CRM - Customer Relationship Management

CRM is the abbreviation for customer relationship management. CRM entails all aspects of interaction that a company has with its customer, whether it is sales or service-related.  CRM is often thought of as a business strategy that enables businessesto:

• Understand the customer
• Retain customers through better customer experience
• Attract new customer
• Win new clients and contractsIncrease profitably
• Decrease customer management costs

While the phrase customer relationship management is most commonly used to describe a business-customer relationship, however CRM systems are used in the same way to manage business contacts, clients, contract wins and sales leads.

CRM solutions provide you with the customer business data to help you provide services or products that your customers want, provide better customer service, cross-sell and up sell more effectively, close deals, retain current customers and understand who the customer is.

Technology and the Web has changed the way companies approach CRM strategies because advances in technology have also changed consumer buying behavior and offers new ways for companies to communicate with customers and collect data about them. With each new advance in technology -- especially the proliferation of self-service channels like the Web and smartphones -- customer relationships is being managed electronically.

Many aspects of CRM relies heavily on technology; however the strategies and processes of a good CRM system will collect, manage and link information about the customer with the goal of letting you market and sell services effectively.

Organizations frequently looking for ways to personalize online experiences (a process also referred to as mass customization) through tools such as help-desk software, e-mail organizers and different types of enterprise applications.