Sage CRM Challenge - Jargon Buster

Campaign management

CRM can help manage marketing campaigns and co-ordinate efforts across the various channels – telemarketing, direct mail, print advertising, point-of-sale and the internet. With a clear view of customers and their buying patterns, companies can measure the effectiveness of their campaigns more easily and use the knowledge to tune future activity.

Collaborative CRM

The various departments of the company, such as sales, technical support and marketing, share the information they collect about customers. The objective is to improve the quality of customer service and increase customer loyalty. This should be a goal of any CRM project.

Collaborative filtering

This a feature of CRM software that allows a business to provide products or services to a customer based on what other customers with similar preferences have bought in the past. The best-known example of this is probably Amazon which offers suggestions for further purchases, saying ’Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought‘ and then listing other items that could be of interest. If customers see this as a truly helpful piece of information, then it can help build trust – and more profit.

Computer telephony integration (CTI)

Combining data with voice systems can greatly enhance telephone services, both incoming and outgoing. The system can recognise incoming phone numbers and allow the caller’s records to be retrieved from the database while the call is being routed to the appropriate person in your company. CTI also enables automatic telephone dialling from a list of customers and prospects.

Customer relationship management

The Gartner Group definition is ’An enterprise-wide business strategy designed to optimise profitability, revenue and customer satisfaction by organising the enterprise around customer segments, fostering customer-satisfying behaviours and linking processes from customers through suppliers.” One key aspect of CRM is that customer information is pooled, allowing anyone in the company who deals with a customer to have a clear picture of all previous transactions and communications.

Cross-selling/upselling

Identifying and selling additional goods and services as a result of the customer’s original purchase, either at the time of purchase or after. This can be helped through collaborative filtering and can only happen if companies have a full picture of the customer’s former buying habits.

Customer-centric

Organisations have traditionally built their businesses around product groups. A customer-centric strategy may require a radical overhaul of business processes and departments and this can be aided by the implementation of a CRM system. The aim is to provide a better service, as well as providing opportunities for upselling and cross-selling – in other words, increasing the net value of the customer.

Dashboard

By bringing all data about customers together into a single database, CRM systems allow companies to analyse the information in whatever way they like, either through regular reports or via a real-time representation of the information. Most systems allow companies to create a dashboard that shows the key elements for their business, providing a real-time snapshot of corporate metrics and key performance indicators.

Operational CRM

The operational application of CRM enables effective interaction with customers and may involve the use of various tools. These contact management tools aim to reduce costs by improved process efficiency and communication channels such as email.

Pipeline management

Pipeline management collects data and analyses active opportunities. This allows sales teams and their managers to see instantly how far each opportunity has progressed (eg received literature, been called, had visit) and to manage qualified deals more efficiently. Businesses can view all current sales activity in real time, spot problems early, analyse individual sales people’s performance trends and gain a much clearer view of the overall sales cycle. Used properly, it can give managers the information they need to adjust quickly to changing circumstances.

Self-service

One key benefit of an effective CRM system is customer self-service. It not only cuts out tedious administrative work (for instance, customers can update their names and addresses online, as well as place orders and pay bills), but it can also boost customer service. Customers can check any time the state of their account, or recent orders, without having to wait for a call centre to open.

Social CRM

The use of social media such as Facebook and Twitter to create commercially advantageous communities of interest around your products and services. It requires a much less controlling approach than that of traditional corporate marketing.

Touch points

This refers to all the various ways in which an interaction may take place with a customer – mail, email, phone, face-to-face meeting, website. By recording all those interactions in one place, CRM can provide a single picture of the company’s dealings with the customer.

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