Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Customer relationship management (CRM) is a model for managing a company’s interactions with current and future customers. It involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize sales, marketing, customer service, and technical support. A customer is the recipient of a good, service, product, or idea, obtained from a seller, vendor, or supplier for a monetary or other valuable consideration. Once a company has collected information about a customer, the next step is training its salespeople and other employees in using that information to keep the customer relationship strong. Because salespeople are often the ‘face’ of the company, theirs is an important role in any CRM program. Frequently a customer who runs into a technical problem will phone her salesperson instead of calling up the customer service team. She already knows her salesperson and probably has good feelings about him, or she wouldn’t have bought the product from him. It’s safer and easier to reach out to someone she knows than to try to explain her problems to a stranger. So even after the sale is complete, salespeople often continue to speak with customers on a regular basis.