Customer Relationship Management is a term that is used to define what is happening or what should happen, when a company is dealing with the below listed items. They use software called CRM software to accomplish this.
Marketing to a target group of people or businesses. The many different types of people and what the company is trying to market to them must be managed. The many targets that present themselves to the marketing company must have separate messages, whether that be e-mails, letters or phone calls. The market research that is done to decide this is just the beginning of the process.
Monitoring the purchases and the sign ups the clients make. This is helpful in determining additional products and services they can be exposed to in order to make he next several steps easier to accomplish.
Customer Service. The ability to know the individual purchases and, therefore, the buying patterns of each client will assist in creating the rapport that is needed for all of the additional checks and balances that are a part of every customer relationship management program.
Follow up to those same groups in a media that is appropriate for those groups. Obviously, if they are marketing a high tech product, the follow up will have tones of high tech language and images as well as a lot of web site presence. The low tech products and/or services can have a high tech look, however, the more traditional methods of communication will probably be an additional forum that might work better or at least as good.
Retention of the clients gained by any method. This will result in increasing their appreciation of the company and the information and products and service they have purchased. This can come in the form of e-mails, letters and, of course, phone calls as appropriate. This might take the form of special pricing, special promotions and/or joint ventures depending on the class of clientele and their specific buying patterns as documented during this whole process.
All of the above tasks and more would have a manual system overwhelmed in a fairly short amount of time. The CRM software will keep everything balanced and present the proper steps in the proper order as they come due. The company can set up the information that should be dealt with on a daily, weekly, bi weekly or monthly basis, whenever it should be presented as programmed in.
This will assist in the very complicated dance of ‘What needs to be done, when?’ It will also keep track of all of the elements that result in the results the company is looking for. It can do all of this, automatically. While it does this, management can be monitoring everything with an eye toward affiliated products and services while looking for the next big thing that absolutely must be marketed.
All of this accomplished with the sole purpose being to make it easier for the company to manage their customer base and make more money, deeper relationships and better networking possibilities.
