Customer relationship management

[1] CRM systems compile data from a range of different communication channels, including a company's website, telephone (which many software come with a softphone), email, live chat, marketing materials and more recently, social media.

[2] They allow businesses to learn more about their target audiences and how to better cater to their needs, thus retaining customers and driving sales growth.

This complete connection covers direct contact with customers, such as sales and service-related operations, forecasting, and the analysis of consumer patterns and behaviours, from the perspective of the company.

[6] At that time, businesses had to rely on standalone mainframe systems to automate sales, but the extent of technology allowed them to categorize customers in spreadsheets and lists.

[7] In 1982, Kate and Robert D. Kestenbaum introduced the concept of database marketing, namely applying statistical methods to analyze and gather customer data.

[citation needed] By 1986, Pat Sullivan and Mike Muhney had released a customer evaluation system called ACT!

[8] In order to compete with these new and quickly growing stand-alone CRM solutions, established enterprise resource planning (ERP) software companies like Oracle, Zoho Corporation,[9] SAP,[10] Peoplesoft (an Oracle subsidiary as of 2005)[11] and Navision[12] started extending their sales, distribution and customer service capabilities with embedded CRM modules.

This included embedding sales force automation or extended customer service (e.g. inquiry, activity management) as CRM features in their ERP.

During this period, CRM was rapidly migrating to the cloud, as a result of which it became accessible to sole entrepreneurs and small teams.

[13] Around 2009, developers began considering the options to profit from social media's momentum and designed tools to help companies become accessible on all users' favourite networks.

Many startups at the time benefited from this trend to provide exclusively social CRM solutions, including Base and Nutshell.

[13] The same year, Gartner organized and held the first Customer Relationship Management Summit, and summarized the features systems should offer to be classified as CRM solutions.

The leading trend is to replace standardized CRM solutions with industry-specific ones, or to make them customizable enough to meet the needs of every business.

The dashboard may provide client information, past sales, previous marketing efforts, and more, summarizing all of the relationships between the customer and the firm.

[20] The role of analytical CRM systems is to analyze customer data collected through multiple sources and present it so that business managers can make more informed decisions.

The third primary aim of CRM systems is to incorporate external stakeholders such as suppliers, vendors, and distributors, and share customer information across groups/departments and organizations.

For example, feedback can be collected from technical support calls, which could help provide direction for marketing products and services to that particular customer in the future.

[28] A lack of relational intelligence is a sign that firms still see customers as resources that can be used for up-sell or cross-sell opportunities, rather than people looking for interesting and personalized interactions.

Overall profiling is gathering information that sums up consumption habits so far and projects them into the future so that they can be grouped for marketing and advertising purposes.

One research study analyzed relationships between consumers in China, Germany, Spain, and the United States, with over 200 brands in 11 industries including airlines, cars, and media.

Companies store and receive huge amounts of data through emails, online chat sessions, phone calls, and more.

All of these are signs of what types of relationships the customer wants with the firm, and therefore companies may consider investing more time and effort in building out their relational intelligence.

[50] Some CRM systems integrate social media sites like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook to track and communicate with customers.

[25] Enterprise feedback management software platforms combine internal survey data with trends identified through social media to allow businesses to make more accurate decisions on which products to supply.

[23] Despite the general notion that CRM systems were created for customer-centric businesses, they can also be applied to B2B environments to streamline and improve customer management conditions.

[52] The main differences between business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business CRM systems concern aspects like sizing of contact databases and length of relationships.

This trend fuels demand for additional capabilities for a more holistic understanding of customer health, which is a limitation for many existing vendors in the space.

[70] As a result, a growing number of new entrants enter the market while existing vendors add capabilities in this area to their suites.

The data sets must also be connected, distributed, and organized properly so that the users can access the information that they need quickly and easily.

Research studies also show that customers are increasingly becoming dissatisfied with contact center experiences due to lags and wait times.