What is CRM?

Introduction:

One important aspect of the CRM approach is the systems of CRM that compile data from a
range of different communication channels, including a company's website, telephone, email,
live chat, marketing materials and more recently, social media. Through the CRM approach and
the systems used to facilitate it, businesses learn more about their target audiences and how to
best cater to their needs.

Definition:

 Customer relationship management (CRM) is the combination of practices, strategies and

technologies that companies use to manage and analyze customer interactions and data
throughout the customer lifecycle, with the goal of improving customer service
relationships and assisting in customer retention and driving sales.

 CRM system is a process to compile information that increases understanding of how to

manage an organization’s relationships with its customer.

Examples:
CRM system examples include marketing, sales, customer service, and support.

Technology Enabled CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is an ideal

approach:
CRM is important because it enables a businesses to deepen and profit from relationships with
customers, service users, colleagues, partners and suppliers. Cloud based CRM is ideal because
it offers instant deployment, cost-effective scalability, and access from anywhere on any device.

Comparison between technology enabled CRM and traditional CRM:

Dimensions Technology Enabled Organization
Management
Advertising Provide information in response to
Specific customer inquiries
Targeting Identify and respond to specific
customer behaviors and preferences.
Promotions and Individually tailored to customers
Discounts offered
Traditional relationships
with customers
Push and sell a uniform
message to all customers
Market Segmentations
Same for all customers
Distribution Direct or through intermediaries; Through intermediaries
Channels Customer choices chosen by the seller
New Product Created in response to customer Determined by the seller based
Features demands on research and development
Measurement used to Customer relation; total value of the Market share; profit
manage the customer individual customer relationship
relationships

Objectives of CRM:
 Customer Satisfaction.
 Become More Efficient
 Produce Better Marketing Campaigns
 Attract New Customers
 Boost Sales
 For customer satisfaction
 For better efficiency
 For better marketing campaigns.

Characteristics of CRM:

1. Case Management:

As the name states, customer relationship management software is about managing your
relationships with your customers. Users can manage each customer case individually and
efficiently to improve customer satisfaction levels with CRM. Track, close and reopen existing
cases with this useful feature. Online case management also allows you to manage any
confidential information in a secure environment. You can ensure your customers’ and leads’
sensitive information is kept away from prying eyes that might use that data for identity theft or
other harmful activities.

2. Social Media Management Integration:

Dedicated SMM efforts can be managed from the CRM UI. Integrate management platforms
like Oktopost and Hoot suite to streamline your social media management and allow multiple
team members to work together from different access points.

3. Email Marketing Integration:

Some businesses will be content with the email marketing features of customer relationship management
software, but others may find they need the more robust power of a separate email marketer.

4. Web Analytics Integration:

Integrating web analytics doesn’t just allow you to collect data on who is visiting your website. It
analyzes that raw data, identifies problem areas, suggests ways to improve and provides insights
into the way your user base interacts with your website. CRM systems provide intuitive ways to
collect and access these statistics from your UI.

5. Testing Environment:

This functionality of CRM refers to user’s ability to test new capabilities before rolling them out.
Your employees can get used to handling the changes, customers can explore and give feedback
and you collect data on every interaction. This helps prevent customer frustration, improve
conversion rates and help you make educated decisions and actions.

6. Support Automation:
Customer support features like FAQ pages, chatbots and email correspondence is becoming
increasingly automated as AI databases improve. Users can control the output of your customer
support features from your UI.

7. Marketing Automation Integration:

Marketing automation allows you to more efficiently and strategically target audiences that are
likely to be interested in what you’re selling. A good CRM platform will allow you to control the
terms of automating parts of your marketing program selectively.
 8. Lead Management for Determining High-Quality Leads:

No CRM feature list would be complete without mentioning lead management. This
technology allows a business to determine the best customers to follow up with based
upon demographic and psychographic factors. Like lead scoring, it improves the
efficiency and productivity of your sales team by helping them focus on the right leads at
the right time.

Sources of CRM:
There are top 10 Sources of CRM

 Sugar CRM
 V Tiger.
 Splendid CRM.
 X tuple
 Concursive
 Compiere
 Opentaps
 Centra View

Types of CRM systems:

There are three types of CRM.
 Operational CRM
 Analytical CRM
 Collaborative CRM

1. Operational CRM:
Operational CRM generally refers to services that allow an organization to take care of
their customers. It provides support for various business processes. Contact and call
centers, data aggregation systems and web sites are a few examples of operational CRM.
Operational CRM streamlines the business process that
includes Sales automation, Marketing automation and Service automation. ...
2. Analytical CRM:
Analytical CRM is based on data mining and data interpretation. It's used to analyze
customer sales data, payment and credit history, and evaluate customer response to
marketing campaigns. Analytical CRM helps top management, marketing, sales
and support personnel to determine the better way to serve customers.
 3. Collaborative CRM:
Collaborative CRM is an approach to customer relationship management (CRM) in
which the various departments of a company, such as sales, technical support, and
marketing, share any information they collect from interactions with customers.

Importance of CRM:
Customer relationship management (CRM) is important in running a successful
business. The better the relationship, the easier it is to conduct business and generate revenue.
Therefore using technology to improve CRM makes good business sense. Literally, CRM is the
acronym of Customer Relation Management, the tool that let us able to save and manage the
information of our customers, in this case our members. The evolution of new CRM for an easy
CRM to facilitate the register of informations that we have to have, keeping everything agile and
smple.
 Enhance sales productivity: A CRM houses all of the important customer
information in one place. Need to know the last time a certain customer made a
purchase? Need to know the group of people who are still waiting for a follow-up
email? Need to see the current level of social media engagement? Need to lay
eyes on the sales pipeline to identify the deals that need to be expedited? Need
to see how well your business is doing on the sales front? You can have answers
to all the above questions without having to leave the application. This helps you
close more deals and increase your sales productivity. The aforementioned is
backed by the survey conducted by Act! which revealed that around 48% of the
700 people who answered, believe that the CRM helped them achieve improve
the sales function.
 Improved customer satisfaction: With a CRM, you can collect data from
multiple sources including social media and keep it organised in one place, so
that you can use it when the need be. By providing attentive customer service,
responding to requests timely and catering to the customer needs at all times, a
business is able to improve levels of customer satisfaction. The survey by Act!
also revealed that more than half (54%) of the 700 people who answered, believe
that the CRM helped them provide better customer service.
  Improved customer retention: A mere 5% increase in customer retention can
increase profits by 25% to 95% and the Act! survey reveals that around 38.5% of
the responders believe that a CRM helps them in increasing customer retention.

 Improved efficiency: By providing a better way to manage leads, by bridging gaps

between multiple departments (sales, marketing etc.), by helping find new customers
and by automating the most mundane tasks, a CRM helps in improving overall workforce
efficiency. The claim can be substantiated by the Act! survey which reveals that more
than half (54.37%) of the 700 responders believe that the CRM helped them in improving
efficiency.

 Improved analytics and reporting: A CRM acts as a central data repository eliminating
the possibility of a miscalculation leading to a poor business decision. Modern CRMs
also help you in creating aesthetic and insightful reports that help teams visualise the
business performance. A customisable, central dashboard is home to all the important
statistics and information (sales goals etc.) that managers would like to have eyes on at
all times.


1. CRM Improves Your Customer Service:

Your time is valuable, but so is your customers’ time. And, should your customers
experience a problem that needs resolution, they’re going to be unhappy unless that
problem can be taken care of quickly. With CRM, as soon as a customer contacts your
company, your representatives will be able to retrieve all available activity concerning
past purchases, preferences, and anything else that might assist them in finding a
solution. In many cases, your more experienced representatives, armed with past
information and history, will be able to locate a solution within the first few minutes,
thanks to an accessible database of potential issues. And, should a solution not be
readily apparent, then bringing in other representatives, or even crowdsourcing for
answers through customer portals, is a simple matter. With CRM, customer support
becomes a walk in the park.

2. Automation of Everyday Tasks:

Completing a sale is never as easy as just getting a customer to agree to commit. Along
with the surface details of any sale, there are hundreds of smaller tasks that must be
completed in order for everything to function properly. Forms need to be filled out, reports
need to be sent, legal issues need to be addressed—these ancillary chores are a time
consuming, yet vital aspect of the sales process. The best CRM systems are designed to
take the burden of many of these tasks from off the shoulders of your employees, thanks to
the magic of automation. This means that your representatives will be able to focus more of
their efforts towards closing leads and resolving customer pain points, while the automated
CRM system takes care of the details.

3. Greater efficiency for multiple teams:

Automatically stored communication allows you to view emails, calendar and phone call
details in one easily accessible place. Add that to the ability for multiple teams to access the
same information, it simply sky rockets the amount of achievable progress. Sales,
marketing, and customer service teams can share valuable information about clients to
continue to funnel them down the pipeline to get the desired result of closing a sale,
knowledge of new products, or excellent customer service. Every department can now tag
team to get the right information to the right individual. With this new found ease, teams can
seamlessly work together to improve the bottom line.

4. Improved Analytical Data and Reporting:

Miscalculated data should not be the reason you cannot succeed, with CRM this is no
longer a possibility. CRM systems store information in one place which leads to improved
analyzing of the data as a whole. Easily integrated with different tools or plugins, you have
the ability to generate automatic reports to maximize your time. Personalize your dashboard
views to quickly locate information needed such as customer information, sales goals, and
performance reports to reach untapped opportunities. With better reporting data you can
make resourceful and effective decisions to reap the rewards in customer loyalty and long
run profitability.