But as a company grows, it becomes increasingly difficult to track customer and prospect information. This data is often scattered across financial systems, Excel spreadsheets, emails, and even handwritten notes, making it difficult to get a full picture of important metrics, from churn and customer acquisition costs to customer lifetime value.
Customer relationship management ( CRM ) technology is list to data designed to solve this problem. It provides a single source of information that helps salespeople, marketers, and support teams increase revenue, improve productivity, track business health, and most importantly, build long-term customer relationships.
Customer relationship management ( CRM ) technology helps companies get the most out of their customer interactions, no matter who they’re talking to. A CRM system collects information about your customers and feeds it into a common platform how to guide the viewer from point to point that helps sales, marketing, and customer support run their business more efficiently and, critically, avoid the tedious “repeat your account number, last order, and why you called yesterday” routine.
CRM systems collect customer account details such as invoices, orders, and service requests, and maintain records of “contacts” to track sales productivity and ensure customer attention. Automation, data analysis, reporting, and trending features help companies learn more about their customers, including their support needs.
History of CRM
Before CRM, companies used surveys and frontline employees to understand and document customer behavior and needs, relying on Excel spreadsheets to store the information. However, with the advent of statistical methods for analyzing and collecting data, european union email list digital Rolodexes and early versions of contact management services have replaced manual processes.
In the 1990s, the first CRM systems entered the market . Soon after, leaders in the ERP industry added CRM modules to their products to compete and expand their service capabilities.