Definition

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is the art of serving your customers in the best way to improve customer retention and drive growth.

Description

Success of brands rely on customer retention.

A customer lifecycle involves:

Targeting>Marketing>Acquisition>Conversion>Retention>Loyalty

Customers stay with a brand when they are happy with what is served and they are served what they are looking for.

Customer Relationship Management is the right combination of strategies, technologies, and practices that the companies use to manage and analyse customer interaction throughout the customer lifecycle.

CRM can be done by using result-oriented CRM software that keeps a track of data, interactions, and knowledge about the potential customers. The data can help to streamline sales, marketing, accounting, customer service, and overall management to grow the business.

The compilation of customer data through different channels and points of interaction help companies focus their actions to grow business.

Example

Online apparel brand, Myntra has set up a strong customer relationship management system. When a customer sends them a query for having received a wrong product, the customer receives a quick response reading “We Are On It.” This way the brand keeps themselves connected with the customers and responds to their query giving customers a feeling of satisfaction.

Importance of Customer Relationship Management

Customer relationship management is an efficient way to maintain and create relationships with the customers. Maintaining relationships with the customers is the simple way to connect deeper with the people and the brand.

A great bond with the customers can take the business to another level.

These are the reasons why CRM is important for the growth of the organisation:

• A CRM helps to evaluate the status of the acquired or to be acquired customers. This helps to serve the customers continuously and maintain relationships effectively.
• CRM can help to track which customers are profitable and which ones are not.
• The CRM system helps businesses to identify potential customers which is also called “Opportunity of Businesses”.
• CRM is cost effective to give wings to your business. It does not require any staff or any dedicated system to manage CRM.
• A proper CRM system increases the customer satisfaction which is about getting more business that drives profit. And if the customer is satisfied with you, it increases the customer loyalty.

Future of Customer Relationship Management (CRM)- What to expect?

These are the trends that will be seen in customer relationship management in next 5 years:

• CRM will develop automation in the system.
• Customer first and not the company. The CRM tool will help in customer retention and offer highly personalised customer experience.
• The CRM softwares will be Easy-to-Use and mobile friendly enabling everyone in the company to use it.
• The CRM will be AI enabled that reduces the chances of manual data entries and captures the complete customer lifecycle. An AI enabled system captures the data irregularities, duplicates, anomalies, and errors.
• CRM will conveniently align sales, marketing and operations that help reach common goals.

FAQs

Which are some of the efficient tools you can use for CRM?

• Salesforce CRM
• SAP CRM
• Zoho CRM
• Oracle CRM
• HubSpot CRM
• CRM Creatio
• Nimble CRM

What are the types of CRM?

These are the types of CRM:

On-premise CRM:

With on-premise CRM, a business must first buy the licences. On-premise CRM is an excellent option for businesses with strong security policies because the software is housed on the company’s servers. However, in these situations, the setup procedure requires more time and IT resources.

Cloud-based CRM:

Software as a service (SaaS), cloud, or on-demand CRM, on the other hand, keeps data on the vendor’s servers.

The vendor assumes full responsibility for the system’s smooth operation and provides all necessary system updates and support, so users have complete access to the database at all times and from any location. This is important for the system.