A good CRM program can improve customer service by facilitating communication in several ways; some of them as listed in wikipedia are as follows.

• Provide product information, product use information, and technical assistance on web sites that are accessible 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
• Identify how each individual customer defines quality, and then design a service strategy for each customer based on these individual requirements and expectations.
• Provide a fast mechanism for managing and scheduling follow-up sales calls to assess post-purchase cognitive dissonance, repurchase probabilities, repurchase times, and repurchase frequencies.
• Provide a mechanism to track all points of contact between a customer and the company, and do it in an integrated way so that all sources and types of contact are included, and all users of the system see the same view of the customer (reduces confusion).
• Help to identify potential problems quickly, before they occur.
• Provide a user-friendly mechanism for registering customer complaints (complaints that are not registered with the company cannot be resolved, and are a major source of customer dissatisfaction).
• Provide a fast mechanism for handling problems and complaints (complaints that are resolved quickly can increase customer satisfaction).
• Provide a fast mechanism for correcting service deficiencies (correct the problem before other customers experience the same dissatisfaction).
• Use internet cookies to track customer interests and personalize product offerings accordingly.

Analytical CRM helps us to analyze the gathered data into useful information. Some of the typical information that be derived are the different segments of customers, identifying high value customers, collecting personalized information.

Personalized information can be of great use when you to sell customized products. Availability of the preference of each individual customer can be helpful under these circumstances. Analytical CRM tools will help gather such information from the large amount of data collected in the operational CRM techniques.

Some of the advantages of collecting such information using analytical CRM are

Cross-sell, up-sell more products to the customers thereby increasing revenue.

Providing timely and regular information to customers.

Avoid sending messages,mailers and flyers to those customers who do not want it.

CRM can be classified further into

Operational crm
Analytical CRM
Collaborative CRM

What is Operational CRM?
Operational CRM supports the front desk executives of the customer service, sales and marketing functions.It is helpful in collecting informastion fromn the customers/clients and forwarding to the concerned team to who process the issue.

The advantages of using an operational CRM are
* Delivers personalized and efficient marketing, sales, and service through multi-channel collaboration
* Enables a 360-degree view of your customer while you are interacting with them
* Sales people and service engineers can access complete history of all customer interaction with your company, regardless of the touch point.
Some of the typical operational CRMs are

Sales force automation (SFA).
Customer Support/service applications.
Enterprise marketing automation (EMA).

A CRM will not improve the performance of an enterprise just by installing a software. To ensure that the CRM becomes successful in an organization the management has to show a lot of commitment and make investment consistently in it over a period of time. The management should formulate a clear business process, train and educate the employees on the significance of understanding the customer, ensure co-ordination among the sales, marketing and the customer service departments of the organization.

Choosing the appropriate software and the IT support for it is very critical for the success of the CRM; however the use of software alone does not guarantee the success of a CRM. It is the combination of the software, the process and the employees which contributes to the success.

Customer Relationship Management(CRM) is a practice in an organisation which helps to collect information about customers from various sources and using it for managing customer relationship better.It helps the organisation to understand the customers requirement when carried out succesfully.The use of softwares in CRM has made it really easier to analyse the data and derive critical information out of them.
According to wikipedia, “CRM includes the methodologies, strategies, software, and web-based capabilities that help an enterprise organize and manage customer relationships. It is the collection and distribution of all data to all areas of the business. The general purpose of CRM is to enable organizations to better manage their customers through the introduction of reliable systems, processes and procedures for interacting with those customers”.

sales force automation is the process by which all day to day transactions and events in the sales department are automated. It includes the automation of all the activities like daily reports of invidual sales executives, order tracking, sharing information among all sales executives,inventory control and monitoring, sales forecast, etc.This will be very helpful for organisations that are geographically spread across the length and breadth of a country or even across different countries.A centralized control is easily possible when the sales activities are automated as access to data becomes easier and quicker.

If you have a well defined sales process, automating it becomes very productive as it can help avoiding unnecessary delay in getting each process done manually.For instance, if a sales executive located in a remote place sends a proposal to be approved by his sales manager by post or courier it will take atleast 3 to 4 days to get it done.This can be avoided if the salesman uses a system and an appropriate software which could alert the manager immediately when a request has been sent to him.The manager can reply to it immediately and the whole activity can be completed in minutes.
There are a numerous instances like this where unnecessary delays could be avoided and help the sales people close the orders immedaitely.It can also help you track the employees performace in a more organised way.

Lotus Notes can be a very useful platform on which these softwares can be built.It can help you develop an application exactly in the way you want instead of purchasing a conventional Sales Fore Automation software which may not suit your requirement.

Before The Call | Solution

If you have a sales team that is cold calling on customers and if you use Salesforce.com, Before The Call has an interesting solution that lets you find out complete details about the lead through multiple sources, before your sales person makes that call.

“Know the Prospect:
Draw from the best-known market intelligence partners to enrich your leads without leaving Salesforce.com. The Validator service search tens of millions of records to ensure you have the most accurate contact and company information available. This information is important to any sales process and Before the Call is able to use this information to access other sources that will provide you a full picture of the prospect. No longer will you have to exit CRM to search for this information, it is all in-process, in-context and retained within your CRM application. “

Interested in doing this from within your Lotus Notes based CRM? While no readymade solution exists, it is possible to build links with webservices. It is also possible to get data from the different lead sourcing companies like infoUSA and merge it with your Lotus Notes CRM data. At Maarga, we offer complete lifecycle solutions for software development on Lotus Notes/Domino technologies. We can also club it with BPO/KPO services like internet based market research to get you the leads you need into your CRM.