Building Profitable Relationship with Crm

Introduction

CRM is the essential part of modern business management. CRM has received a lot of attention and come to occupy a central place as a vital strategy in organization. The ultimate purpose of CRM in any organization is to increase profit. In case of CRM this achieved mainly by providing better services to the customer than the competitors.

Traditionally, customer service centers have always been regarded as cost centers. In the 80s, customer care was not as important as it is today. Many vendors even refused to obtain 800 numbers by which to welcome customer input and provide customer service. Slowly and gradually, the customer got the respect that he or she deserved. Outstanding customer service became the source of customer satisfaction without which no company could exist. Without an outstanding customer care strategy, no company can exist profitably. In the 90s companies began to improve on customer relationship management by making it more of two –way communication. Instead of simply gathering data for their own use, they began giving back to their customers not only in terms of the obvious goal of improved customer service, but in incentives, gifts and other perks for customer loyalty. CRM was now being used as a way to increase sales passively as well as through active improvement of customer service.

Real customer relationship management began in earnest years of this century. As the software companies began realizing newer, more advanced solutions that were customizable across industries, it became feasible to really use the information in a dynamic way. Instead of feeding information into a static database for future reference, CRM became a way to continuously update understanding of customer needs and behavior. The internet played a vital role to the development of these huge databases by enabling offsite information storage. Earlier, companies had difficulty supporting the huge amount of information, the internet provided new possibilities...