What is CRM?
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) on the whole is a total of all the strategies and practices for analyzing and managing customer interactions. The main purpose of CRM is to improve these interactions between businesses and customers to increase retention and sales. Consequently, the CRM software is a type of enterprise software which helps various businesses to manage customer data, employee and vendor management, along with partner relationships. Important information which CRM systems store are customer preferences, their purchase history and personal information.
The main function of a CRM software is to aggregate all customer information (data + interactions) into a single and manageable CRM database. It allows managers to track performance, drive sales and store users’ contacts.
Modern CRM software trends:
- Engagement of customers through such social media platforms as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
- Tracking the information about the brand (discussions, mentions, complaints) across social networks.
- Connecting customers with each other through customer communities, which act as a low-level support, as well as collecting users’ feedback.
- Mobile CRM – are CRM applications which provide marketing representatives information on-the-go, without having to be at the office.