For a decade now, marketers have been striving to obtain email addresses for their clients and prospects as the most critical piece of data for keeping in touch with customers.  In many cases, companies would incentivise sales forces and telemarketers if they could obtain that single piece of information from a client.  Because email as [...]

New CRM implementations will often focus on Sales and Support (in that order).  As an outgrowth of this (or perhaps as its cause) CRM software solutions tend to focus heavily on these two areas, often downplaying one of the most critical components of CRM, marketing.  Marketing is truly the neglected child of CRM, and marketing [...]

CRM is focused primarily on relationships with customers for the purpose of driving revenue and profits.  As such, in typical instances of CRM implementations, Sales Force Automation typically becomes the central focus, with all other aspects of CRM becoming secondary.  Indeed, in most of the cross-departmental CRM implementations that I have been involved with, Sales [...]

The modern call center has evolved from a simple answer-and-respond environment to a complex, multi-channel environment for servicing customers.  This revolution started with the advent of CRM and the Internet a decade ago, with the introduction of email and web portals.  Customer support has gone digital to the point that many “call centers” have gone [...]

Well, this is the traditional “Hello World!” post that every blogger has ever written, so I may as well follow tradition and write my own.  CRM Bytes is a blog dedicated to exploring the concept of Customer Relationships, and applying technology to aid in gaining and retaining customers.  CRM is traditionally thought of as a [...]