Types of CRM:

There are several different approaches to CRM with different aspects. In general, Customer Service, Campaign Management and Sales Force Automation (SFA) form the core of the system (with SFA being more popular).

1. Operational CRM:

Operation CRM provides support to “Front Office” business processes. For example, Sales Marketing and Service Staff. Interaction with customers is generally stored in customer contact histories and staff can retrieve customer information as necessary. The contact history provides staff members with immediate access to important information on the customer (Product owned prior support calls etc) eliminating the need to individually obtain this information directly from the customer. Reaching the customer at right time at right place is preferable.

Operational CRM processes customer data for a variety of purposes:

• Managing Campaigns
• Enterprise Marketing Automation
• Sales Force Automation
• Sales Management System
• Activity and Time Management
• Quotation and Order Processing
• Delivery and Order Fulfillment
• Tele-marketing and Tele-sales
• Customer Service and Support
• Remote Access

2. Analytical CRM:

Analytical CRM analysis customer data for variety of purposes:

• Designing and Executing targeted marketing campaigns
• Designing and executing campaigns. For example- Customer Acquisition, Cross selling, up selling and add on selling.
• Analyzing customer behaviour in order to make decisions relating to products and services ( eg. Pricing, Product development)
• Managing Information System (eg. Financial Forecasting and Customer Profitability Analysis)
• Customer Segmentation (eg. Age, Sex, Income level)
• Trend Analysis for Customer Satisfaction.

Analytical CRM generally makes heavy use of data mining and other techniques to produce useful results for decision making.

3. Sales Intelligence CRM:

Sales Intelligence CRM is similar to Analytical CRM, but it is intended as a more direct sales tool. Features include alerts sent to sales staff regarding

• Cross selling/ Up selling / Switch selling opportunities
• Customer drift
• Sales Performance
• Customer trends
• Customer margins
• Customer Alignment

4. Campaign Management CRM:

Campaign Management combines elements of operational and Analytical CRM. Campaign Management function includes:

• Target groups formed from the client base according to selected criteria
• Sending Campaign related material (eg. On special offers) to selected recipients using various channels (eg. E-mail, Telephone, SMS, Post)
• Tracking, Storing and analyzing campaign statistics
• Tracking responses and analyzing trends.

5. Collaborative CRM:

Collaborative CRM covers aspects of a company dealing with customers that are handled by various departments with in the company such as sales, technical support and Marketing. Staff Members from different departments can share information collected when interacting with customers. For example, feedback received by Customer support agents can provide other staff members with information on the services and features requested by customers. Collaborative CRM’s ultimate goal is to use information collected by all departments to improve the quality of services provided by the company.

Collaborative CRM processes customer data for variety of purposes:

• Enterprise Portals
• Customer Access
• Supplier Access
• Personalisation