Marketing applications of CRM
A CRM system supports the following marketing applications:
1 Sales force automation (SFA). Sales representatives are supported in their account management through tools to arrange and record customer visits.
2 Customer service management. Representatives in contact centres respond to customer
requests for information by using an intranet to access databases containing information on the customer, products and previous queries. It is more efficient and may
increase customer convenience if customers are given the option of web self-service,
i.e. accessing support data through a web interface.
3 Managing the sales process. This can be achieved through e-commerce sites, or in a B2B
context by supporting sales representatives by recording the sales process (SFA).
4 Campaign management. Managing advertising, direct mail, e-mail and other campaigns.
5 Analysis. Through technologies such as data warehouses and approaches such as data
mining, which are explained further later in the chapter, customers’ characteristics,
their purchase behaviour and campaigns can be analysed in order to optimise the
marketing mix.