CRM includes all aspects in which a company interacts with customers, but more commonly refers to the technology used to manage these relationships. Special CRM software aggregates customer information in one place to give businesses easy access to data, such as contact data, purchase history and any previous contact with customer service representatives. Increasingly, the term CRM is being used to refer to the technology systems companies can engage to manage their external interactions with customers at all points during the customer lifecycle, from discovery to education, purchase, and post-purchase.
From the organization’s point of view, this entire relationship encompasses direct interactions with customers, such as sales and service-related processes, forecasting, and the analysis of customer trends and behaviors.
For successful CRM, companies must learn to discern useful information and superfluous data and must weed out any duplicate and incomplete records that may give employees inaccurate information about customers. Cloud-based systems provide real-time data to sales agents at the office and in the field as long as a computer, smartphone, laptop or tablet connects to the internet. This data helps employees interact with clients, anticipate customer needs, recognize customer updates and track performance goals when it comes to sales. Data mining is a process used by companies to turn raw data into useful information by using software to look for patterns in large batches of data. Such systems boast heightened accessibility to customer information and eliminate the sometimes-complicated installation process involved with other CRM products or software.
Reference : Marshal Hargrave https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/customer_relation_management.asp
