C.R.M. - Customer Relationship Management

is concerned about how a customer sees your business and how they interact with your business, in order to develop stronger relationships with them. Good customer relationships are at the heart of business success. One aim of CRM is to provide a cost effective seamless interface with customers no matter by what method they choose to contact you - by (mail, e-mail, web, telephone, face to face, etc.) and no matter at what lifecycle stage they have reached - initial contact, interested lead, qualified prospect, quoting, delivery, invoice, payment, or after sales service and support, followed by a re-purchase.

Improving customer support and service is a business and technology priority for nearly all businesses. Although technology is a component of CRM, it is a mistake to think about it in those terms. CRM is a strategic process that will help you better understand your customers’ needs and how you can meet those needs and enhance your profits at the same time. The strategy must bring together all the of pieces of information about customers and market trends so you can sell and market your products and services more effectively.

This may be by providing true one-to-one marketing and then gauging the effectiveness of such campaigns in real time.
By providing sales and accounting staff with a total view of all customer data and customer interactions, including complete visibility of all financial transactions and website interactions without any additional integration requirement.

CRM helps businesses use technology and human resources to gain insight into customer behaviour and the value of individual customers to the business. With an effective CRM strategy, a business can increase revenues by:
- helping sales staff close deals faster
- providing services and products that exactly met customer requirements
- offering better customer service
- cross selling products more effectively
- retaining existing customers and discovering new ones