Here's what Wikipedia says about this.
Customer Relationship Management (abbreviated CRM) is an application software that enables automation of an organization's interaction strategies with its clients (customers) in order to medicare leads email list increase sales growth, optimize marketing, and improve service by storing information about customers and the history of interactions with them, establishing and improving business processes, and subsequently evaluating the results obtained.
What is a CRM system
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It turns out that any type of accounting and control that helps improve work with consumers falls under the definition of a CRM system. Have you ever recorded the history of contacts and calls (in Excel or on paper)? If this method worked and allowed you to exercise control, then it can be considered a CRM system. Today, it is quite difficult to imagine any business without effective automation, so such methods of accounting are becoming a thing of the past. And by a CRM system, people usually mean special software.
Sometimes developers promote the concept of "CRM", introducing some confusion into the terminology. The fact is that this combination of symbols cannot be deciphered, because it appeared as a result of designating the English abbreviation in Russian letters. It is not recommended to use this term even for promotion in search engines.
In addition, software developers often impose their understanding of a CRM system on others. Moreover, the list of necessary qualities of a real accounting system surprisingly coincides with the one they implemented in their product.
Sometimes such promotion looks too obvious and intrusive: the program must be exactly like this (like our product!). Marketing of other manufacturers (mostly foreign) is less obvious. They only demonstrate their development and say: "This is what a CRM system is."
It is important to understand that there are no universal and clear standards. Any customer relationship management system convenient for business can act as a CRM system.
Let's assume that some entrepreneur will use it only to record contacts and interact with them, since other functions, in his opinion, are not necessary. And developers of powerful CRM platforms will continue to prove that even the systems of many credit institutions are not functional enough to be called CRM. As you can see, everything depends on the scale and purposes of application.
Why does a business need a CRM system? A small company's software may only include customer contacts. But a beauty salon will add to this the average bill and frequency of visits of each client.
Any program that allows you to successfully plan, organize and control work with consumers can be called CRM.
The main thing in business is to retain the client. And it doesn’t matter how to do it – send postcards on holidays or something else. Losing a client and interacting with him will negate all the efforts spent on attracting him. That’s why it’s so important to monitor incoming calls, requests from e-mail, website, etc.