CRM and Customer Life Cycle
Customer Relationship
Management or CRM is a combination of enterprise strategies,
business processes and information technologies used
to learn more about customers' needs and behaviors
in order to develop stronger relationships with them.
CRM software systems automate many customer-related
business tasks. CRM applications are traditionally
developed as client-server software which incurs higher
initial cost of ownership. The proliferation of the
Internet and the Web has fueled the rapid growth of
Web-based CRM or online CRM applications ( http://www.sysoptima.com/crm/web_based_crm.php
). Web CRM systems are widely deployed for web based
call center, contact management, trouble ticket, personal
information manager and scheduling.
The life cycle of CRM consists of three phases - customer
acquisition, customer relationship enhancements and
customer retention. CRM software streamlines CRM activities
at each phase of customer relationship management.
Customer Acquisition
Contact management module and direct marketing module
of CRM allow companies to effectively promote and
market their products and services to prospects. Those
modules help speed up the acquiring processes and
reduce the cost of acquiring new customers.
Customer Relationship Enhancements
CRM helps companies better understand existing customers'
needs and behaviors and enhance the profitability
from existing customers by cross-selling. They can
customize their products and services to individual
customers' needs and preferences.
Customer Retention
Customer service module of CRM system gives the organizations
the edge in customer support and call center services
( http://www.sysoptima.com/crm/call_center_management_software.php
). They can increase customer satisfaction while reducing
the cost of support. Customer retention is critical
to the overall profitability of an organization. A
customer you spend hundreds of dollars and months
to acquire may leave you in seconds as a result of
poor customer services.
About the Author:
Bruce Zhang has
over 10 years experiences in developing and implementing
ecommerce and ebusiness systems in various industries.
He has created a news aggregator http://www.sysoptima.com/newsbot/crm.php
t hat automatically extracts CRM news and new articles
from over 50 sources daily to help corporate executives,
IT professionals and consultants to keep up with the
latest development in enterprise software market.
The website offers a knowledge base http://www.sysoptima.com/crm/
for understanding CRM software from a systems
perspective.
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