Customer Relationship Management (CRM): a strategy for management and development of a company, communications with

 clients and sales prospects. It involves managing all aspects of customers’ relationship with an organization to increase customer

 loyalty and retention and an organization’s profitability. CRM allows an organization to gain insights into customers’ shopping and

buying behavior. To shift from product focus to customer focus is the best thing for an organization to realize, that treating existing

customers well is the best source of profitable and sustainable revenue growth.

CRM Benefits:

1.      Increases customer revenue

2.      Cross-sells products more effectively

3.      Cost Efficiency

            4.      Provides better customer service

5.      Improves call center efficiency

6.      Setting goals and objectives

7.      Attracts and discovers new customers

 

Goals

To find, attract, and win new clients, as well as to maintain already existing ones. When the objectives are executed, increase in

 profitability and reductions in operational costs will show.

 

Objectives

 

It is essential to have the objectives clearly communicated to the entire company, explaining to the employees how

 

important success is to the organization. It is most likely that CRM will have the most success implementing the

 

customer service communication process; thus it is crucial to focus on communication training and other aspects of it. In order

 

 to achieve this goal, the organizations needs to make sure to use the most skillful and experienced group of professionals

 

possible. Management should be equipped both intellectually and technologically to attain the CRM performance successfully.

 

 

Customer Service Objectives

Sustaining customer loyalty is one of CRM’s goals to continuous implementation of successful customer services. The biggest

part of achieving this goal is to work as a team, because this objective cannot be achieved with the help of a few employees

only, but the organization as a whole. Part of being a team player is to bring the organization an increase in efficiency and effectiveness, which is achieved

through profuse training.

 

Cost Efficiency

One of the other goals of CRM is the reduction in costs of operation. The way to reduce the operating costs is through a

workforce management system. It helps to benefit on knowledge and skills, which ultimately will reduce costs. The reduced

costs will enable the organization to achieve greater efficiency.

 

There are two main positions held as part of the CRM system: Contact Management CRM system and Sales management CRM system.

The contact management CRM system maintains customer contact information, which includes updating organizational charts, taking detailed customer notes, and supplemental sales information. For example, when a customer calls in, the system automatically allows customer service representative to see the full name and the detailed notes previously taken, making the customer feel valued. That allows the customer support staff to determine appropriate approach for that specific client. The system aids the salespeople to search and update contact information more easily, rather than using paper files or a desktop spreadsheet. Easy and time saving access to the profile history of each individual customer administers prevention of errors of replication (Example: making a call that someone else already made). It also allows the sales person to gather leads from a variety of sources, track prospects and maintain information about already existing clients.

On the other hand, sales management CRM system helps representatives keep track and coordinate all of their accounts. Elements like calendar will helps plan meetings, set up reminder tasks, and even generate a performance report for each individual representative. The CRM sales management provides applications to assist in quoting, order making, generating the invoice and managing the product catalog. The CRM's administrative tools administer in managing the workflow rules in such ways that bring success to the working environment. It defines and spreads leads to the appropriate sales personnel, which uses precise sales process for that specific lead.

The CRM software is more than just a software application, it is a strategy designed to increase companies’ productivity and customers' satisfaction, as well as to help the customer service department to improve their knowledge and skills in an easy-to-use customizable environment. The CRM system tracks every communication between the customer and the organization and provides access to CRM information across different systems from accounting to order fulfillment. The improvement in customer service comes from the easiness and availability of the information right in front of the customer service representative, who can greatly benefit from it. Therefore, improved customer service leads to increased customer satisfaction. Automatically, customer feels like he/she is more than just another subject to sales inquiry, but an individual. Finally, customer satisfaction will lead to loyalty, which means that they will come back for more. More customers = more business, and thus more profit.

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