A customer relationship system (CRM) system uses technologically-driven strategies to assess customer needs and buying behavior. This allows businesses to market their products and services more effectively. The ever-increasing level of technology available to a CRM system can, however, provide an overwhelming amount of information to a company, not all of it useful. Large corporations compile enough data in their 'data warehouses' each day to occupy a team of marketing analysts for a lifetime. In fact, 'data mining,' a relatively recent term coined by marketers and data analysts, was coined from
attempts to sift sales trends and associations out of mountainous volume of data constantly pouring into a company.
This information overload has created a need to give useful meaning to data. This is where a CRM system can be essential. A CRM system takes data mining to next level by focusing on data that will paint clearest customer portrait possible. If a CRM system works properly, a number of important benefits should result, including:
· Customer retention improvement · Increase in call center sales conversion rates · Sales agents are able to more effectively cross-sell products · Deals close more quickly · New customer inflow · Increase in revenue
To get results listed above, a CRM system must take name, address, and other important demographic information into account. Moreover, system must be able to gather information from a wide variety of customer 'touch points', or instances of customer contact. These can include faxes, emails, direct mails, personal sales, etc.
The most important function of any CRM system is to provide you with an accurate profile of your customer. If you can identify your customer, you know how to market, where to focus R&D funds, and what kind of potential growth road blocks you can expect.
