CRM PROCESS

CRM Process

Customer relationship management (CRM) involves all processes to capture customers

and maintain a relationship with them.
Other processes include the management of customer data, information analysis, and
generating reports to gain insights.
CRM covers all aspects of the business operation that involves customers, such as sales,
business development, sales, marketing, and customer service.
Therefore, CRM tools are integral in storing information and executing these processes.
They also help facilitate other procedures such as integration with different business
workflows.
These solutions centralize many operations that allow you and your team to manage
marketing campaigns, create sales strategies, identify opportunities, minimize risks, and
more.
CRM Process Provide quality
customer
support

Drive
upsells and
Nurture Leads
Crosssells

Acquire Leads

Converts leads
Generate
to customers
Brand
Awarness
Generate
Brand
Awarness

CRM role of collecting

Customer Awarness
and analysing data
of product and
services
Building
custome
persona r
for
segmee
nting cu
into grou stomer
p
Acquire Lead
Leads Capture
Automation

Lead
Tracking

Lead
Qualification
Lead
Distribution

Lead generation is the process of attracting leads or potential

customers into your sales funnel. This is done through
multichannel engagement and by generating content that Lead
captures the interest of your audience. It also involves nurturing Nurturing
them through the buying process to increase the chances of
turning them into customers. Sales Result
Convert
leads into
customers

Brand Interest Brand Purchase

Awareness Comparison
Nurture
Leads

Nurturing leads is crucial in building customer loyalty wherein customers keep coming back to you and
making repeat purchases. One of the most effective ways to nurture customers is through email
marketing where you continuously share relevant content based on their preferences.

This is where email marketing list segmentation plays an essential role because you shouldn’t employ a
one-size-fits-all approach since your customers have varied preferences. Therefore, build various email
marketing distribution channels based on factors such as past purchase history, demographics, and
pages visited on your site.
Nurture
Leads

Nurturing leads is crucial in building customer loyalty wherein customers keep coming back to you and
making repeat purchases. One of the most effective ways to nurture customers is through email
marketing where you continuously share relevant content based on their preferences.

This is where email marketing list segmentation plays an essential role because you shouldn’t employ a
one-size-fits-all approach since your customers have varied preferences. Therefore, build various email
marketing distribution channels based on factors such as past purchase history, demographics, and
pages visited on your site.
Provide
Quality
Customer
Service

The CRM process does not end when a customer makes a purchase. Your business needs to retain
customers for it to grow—and this is where your support team comes in. Excellent customer service
keeps clients coming back for your products or services. Make sure you deliver superior service,
preferably via various communication channels (live chat, email, and phone) whenever your
customers need it.
Leverage your CRM’s help desk and service system to understand your customer’s user experience
after they make a purchase. It is important to get honest feedback from them to understand the
changes that you need to make to improve their experience.
Drive
Upsells and
Cross-Sells

Once you’ve built and established your customer database, the goal is to introduce repeat buyers to
your other products or services—whether that is an upgrade to their usual purchase or a completely
different product that they may also be interested in based on their purchase preferences. To do
this, you can use two strategies: cross-selling and upselling.
Upselling is a sales strategy used to convince existing customers to buy additional products or
upgrades related to their original purchase. Grouping together several varieties of a perfume brand
to create a new bundle is also considered upselling.
Meanwhile, cross-selling is a sales strategy used to obtain more value from a deal or sales
transaction. It involves suggesting additional products or services complementing an existing
purchase so you can generate more revenue from one deal from customers who are already in the
buying mindset.
An Insight into CRM
and e-
CRTA/online CRM
E-CRM, or Electronic Customer Relationship Management, is an integrated
online sales, marketing and service strategy that is used to identify, attract
and retain an organisation’s customers.

E-CRM software provides

It describes improved
profiles and histories of
and increased
each interaction the
communication between
organisation has with its
an organisation and its
customers, making it an
clients by creating and
important tool for all
enhancing customer
small and medium
interaction through
businesses
innovative technology
 Back-End Reporting &
Account Case
Customer Knowledge Integration Integration
Management Management
Management Management
 Service level
improvements Customer
Satisfaction
Revenue growth

Automation
Productivity
A Historical
Perspective

1970
The concept of customer
support meant that
Customer organizations were doing
Relationship Cell favour by answering a
started few question for the
customer on phone
Evolution of Customer
Relationship
Internet
Deregulation
Services and products were
bought at the convenience of
1990 Break down the barriers to entry their home.
resulting in an environment of The explosion in information
Two New intense competition. allowed customers to compare
Concept Stores Forced competition from
Introduced features, and prices across
online stores multiple service providers.

iator
nt

iffere
Customer Relationship Management

y D
Ke
 Evolution of Customer
Relationship

The genesis of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) lies in Sales Force

Automation (SFA) tools.
Companies like Siebel and Vantive (now part of PeopleSoft) took the early lead by
introducing tools to help sales personnel become more efficient in tracking their
customers.
There were also a few problem-tracking tools for the help desk such as Remedy. As
companies focused more on customer relationships, additional applications emerged in
areas of customer support, field support, and marketing automation.
Most CRM companies today a retrying to address these four areas usually by partnering
with other companies
 in g ac c es s to
Allow
info rm a tio n by
custome r
m e m b e r of the
any
A central repository
organisation
of customer records
Providing a portal on each
employee's computer
system
Through this system, E-
CRM gives you the ability
to know more about
customers, products and
performance results using
real time information
across your business
 Generate a list of key
aspects of your
SERVICE & SUPPORT customer relationships
and the importance of
By tracking and
these relationships to
measuring the DEVELOP A PLAN
your business
dimensions of the
Create a broad
relationship, organizational
relationship
identify their strength and
customised to the
weakness
smaller segment.
Use a suitable
software for this

FOCUS ON CUSTOMERS
Focus on aspects Create a broad
of your business relationship
SAVE MONEY
that can customised to the
contribute to the smaller segment.
bottom line. Use a suitable
software for this
CRM Cycle
 The Assessment phase develops a model of the behaviour of target
customers, using a combination of in-house data and external demographic,
psychographic, and other data. Here, marketing will explore a number of
questions, including:
Who are the customers? What are their demographics and lifestyle?
Where do they live?

ssment
What are they worth? What is their lifetime value potential?

e What and how do they buy?

Is there a model of their profitability or the risk associated with doing

Ass
business with them?
How can they be reached? How have they responded to promotions in
the past and through which channels do they prefer to be contacted?

Planni
on

ng
ti

During the Planning Phase,

u

Exec marketing decides how best to

The Execution Phase of the cycle approach the customers defined
is where an organization puts all in the assessment stage by
this knowledge to work, using all designing marketing campaigns
of the customer touchpoints and strategies
available
 tention
Ex

mer
tention
e

o
R

t
mer

us
uisition
cq
C

to
mer A

us
C
sto

Cu
CRM Module
The entire CRM application is divided functionally for different types of users and teams. Hence, if an
organisation is using CRM to manage its processes, the users from the Sales team would use the
functionalities that come under the Sales module. In contrast, the users from the Marketing team would use
functionalities that fall under the Marketing module.
All these three functional modules come together to drive the entire lifecycle of gaining new customers
(Marketing), selling them the services (Sales) and maintaining the existing customers (Service Management).

Sales & Sales Service

Marketing
The Sales module of CRM is designed to drive the entire sales lifecycle of a new customer. The Sales module
consists of the following sub-modules −

Leads Opportunities Accounts Contacts Competitors Products Quotes Orders Invoices

The Marketing module of CRM is designed to drive the entire marketing process of an organization for its
existing and potential customers. The Marketing module consists of the following sub-modules −

Marketing Campaigns Quick

Lists Campaigns

All the above Marketing modules work in close

coordination with the Sales module.
The Service Management module of CRM is designed to focus, manage, and track the customer service
operations of an organization such as supporting the incident-based services, supporting the customers
using service scheduling, etc.
The Service Management module covers the following sub-modules −

Resources
Cases Knowledge Contracts Services Service
/Resource
(Incidents) Base Calendar
Groups
All the modules explained above use the Activity Management module of CRM. An Activity represents any
kind of interaction with the customer such as a Phone Call, Email, Letter, etc. These activities can be related
to any of the entities explained earlier such as Account, Contact, Lead, Case, etc. By default, CRM provides
following types of activities out-of-the-box −

Phone Call E-Mail Task Appointment Letter Fax

recurring Campaign Campaign Service Custom

appointment Response Activities Activity Activities

4 C's of a CRM
Process
 People love to talk about your
service and your products. It is
the key driver of consumer
conversations.

the story of my previous book,

The Conversation Manager. It is
the goal to converse and not
communicate. Listen, ask
questions, facilitate the
conversations and actively take
part in them.

give people stuff to talk about,

but do it in an authentic, positive
and relevant way.

involve customers in everything

your company does. Let them be
part of your boardroom and let
them be involved in your
decision making processes
The basis of positive conversations about your
company is very simple: offer strong products and
decent customer service. The Conversation Company manages
Next to that, there is the challenge to integrate online conversations in three stages:
online and offline customer experiences. There are observing, facilitating and participating.
still far too few companies that supplement their The company prepares its content in
traditional offline customer service channels with such a way that it can easily be shared
the new online possibilities offered by social with other interested parties.
media. Clever companies combine these online
The role of social media within this philosophy is to conversations with their offline activities.
react in real-time to people's problems and
complaints.

Companies should no longer be

concerned with the planning of one- The Conversation Company
off advertising campaigns, but with collaborates structurally with
the global planning and management its customers. This increases
of their content the average level of consumer
The paper with the most interesting commitment.
content is the paper that is read the
most. Good content is the ideal way
to increase your reach.
CRM Process for
Marketing
organization
In the same way that your sales and marketing teams are connected during the sales process, so should
your sales and marketing software. Clever use of customer data is the building block for smart marketing
and is typically held in CRM.

Lead Lead Customer Marketing

Management Nurture retention & organisation &
upselling Planning
Lead management and qualification can be a very manual and time consuming process. Capturing leads from your web forms
and entering them in CRM is not the most exciting or useful way for a marketer to spend their time. You can find a number of
quick wins by automating and streamlining your lead management processes.

Your inbound web traffic

can be split into two Not all leads that come
sources, web forms & into your business are
anonymous website created equal. There is
visitors. Connect your no point in wasting sales
website with your CRM, or marketing time Lead scoring is all about highlighting multiple valuable
so website form leads chasing down leads who interactions with your business and should be automated to let
are captured and aren’t worth the effort. your CRM do the scoring for you. The next part to automate in
entered as such in your Your lead scoring plan is CRM will be alerting your teams when leads or prospects reach
system. To ensure none how you qualify leads high scores. As long as you’ve pre-defined when your leads are
of them slips through the until they’re a MQL and qualified, CRM can also do this job for you.
cracks, set up you feel confident

notifications for you and handing them over to

your team to take action. sales teams.

In B2B businesses, the sales cycle is typically longer than their B2C counterparts.
To avoid leads and prospects going cold, keep them engaged throughout the buying cycle. One way to achieve
engagement is by sending drip emails at regular intervals with relevant content.
Aim to build trust and relationships, until your leads are ready to engage with your sales team.
Don’t be afraid to re-purpose existing content. After all, this is all about time-saving. There’s no need to re-invent the
wheel, your whitepapers could easily be a basis for 1 or 2 good blogs. Use the resources you already have and build on
them.

Keeping your hard-won customers happy and engaged is essential to long-term recurring sales.
Happy users of your products or services will come back for more and will also be your greatest brand advocate.
In the long run, they will be a great referral lead source and help to generate new business for you. CRM can automate parts
of your customer engagement processes.
By allowing you to make the most of your customer data, you can automate marketing workflows such as:
 When a co
ntact post
wall or twe on your Fac
ets your br ebook
automatica and, you co
lly create a uld
social med c tivities for
ia team your
When a co
ntact make
follow up 3 s a purchas
0 days late e,
creating an r b y automatic
activity to ally
or a review a sk for feedbac
. Take full a k
an integrat d va n ta ge of using
Customers are always at Segmenting customers ed sales an
Staying in touch with software, c d marketin
ombining C g
risk of falling through the by activity data in CRM RM data an
your customers and marketing a d
cracks after their initial will allow you to identify utomation
keeping them engaged
purchase. Marketing which additional
takes a lot of effort.
automation backed by products or services
Automate certain
customer data from CRM may be useful for your
interactions and keep
ensures you stay in existing customers.
them personalised using
touch and keep your Automate email
CRM data.
brand/product top of campaigns to customers

mind. Automate a quick who purchased one

email or phone call 1 service and inform them
month after they about the other service
become a customer or product
 r C R M is m a r keting
a u to m a t e in you
Another proce
ss to
m a k e a p r o je ct, and
yo u r C R M system,
k lo a d p la n n in g. In
t e m a ils . A d d some
wo r s , a n d relevan
ie s , do c u m e n t s te ps are
a ll ac tiv it n s u re n o
add
o rk f lo w in t h ere to e
oject w n goes
automated pr u r n e xt mark e tin g c a m p a ig
b e f o r e y o ct can
being missed c u s tomer ne w sle tt e r p r o je
s ta n c e , a n e w a c t iv it ie s for
out. F o r in tent creat io n
s ig n & c o n
t o m a tic a lly la unch de
au s.
team member a c t iv ities to
against th e s e
b e lo g ge d
r ke t in g s p e n d c a n
e t in g a c t iv it y. The
Ma
e o f R O I o f ea ch mark
pictur e of the
create a clear a g e ment is a lw a y s a w a r
th at m a n CRM.
benefits are e ry step is tr a c e a b le in
e m s an d e v
progress of it

Developing CRM
Strategy
 Customer relationship management in retail can increase customer satisfaction, reduce your costs and improve your
company’s performance in the marketplace. CRM software manages your relationships with individual customers to create
advantages for both parties. To select the appropriate software and ensure it includes the features you need, you have to know
how CRM works and what effects it has on your retail operations

The overall effect of CRM is to

increase the retention of customers
CRM helps you gather information A CRM system keeps records of
by serving them in a more focused

The data you gather within a CRM customer purchases and customer
about each of your customers, including and convenient way. You can further
system lets you not only target a

preferences and demographic data. You service calls. You can keep track of increase this effect by using the CRM
market segment with promotions that
can use such information to segment the products each customer has software to implement customer
appeal to its members but also target
your market and customize your purchased and whether there have loyalty programs. Since the
individual customers. CRM reduces
approach to each group of been any warranty or dissatisfaction applications already track purchases,
promotions that are of no interest to
customers.The effect of segmentation issues with the purchase. This you can issue reward points and
the recipient and increases the
based on CRM data is to adjust your bonuses to keep valuable customers.
relevance of material you send out. information allows you to send out
retail strategies to better suit the Such programs let your further reduce

special offers to customers when the
customers you have. costs because sales to long term
products they have purchased reach customers are less expensive than
the end of their lives. sales to new customers.

Make your customers happier

Strengthen customer loyalty

Improve company performance

Spend less money on ineffective marketing

Increase customer retention rate

Encourage repeat sales and return customers

Create successful marketing campaigns with a higher ROI

Having a CRM won’t do you much good if you don’t take full advantage of it. Use these pro tips to get the most out of your
customer relationship management system

Be Thorough Segmentation
Keep detailed, accurate records on
If you segment your data, you can
as many customers as you can. market effectively to each type of
Complete every customer profile buyer you serve. Divide your Example
with as many details as possible. customers into categories that you A company can craft more
Keep a record of purchase history, can really market to based on what powerful and precise marketing
demographic information, and you have to offer.
campaigns by sending home
anything else you can use to fine- Some companies segment their
decor promotions to customers
tune your marketing campaigns buyers by age, location, or gender.
who have shown the most
and show your customers that Others may choose to segment their
interest in the home goods
you’re really paying attention. data into interests and purchase
history, such as customers who department.

spend a lot of time and money in a

specific department.