What is the use of a CRM system?

A CRM system is a customer relationship management system that allows businesses to manage and analyse customer interactions and data throughout the customer lifecycle. The idea of this is to help them improve business relationships with customers, assisting in customer retention and driving more sales and enquiries to the business.

There are a number of different CRM systems on the market and some businesses use their own methods rather than an off the shelf marketing systems. Also some businesses chose to have a bespoke system created to allow them to add in all the elements they want to. Some CRM systems are used only for marketing and keeps a record of each customer. Within this record there is usually contact details such as addresses, phone numbers and email addresses as well as previous sales and marketing preferences. Other CRMS systems are set to do a lot more, they can be integrated in to an invoking system to allow all invoices to be created and sent from the system. It is possible to include account details and even a payment gateway system.

Some systems are bought outright and others can be leased on a monthly basis, often charged per user.