| CRM - A Technology or a Strategy? |
| Written by Site Editor | |
| Tuesday, 02 January 2007 | |
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When most people mention the acronym "CRM", they are referring to database software or a Web application for managing sales, marketing and/or customer support. However, many articles on various industry sites definitively state that CRM is a strategy and not a technology. So, what is CRM, a technology or a strategy? The answer, of course, is it's a little of both. Before you can properly implement a CRM application, you first need to establish a strategy. The strategy will then help to lead you to a definition of your requirements as they pertain to managing and supporting your prospects and customers. This will, in turn, drive the application of a technology.
For example, part of your company's CRM strategy might be to improve customer satisfaction by reducing the resolution times for customer support issues.
The resulting requirement could be to have a system that allows customers to easily submit issues via e-mail and to have those routed to an available Level I support representative who must try to resolve the issue within 24 hours -- or the issue will be escalated to the next level.
The application of technology is a system that can monitor an inbound e-mail service request account, add these requests to a service queue and then route the requests to the best person to handle a given request. If the issue is still open after 24 hours, an automated e-mail notification can, for example, go to a Level II representative and/or the request can be automatically reassigned to that person.
In this example, a strategy drives a requirement that results in delivered technology functionality that is used to support the customer. There's a little "CRM" in each.
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