Customer relationship management (CRM) is a process in which a business or other organization administers its interactions with customers, typically using data analysis to study large amounts of information.
CRM systems compile data from a range of different communication channels, including a company's website, telephone (which many softwares come with a softphone), email, live chat, marketing materials and more recently, social media. They allow businesses to learn more about their target audiences and how to best cater to their needs, thus retaining customers and driving sales growth. CRM may be used with past, present or potential customers. The concepts, procedures, and rules that a corporation follows when communicating with its consumers are referred to as CRM. This complete connection covers direct contact with customers, such as sales and service-related operations, forecasting, and the analysis of consumer patterns and behaviors, from the perspective of the company. According to Gartner, the global CRM market size is estimated at $69 billion in 2020.
Strategic
Strategic CRM concentrates upon the development of a customer-centric business culture.
The focus of a business on being customer-centric (in design and implementation of their CRM strategy) will translate into an improved CLV.
Operational
The primary goal of CRM systems is integration and automation of sales, marketing, and customer support. Therefore, these systems typically have a dashboard that gives an overall view of the three functions on a single customer view, a single page for each customer that a company may have. The dashboard may provide client information, past sales, previous marketing efforts, and more, summarizing all of the relationships between the customer and the firm. Operational CRM is made up of 3 main components: sales force automation, marketing automation, and service automation.
Analytical The role of analytical CRM systems is to analyze customer data collected through multiple sources and present it so that business managers can make more informed decisions.[24] Analytical CRM systems use techniques such as data mining, correlation, and pattern recognition to analyze the customer data. These analytics help improve customer service by finding small problems which can be solved, perhaps by marketing to different parts of a consumer audience differently. For example, through the analysis of a customer base's buying behavior, a company might see that this customer base has not been buying a lot of products recently. After scanning through this data, the company might think to market to this subset of consumers differently, to best communicate how this company's products might benefit this group specifically.
Collaborative The third primary aim of CRM systems is to incorporate external stakeholders such as suppliers, vendors, and distributors, and share customer information across groups/departments and organizations. For example, feedback can be collected from technical support calls, which could help provide direction for marketing products and services to that particular customer in the future.