad range of purposes

Operational
Operational CRM provides support to "front office" business processes, including sales, marketing and service. Each interaction with a customer is generally added to a customer's contact history, and staff can retrieve information on customers from the database as necessary.
One of the main benefits of this contact history is that customers can interact with different people or different contact channels in a company over time without having to repeat the history of their interaction each time.Many call centers use some kind of CRM software to support their call center agents.

Collaborative
Collaborative CRM covers the direct interaction with customers, for a variety of different purposes, including feedback and issue-reporting. Interaction can be through a variety of channels, such as web pages, email, automated phone or SMS.The objectives of collaborative CRM can be broad, including cost reduction and service improvements.

Analytical
Analytical CRM analyzes customer data for a variety of purposes:

• Design and execution of targeted marketing campaigns to optimise marketing effectiveness


• Design and execution of specific customer campaigns, including customer acquisition, cross-selling, up-selling, retention


• Analysis of customer behavior to aid product and service decision making (e.g. pricing, new product development etc.)


• Management decisions, e.g. financial forecasting and customer profitability analysis
  Prediction of the probability of customer defection.

Analytical CRM generally makes heavy use of predictive analytics.

Key functionalities of Any CRM:--

A typical CRM system is subdivided into three basic sub modules:

1. Marketing
2. Sales
3. Service

More on Functionalities of CRM come next time.

WHY CRM ?

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is the way in which businesses acquire, document, and assess their potential customers, and maintain relationships with their clientele. CRM systems aid businesses in scheduling and maintaining their clients in order to build a long lasting and trusting business relationship more efficiently than ever before. Without such a system, any businesses would constantly be rewriting the same information on different documents.

With a CRM system, fields are automatically populated by the information that is repetitive (Name, D.O.B., etc.) such that agents save vast amounts of time and energy on these forms, time and energy that is then reassigned to attaining new cases.

Reference:

1)http://en.wikipedia.org

2)http://www.leadorganizer.net