Call Centre & Call Centre Software

What is Customer Relationship Management

The general purpose of Customer Relationship management is to enable organizations to manage their customers through reliable systems, processes and procedures for interacting with those customers.

In todays business environment a productive CRM strategy cannot be implemented by installing and intergrating a software package designed to support CRM processes. The best approach for implementing a successful CRM system includes training of employees, an adoption of relevent IT Systems, a modification of business processes based of customers needs and the usage of IT services that enable the organization or company to follow its CRM strategy.

The term CRM is used to describe either the software or the whole business strategy oriented on customer needs, the main misconception of CRM is that it is only software, instead of whole business strategy.

The major areas of CRM focus on service automated processes, personal information gathering and processing as well as self-service. It attempts to intergrate and automate the various customer serving processes within a company.

With each new advance in technology, especially the proliferation of self-service channels like the Web and WAP phones, more of the relationship is being managed electronically. Organizations are therefore looking for ways to personalize online experiences (a process also referred to as mass customization) through tools such as help-desk software, e-mail organizers and Web.

According to Gartner Group, the operational part of CRM typically involves three general areas of business:

Sales force automation (SFA): SFA automates some of the company's critical sales and sales force management functions, for example, lead/account management, contact management, quote management, forecasting, sales administration, keeping track of customer preferences, buying habits, and demographics, as well as sales staff performance. SFA tools are designed to improve field sales productivity. Key infrastructure requirements of SFA are mobile synchronization and integrated product configuration.

Customer service and support (CSS): CSS automates some service requests, complaints, product returns, and information requests. Traditional internal help desk and traditional inbound call-center support for customer inquiries are now evolved into the "customer interaction center" (CIC), using multiple channels (Web, phone/fax, face-to-face, kiosk, etc). Key infrastructure requirements of CSS include computer telephony integration (CTI) which provides high volume processing capability, and reliability.

Enterprise marketing automation (EMA): EMA provides information about the business environment, including competitors, industry trends, and macroenviromental variables. It is the execution side of campaign and lead management. The intent of EMA applications is to improve marketing campaign efficiencies. Functions include demographic analysis, variable segmentation, and predictive modeling occur on the analytical (Business Intelligence) side.