CRM is an abbreviation of Customer Relationship Management. Many
experts agree that there's no certain definition for what CRM
is. For many people, CRM is all about software. This is an
incorrect perception even though software is a very important
part of successful CRM strategies.
I personally define CRM as certain business strategies to
generate new leads, convert them into new customers, maintain
those customers, and collect the data for analysis purposes. For
small companies dealing with moderate numbers of customers, all
of theses processes don't necessarily require CRM system.
Manually writing happy birthday cards and sending them to your
customers is an example of simple CRM without needing any system
or software.
However, as a company grows larger, acquiring new customers and
maintaining them could be inefficient and time-wasting if the
process is not automated by system or software. This is when a
company usually needs to consider implementing CRM software.
If you are new to CRM software, there are three main CRM modules
you need to know as introductory. They are Sales Force
Automation, Marketing Automation, and Customer Support.
Sales Force Automation (SFA)
This is CRM module to automate and
manage the sales processes of your company's sales force. SFA
helps your sales representatives maintain the data of new leads,
convert them into new customers, organizing sales activities,
simplifying the sales process, and thus generating reports and
dashboards from all of those processes. There are several
numbers of sub modules involved here, such as Lead Management,
Potentials, Accounts, Contacts, etc. Some of the jargons might
confuse you.
Marketing Automation (MA)
Marketing Automation is part of CRM
software that helps company execute marketing campaign. Usually,
it uses email and SMS as the marketing channels to reach the
potential prospects. This module can automatically track how
many people respond the campaign, what type of respond, and if
the recipients who respond the message can be classified as
qualified leads. If they are, the marketing division could
easily forward them to sales division for further follow up, or
even sales closing.
Customer Support or Help Desk
There's no perfect business.
There are always complaining customers. Handling them is one of
the most important tasks to maintain their loyalty.
Customer Support module in CRM is purposed to make sure that all
complaints, questions and feedbacks are handled properly and
efficiently. CRM system will automatically generate ticket ID
for every complaint, so it can be easily tracked and recorded.
Above are three basic modules of CRM application that mostly
applied for B2B business. That doesn't mean that it can't be
customized according to B2C business process. Many CRM vendors
are now provide flexible customization to suit your CRM
strategy. I hope this article can give you some initial
information before you start talking to your CRM vendor.
Source: Deddy Lim
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