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Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

​Strategic

Strategic CRM concentrates upon the development of a customer-centric business culture.[18]

The focus of a business on being customer-centric (in design and implementation of their CRM strategy) will translate into an improved CLV.[19]

Operational

The primary goal of CRM systems is integration and automation of sales, marketing, and customer support. Therefore, these systems typically have a dashboard that gives an overall view of the three functions on a single customer view, a single page for each customer that a company may have. The dashboard may provide client information, past sales, previous marketing efforts, and more, summarizing all of the relationships between the customer and the firm. Operational CRM is made up of 3 main components: sales force automation, marketing automation, and service automation.[20]

Sales force automation works with all stages in the sales cycle, from initially entering contact information to converting a prospective client into an actual client.[21] It implements sales promotion analysis, automates the tracking of a client's account history for repeated sales or future sales and coordinates sales, marketing, call centers, and retail outlets. It prevents duplicate efforts between a salesperson and a customer and also automatically tracks all contacts and follow-ups between both parties.[21][22]

Marketing automation focuses on easing the overall marketing process to make it more effective and efficient. CRM tools with marketing automation capabilities can automate repeated tasks, for example, sending out automated marketing emails at certain times to customers, or posting marketing information on social media. The goal with marketing automation is to turn a sales lead into a full customer. CRM systems today also work on customer engagement through social media.[23]

Service automation is the part of the CRM system that focuses on direct customer service technology. Through service automation, customers are supported through multiple channels such as phone, email, knowledge bases, ticketing portals, FAQs, and more.[20]

Analytical

The role of analytical CRM systems is to analyze customer data collected through multiple sources and present it so that business managers can make more informed decisions.[24] Analytical CRM systems use techniques such as data mining, correlation, and pattern recognition to analyze the customer data. These analytics help improve customer service by finding small problems which can be solved, perhaps by marketing to different parts of a consumer audience differently.[20] For example, through the analysis of a customer base's buying behavior, a company might see that this customer base has not been buying a lot of products recently. After scanning through this data, the company might think to market to this subset of consumers differently, to best communicate how this company's products might benefit this group specifically.[25]

Collaborative

The third primary aim of CRM systems is to incorporate external stakeholders such as suppliers, vendors, and distributors, and share customer information across groups/departments and organizations. For example, feedback can be collected from technical support calls, which could help provide direction for marketing products and services to that particular customer in the future.[26]

Customer data platform

Main article: Customer data platform

A customer data platform (CDP) is a computer system used by marketing departments that assembles data about individual people from various sources into one database, with which other software systems can interact.[27] As of February 2017 there were about twenty companies selling such systems and revenue for them was around US$300 million.[27]

​Swindon (/ˈswɪndən/ (listen)) is the largest town in Wiltshire, South West England, lying between Bristol, 35 miles (56 kilometres) to the west, and Reading, the same distance to the east. The town is 71 miles (114 km) west of London. The population of the Swindon built-up area was 185,600 in 2011.[1]

The Town Development Act 1952 led to a major increase in its population.[2]

Swindon railway station is on the line from London Paddington to Bristol. Swindon Borough Council is a unitary authority, independent of Wiltshire Council since 1997. Residents of Swindon are known as Swindonians. The town is home to the offices of English Heritage, the Historic England Archive (formerly the National Monuments Record Centre) and the headquarters of the National Trust (all three are on parts of the site of the former Great Western Railway's Swindon Works), and the head office of the Nationwide Building Society.

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