What is a Customer Relationship Management- CRM?

CRM stands for customer relationship management. It is a technology or a tool that companies use to maintain their relationships with their customers. Maintaining a relationship with a customer means properly communicating with them, and recording their activities related to the brands such as website visits, direct chats, etc.

Customer relationship management is called CRM widely with an increase in usage leading to a total industry of 80 Bn dollars in revenue.

Why do we need Customer relationship management software?

Relationships might seem only personal but relationships are very important in the world of business as they make or break an organisation’s portfolio. Relationships can be between the organisation and its customers, the organisation and its employees, and could be in between different organisations.

Relationship in business between organisations, and customers means how much a customer is satisfied with an organisation’s service/product, how likely is the customer to purchase the same again, and for how long.

The ultimate goal of such a relationship where all the needs of organisations are met following the demand fulfillment, and the delight of the customer increase trade between both parties and generates more revenue for the organisation.

Customer relationship management is a technology or tool that tries to power the relationship between the organisation and its customer by obtaining satisfaction for both parties involved.

CRM in Consumer Funnel

Customer relationship management plays an important role in converting the lead into a customer.

In the following way, Customer relationship management software records a consumer’s journey up to conversion.

An unknown person is unaware of a brand but comes to know about it through an Ad or maybe word of mouth.
Customer searches for the brand on Google and checks out their social media. A CRM gets notified and immediately, an unknown person becomes a lead. CRM records their social accounts and if possible, email.
CRM tracks down the lead’s activities and works with marketing sections to grab the attention of the lead through ads, or emails.
Lead buys from the brand and becomes a customer. CRM updates its database for the activity.
Customer relationship management maintains the digital record in the database.
Customer relationship management engages the customer with emails and messages only to make them buy again from the brand.
Customer relationship management performs analytics to show the customer’s loyalty and the likelihood of the customer adding value to the brand again and again.

In layman’s terms, Customer relationship management software performs the following activities

Recording and managing databases of customer information of phone numbers, email addresses, and social handles.
Recording and managing customer conversations.
Engaging Customers
Sending them emails and messages for conversion again.
Analyzing databases to understand customer lifetime value.

Stages of CRM

Stage 1: Record Data

In the first stage, a CRM records customer data in form of emails, phone numbers, telephonic conversations, chats, etc.

Stage 2: Collect the data.

In the second stage, CRM collects the data and stores it.

Stage 3: Compile it to form a database.

In the third stage, CRM prepares a database.

Stage 4: Run the analysis.

In the fourth stage, CRM runs an analysis to present the results from which organisations can prepare some categories of data.

Stage 5: Perform operations.

According to the organisation’s wishes, CRM is programmed to perform marketing operations for data obtained.

Types of CRMs

Record CRM

The CRM that records and manages customer contact information and interactions is known as a recording CRM. It is a very basic form of CRM that no one uses.

Collaboration CRM

An organisation has different departments such as sales, marketing, support, analysis, operations, and management, etc. It is a mandatory need for every department to get connected to each other for easy access to the database and to prepare a larger one. To serve this purpose, a collaborative CRM integrates different departments altogether.

Operational CRM

An operational CRM carries on the journey of a conversion of a lead into a customer. A basic example of this kind of CRM is a marketing CRM such as Mailchimp etc.

Analytical CRM

A CRM that performs data analytics to pass on information to the company is an analytical CRM. The function of an analytical CRM is to filter out leads and understand customer loyalty.

List of top 10 CRMs by market share

1. Salesforce

Occupying a whopping 32% market share, Salesforce is the number one CRM in the whole world. Being a cloud-based CRM, it is one of its kind and built on a business model that was the first to be ever launched. It offers a large amount of pre-customized services in sales, marketing, operations, and many other fields known as service clouds.

These clouds can be purchased on subscriptions anywhere in the world and can be modified as per the organisation’s needs. Another important thing about salesforce is that it offers third party integration, other applications like Mailchimp, Dropbox, and Gmail, etc can be clubbed together using salesforce and made to behave the way the organisation wants.

The third-party integration technology is known as AppExchange. Offering loads of features for businesses operating in any capital, salesforce is used by small businesses to multinational companies on subscription.
Famous Client of Salesforce: Spotify

2. Adobe

Immensely popular as the graphics software, Adobe is much more than just design. Being in the market for a long time, adobe has become analogous with graphic design and is known to be the designer’s favorite choice as most people opt for the infamous creative cloud membership.

Adobe has its own customer relationship management, known as the Adobe Experience Cloud. The experience cloud was initially known as the Marketing cloud offers business-to-business and business-to-customer insights supporting content management, marketing, and commerce. It provides open APIs that allow third-party integration with Microsoft, Salesforce, Oracle, and SAP.

3. Oracle CRM

Oracle CRM is one of the oldest CRM along with other products of the infamous company. Identified as a classic solution in the market by many, Oracle CRM has been a big player alongside salesforce. Soon, oracle shifted its database into the cloud which is more comfortable for businesses, hence data migration took place. Some features include easy use, mobile support, integration to Siebel CRM, partner relationship management, social CRM, and Business intelligence applications.
Popular Clients: AstraZeneca

4. SAP CRM

SAP CRM is another big player in the market regarding the use of CRM. SAP CRM is a part of Enterprise Resource Planning which has been used by a large number of businesses to maintain their day-to-day operations. Initially, SAP has been used as an ERP where businesses would just manage their processes, they won’t just record and analyze data. Of the market popularity of clouds, SAP shifted itself into clouds where businesses would customize their processes according to their needs. Built on SAP C/4HANA framework, automation augmented intelligence, real-time data, etc.
Popular Clients: Daimler, Deutsche Post

5. Microsoft CRM

Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a cloud offering an on-premises installation. Besides being popular immensely for windows, and MS Office, Microsoft has its CRM known as Microsoft Dynamics 365. It has 8 modules including sales, marketing, customer service, social, technical and security, etc. Its most popular roles include Microsoft’s social module with Microsoft social listening. Microsoft social listening helps an organization to see its social standing and make strategic moves in the future.
Popular Clients: Cargill incorporated

6. Genesys telecommunication laboratories

Genesys Telecommunications Software is software used by the telecommunications industry because it is specifically meant for the management of the telecom industry. Most call Centers use Genesys CRM which helps call executives and agents to understand, and customer behavior along with all the required insights to make them function better.
Popular Clients: Vodafone Group PLC, BT-America, Walgreens

7. Zendesk

The American SaaS company is another big player in the CRM market. Highly niched down, Zendesk is a complete Sales CRM known as Zendesk Sell or Sell Zendesk. It is easy to use, and build and provides the required insights to the organisations using data visualization. Along with the sale Zendesk, a customer service solution built on the sunshine platform which manages the customers and provides insight is also very popular. In the Zendesk marketplace, you can integrate third-party apps with Zendesk partners such as Google Play reviews, Giphy and Harvest, etc.
Popular clients: Uber, Shopify, Slack, and Twitter.

8. Hubspot

The 100% free CRM Hubspot has become immensely popular in recent years. Analogous to the term marketing, the company has an enormous free educational value to offer along with the CRM. A favorite of Freelancers, and small entrepreneurs, Hubspot is a customer relationship management tool marketed as business growth software. It performs functions of lead management and sales pipeline etc.
Popular Clients: Walmart Inc., United States Air Force

9. Pega systems

Pega Systems CRM is a part of Pega Systems which was initially known as Business Process Management. The Pega systems CRM is built around the use of case management of a single customer. Deployed either on a public cloud or on-premises, provides the utmost level of integration in Business process management.
Popular Clients: Popular Financial, Healthcare, and Life sciences companies.

10. Nice Systems

Nice Ltd is another Telecommunications Juggernaut Israel-based company with its CRM known as Nice Systems. Nice Systems enhances a customer’s journey to the contact centre and provides better insights to the organisations for taking important decisions in the Contact Center.
Popular Clients: CTBC bank, Celcom, Citation, etc.

Hot pick: “ZOHO’

Zoho Office Suite

Launched in 2005, Zoho Suite is an Indian web office suite specializing in assisting small-scale biz operations such as managing databases, project management, and customer relationship management.
Popular Clients: Netflix, Charge.org, Amazon, etc