• Operational - automation to the basic business processes (marketing, sales, service)
• Analytical - support to analyze customer behavior, implements business intelligence alike technology
• Collaborative - ensures the contact with customers (phone, email, fax, web, sms, post, in person)

Operational CRM

Operational CRM means supporting the "front office" business processes, which include customer contact (sales, marketing and service). Tasks resulting from these processes are forwarded to employees responsible for them, as well as the information necessary for carrying out the tasks and interfaces to back-end applications are being provided and activities with customers are being documented for further reference.

Operational CRM provides the following benefits:

• Delivers personalized and efficient marketing, sales, and service through multi-channel collaboration
• Enables a 360-degree view of your customer while you are interacting with them
• Sales people and service engineers can access complete history of all customer interaction with your company, regardless of the touch point

According to Gartner Group, the operational part of CRM typically involves three general areas of business:

Sales force automation (SFA) 

SFA automates some of the company's critical sales and sales force management functions, for example, lead/account management, contact management, quote management, forecasting, sales administration, keeping track of customer preferences, buying habits, and demographics, as well as performance management. SFA tools are designed to improve field sales productivity. Key infrastructure requirements of SFA are mobile synchronization and integrated product configuration.

Customer service and support (CSS) 

CSS automates some service requests, complaints, product returns, and information requests. Traditional internal help desk and traditional inbound call-center support for customer inquiries are now evolved into the "customer interaction center" (CIC), using multiple channels (Web, phone/fax, face-to-face, kiosk, etc). Key infrastructure requirements of CSS include computer telephony integration (CTI) which provides high volume processing capability, and reliability.

Enterprise marketing automation (EMA) 

EMA provides information about the business environment, including competitors, industry trends, and macroenviromental variables. It is the execution side of campaign and lead management. The intent of EMA applications is to improve marketing campaign efficiencies. Functions include demographic analysis, variable segmentation, and predictive modeling occur on the analytical (Business Intelligence) side.

Integrated CRM software is often also known as "front office solutions." This is because they deal directly with the customer.

Many call centers use CRM software to store all of their customer's details. When a customer calls, the system can be used to retrieve and store information relevant to the customer. By serving the customer quickly and efficiently, and also keeping all information on a customer in one place, a company aims to make cost savings, and also encourage new customers.

CRM solutions can also be used to allow customers to perform their own service via a variety of communication channels. For example, you might be able to check your bank balance via your WAP phone without ever having to talk to a person, saving money for the company, and saving your time.

Analytical CRM

In analytical CRM, data gathered within operational CRM and/or other sources are analyzed to segment customers or to identify potential to enhance client relationship. Customer analysis typically can lead to targeted campaigns to increase share of customer's wallet. Examples of Campaigns directed towards customers are:

• Acquisition: Cross-sell, up-sell
• Retention: Retaining customers who leave due to maturity or attrition.
• Information: Providing timely and regular information to customers.
• Modification: Altering details of the transactional nature of the customers' relationship.

Analysis typically covers but is not limited to:

• Decision support: Dashboards, reporting, metrics, performance etc.
• Predictive modelling of customer attributes
• Strategy and research.

Analysis of Customer data may relate to one or more of the following analyses:

• Campaign management and analysis
• Contact channel optimization
• Contact Optimization
• Customer Acquisition / Reactivation / Retention
• Customer Segmentation
• Customer Satisfaction Measurement / Increase
• Sales Coverage Optimization
• Fraud Detection and analysis
• Financial Forecasts
• Pricing Optimization
• Product Development
• Program Evaluation
• Risk Assessment and Management

Data collection and analysis is viewed as a continuing and iterative process. Ideally, business decisions are refined over time, based on feedback from earlier analysis and decisions. Therefore, most successful analytical CRM projects take advantage of a data warehouse to provide suitable data.

Business Intelligence is a related discipline offering some more functionality as separate application software.

Collaborative CRM

Collaborative CRM facilitates interactions with customers through all channels (personal, letter, fax, phone, web, e-mail) and supports co-ordination of employee teams and channels. It is a solution that brings people, processes and data together so companies can better serve and retain their customers. The data/activities can be structured, unstructured,conversational, and/or transactional in nature.

Collaborative CRM provides the following benefits:

• Enables efficient productive customer interactions across all communications channels
• Enables web collaboration to reduce customer service costs
• Integrates call centers enabling multi-channel personal customer interaction
• Integrates view of the customer while interaction at the transaction level