Customer relationship management (CRM) for short.
The concept of CRM has been introduced to China for several years, which literally means customer relationship management, but its deep connotation has many explanations. The following excerpts are different definitions of CRM by several foreign experts, through which we can have a preliminary understanding of CRM.
Literally, it means that enterprises use CRM to manage the relationship with customers. CRM is a business strategy to select and manage valuable customers and their relationships. CRM needs a customer-centered business philosophy and corporate culture to support effective marketing, sales and service processes. If the enterprise has correct leadership, strategy and corporate culture, CRM application will realize effective customer relationship management for the enterprise.
CRM is a method and process to acquire, maintain and increase profitable customers. CRM is not only a brand-new, internationally leading, customer-centered enterprise management theory, business philosophy and business operation mode, but also a concrete software and implementation method to effectively improve enterprise income, customer satisfaction and employee productivity by means of information technology.
The implementation goal of CRM is to reduce the cost of enterprises by comprehensively improving the management of business processes, and to attract and maintain more customers by providing more efficient and thoughtful quality services. As a new management mechanism, CRM has greatly improved the relationship between enterprises and customers, and has been applied in customer-related fields such as marketing, sales, service and technical support.
The role of customer relationship management can be summarized in three aspects: customer relationship management in marketing, customer relationship management in sales and customer relationship management in customer service, hereinafter referred to as marketing, sales and customer service.
marketing management
In the process of marketing, customer relationship management system can effectively help marketers to analyze the existing target customer groups, such as which industry, which occupation, which age level, which region, etc., thus helping marketers to make accurate market launch. Customer relationship management also effectively analyzes the input-output ratio of each market activity, and calculates it according to the collection records associated with the market activity and the reimbursement documents for holding the market activity, thus counting the effect reports of all market activities.
sell
Sales is the main part of customer relationship management system, which mainly includes potential customers, customers, contacts, business opportunities, orders, payment receipts, reports and statistics. Salespeople can effectively shorten working hours by recording communication contents, establishing schedules, inquiring about appointment reminders, and browsing customer information quickly. Functions such as large-sum business reminder, sales funnel analysis, performance index statistics and business stage division can effectively help managers improve the completion rate of the whole company and shorten the sales cycle, thus achieving the most effective business growth.
customer service
Customer service is mainly used to quickly and timely obtain the information and customer history of problem customers, so as to solve problems for customers in a targeted and efficient way, improve customer satisfaction and enhance corporate image. The main functions include customer feedback, solutions, satisfaction survey and other functions. Using the automatic upgrade function in customer feedback, managers can get overdue and unresolved customer requests in the first time. The solution function allows all employees of the company to submit the most satisfactory answers to customers at one time, and the satisfaction survey function allows senior managers to know the real level of customer service at any time. Some customer relationship management software will also integrate the call center system, which can shorten the response time of customer service staff and improve the customer service level.
Many customer relationship management software in the market will have many other functions, such as office management, administrative management, invoicing and so on. But these systems are only produced for the convenience of users and have nothing to do with real customer relationship management.
Reference source: Baidu Encyclopedia-Customer Relationship Management