CRM

Customer relationship management is a strategy for managing a company’s interactions with customers and sales prospects in order to ensure that customers are served in the best way possible. CRM helps a business to recognise the value of its customers and to capitalise on improved customer relations. The better you understand your customers, the more responsive you can be to their needs. It involves using technology to organize business processes—principally sales activities, but also those for marketing, customer service and technical support.

CRM- WHAT IS IT?

GOALS

Find, attract, and win new clients, nurture and retain those thecompany already has

Entice former clients back into the fold

Reduce the costs of marketing and client service.

CRM can be achieved by:

Finding out about your customers' purchasing habits, opinions and preferences

Profiling individuals and groups to market more effectively and increase sales

Changing the way you operate to improve customer service and marketing

CREDIBILITY

The internal fragmentation that is happening in the commercial world is now visible to the rest of the world in the era of the social customer; in the past, only employees or partners were aware of it.

The fragmentation requires a shift in philosophy and mindset in an organization so that everyone considers the impact to the customer of policy, decisions and actions.

The more opportunities that a customer has to conduct business with one company the better, and one way of achieving this is by opening up channels such as direct sales, online sales, franchises, use of agents, etc. However, the more channels you have, the greater the need to manage your interaction with your customer base.

Customer relationship management (CRM) helps businesses to gain an insight into the behaviour of their customers and modify their business operations to ensure that customers are served in the best possible way.

CRM TechniquesSales force automationInvolves using software to streamline all phases of the sales process, minimizing the time that sales representatives need to spend on each phase. This allows a business to use fewer sales representatives to manage their clients.

MarketingCRM systems for marketing help the enterprise identify and target potential clients and generate leads for the sales team.

Technologyto help the companys improve their clients’ experience while aiming to increase efficiency and minimize costs.

AppointmentCreating and scheduling appointments with customers is a central activity of most customer oriented businesses.

AnalyticsRelevant analytics capabilities are often interwoven into applications for sales, marketing, and service.

Integrated/CollaborativeDepartments within enterprises — especially large enterprises — tend to function with little collaboration.

• • Small business• For smal busines, sbasic client service can be accomplished by a contact manager system: an integrated solution that lets organizations and individuals efficiently track

and record interactions, including emails, documents, jobs, faxes, scheduling, and more.• • • Social media• Ssocial media sites like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook are amplifying the voice of people in the marketplace and are having profound• and far-reaching effects on the ways in which people buy.