CRM is an acronym that stands for Customer Relationship Management. It describes the strategy that a company uses to handle customer interactions. One example of a common CRM strategy is the rewards card program offered by many supermarkets. The store gives its customers a free card that gives them access to special deals and discounts when they swipe the card during checkout. But that card also tracks everything the customer buys and allows the store to create an extremely detailed customer profile based on his or her purchasing habits. Armed with that information, the store can then offer its customers targeted coupons and other programs that will motivate its customers to buy more products from that store.
Many CRM software and/or service packages exist to help companies manage the customer relationship process. In fact, salespeople tend to think of these computer programs as the be-all and end-all of CRM. But CRM has existed for much longer than the computer – in fact, it has been around in one form or another for as long as people have been buying and selling. Computers have greatly enhanced the customer relationship management process because the key to a good CRM is uncovering and storing information about customers. The more a company knows about its customers, the better it can manage those relationships – as in the above example of supermarket rewards cards.
CRM software can help by storing all this information in an easy-access format. With a typical CRM program, new leads are entered into the program's database and salespeople add notes throughout the sales cycle. It's then easy for a company to compile reports from this data that help it to design a CRM strategy that's tailored to its customers. The CRM software can also automatically send out emails to individual customers as designated by the salesperson. For example, a salesperson might program his