Customer Relationship Management - Overview

Customer Relationship Management (CRM), also known as relationship marketing or customer management, is an information technology industry term for the methodologies, strategies, software, and other web-based capabilities used to help an enterprise organize and manage customer relationships. The goal of CRM is to aid organizations in better understanding each customer's value to the company, while improving the efficiency and effectiveness of communication. CRM captures, analyzes, and distributes all relevant data from customer and prospect interactions to everyone in the organization. This distribution of information helps an organization better meet customer, product, and service needs.

CRM has replaced traditional marketing techniques that focused on key marketing mix elements, such as product, price, promotion and place. By being too functionally-based, traditional marketing techniques neglected the customer in the after-sales process and failed to meet customers' desires. CRM emphasizes customer retention over customer acquisition and is recognized as one of the most viable tools used to further a company's success in the highly competitive business world.

There are three major areas that focus on customer satisfaction: sales, marketing, and service. The functionality of and between these three fields is essential to successfully connecting a company's front and back offices to facilitate effective, enterprise-wide coordination. The professional sales force predicts and proposes the real-time analysis of information and distributes this information to the company and business partners. Marketing concentrates on personalizing customer preferences and offering them satisfying experiences. Service is associated with the companies' call centers and coordinates interaction between Web, e-mail, and other communication medias. These fields are developed further with the help of CRM automation.