CRM Software Briefing

The term CRM is often described as a software (Customer Relationship Management software) that helps businesses organize and manage customer data including the capture, storage and analysis of customer information. As a business develops, it becomes apparent that they cannot continue the informal and regular personal interaction with their customers. This is where CRM systems become a strategic tool for retaining customers and acquiring new ones.

Aspects of a CRM - Customer Relationship Management software

Customer Support is often considered as the key differentiator in a fiercely competitive market. The “Case management feature” of the Customer relationship management software empowers a business to deliver timely, accurate, complete and clear information to customers. The customer service desk can easily open, track, report on and close calls allowing managers to prioritize the workflow.

The three aspects of CRM - customer relationship management software implementation are:

• Operational CRM - Automation of the support of customer processes that include a company’s sales or service representative
• Collaborative CRM - direct communication with customers that does not include a company’s sales or service representative (“self-service”)
• Analytical CRM - analysis of customer data for a broad range of purposes

Operational CRM - Customer relationship management software

Operational CRM - provides support to "front office" business processes such as sales, marketing and service. Each interaction with a customer is generally added to a customer's contact history, and staff can retrieve information on customers from the database as necessary.

One of the main benefits of this contact history is that customers can interact with different people or different contact “channels” in a company over time without having to repeat the history of their interaction each time.

Collaborative CRM - Customer relationship management software

Collaborative CRM covers the direct interaction with customers via a variety of channels, such as internet, email, automated phone (Automated Voice Response AVR), SMS or through mobile email. Of these, feedback through SMS or mobile email provides greater efficiency relative to alternative channels. Part of this has to do with the ease of use of particular feedback channels.

Analytical CRM - Customer relationship management software

Analytical CRM analyses customer data for a variety of purposes including:

• Design and execution of targeted marketing campaigns to optimize marketing effectiveness
• Design and execution of specific customer campaigns, including customer acquisition, cross-selling, up-selling, retention
• Analysis of customer behavior to aid product and service decision making (e.g. pricing, new product development etc.)
• Management decisions like financial forecasting and customer profitability analysis
• Prediction of the probability of customer defection (churn).

Technology Considerations of CRM - Customer relationship management software

The basic building blocks of a CRM - Customer relationship management software include

• A database to store customer information. This can be a CRM specific database or an Enterprise Data warehouse.
• Operational CRM requires customer agent support software.
• Collaborative CRM requires customer interaction systems, (e.g. an interactive website, automated phone systems etc.)
• Analytical CRM requires statistical analysis software as well as software that manages any specific marketing campaigns.