CRM – customer relationship management – has existed since people first started selling things. The first shopkeeper who stopped to chat with his customers, who remembered their names, and perhaps gave them a small ‘freebie’ for continually using his services, was practicing a form of customer relationship marketing by making customers feel special. He was also probably seeing a favorable impact on his bottom line.

Today, with businesses becoming more digitally remote, and person-to-person contact becoming more scarce, CRM is more important than ever. We need to build and maintain relationships with our customers. A faceless company is not personable or engaging - it has to work harder to fill the gap between attracting and retaining customers (and their goodwill). The relationship a customer builds with a company is often the reason they return – but building it today is more difficult than ever, in a society where data is protected, customers are smart and exercise their right to choose, and a competitor can be just a click away.

CRM is a customer-focused approach to business based on fostering long-term, meaningful relationships. CRM is not about immediate profit. It’s about the lifetime value of a customer – the purchases they will make in the future, the positive word of mouth they will generate on your behalf, and the loyalty they will show your brand. Effective CRM enables businesses to collaborate with customers to inform overall business strategies, drive business processes, support brand development, and maximize ROI.

There is a truism that a happy customer tells one person, but an unhappy customer tells ten. With your customers’ voices being heard on blogs, forums, review sites, and social media, they can talk really loudly and impact your business much more easily.

In this chapter, you will learn:

• Why CRM is essential for any business
• The role that customers play in shaping and steering your business
• The various approaches and mindsets that are applied in CRM
• How to collect, store, analyze and update your essential CRM data
• The step-by-step process of putting together your CRM strategy

Important: This topic will be covered by our guest Mr. David Brandejs. All details of the guest lecturer here. More details about the event itself here