Customer relationship management, or CRM, is an approach to doing business that can transform the performance and profitability of an organisation.
It is about putting the customer first – but although it should certainly help to improve the customer experience, it emphatically does not just mean ‘the customer is always right’.
Instead, the promise of CRM is that understanding your present and potential future customers, their situations, their needs, and how much value they can bring to your business will enable you to make the smartest decisions.
CRM is not a product, or a technology, although the providers of CRM systems include big names such as Microsoft, Sage and Salesforce. It is a way of working: one that could, in theory, be achieved with pen and paper, but is clearly a lot easier when supported by the numerous IT tools that have been developed to enable effective CRM.
