Customer Relationship Management
Customer Relationship Management

Implementing CRM

Architecture Of CRM

Purposes Of Customer Relationship Management

Improving Customer Relationships

Technical Functionality

Privacy And Ethical Concerns

CRM In Business

See Also

External Links

Implementing CRM

A successful CRM strategy cannot be implemented by simply installing and integrating a software package, a holistic approach is needed. This approach may include training of employees, a modification of business processes based on customers' needs and an adoption of relevant IT systems (including software and maybe hardware) and/or usage of IT services that enable the organization or company to follow its CRM strategy. CRM services can even replace the acquisition of additional hardware or CRM software licences.

The term itself is meant to describe the whole business strategy (or lack of one) oriented on customer needs. The main misconception of CRM is that it is only a software, instead of a whole business strategy. To be effective, the CRM process needs to be integrated end-to-end across marketing, sales, and customer service. A good CRM program needs to:

  • Identify customer success factor
  • Create a customer-based culture
  • Adopt customer-based measures
  • Develop an end-to-end process to serve customers
  • Recommend what questions to ask to help a customer solve a problem
  • Recommend what to tell a customer with a complaint about a purchase
  • Track all aspects of selling to customers and prospects as well as customer support.

When setting up a CRM segment for a company it might first want to see what profile aspects it feels are relevant to its business, such as what information it needs to serve its customers, the customer's past financial history, the effects of the CRM segment and what information is not useful. Being able to eliminate unwanted information can be a large aspect of implementing CRM systems.

When designing a CRM's structure, a company may want to consider keeping more extensive information on their primary customers and keeping less extensive details on the low-margin clients.


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