What is a CRM system

A CRM system gathers, and analyzes all collected customer data, including contact information, interactions with sales and customer care representatives, purchases, service requests, assets, and quotes/proposals. The system then lets users access that data and understand what happened at each touch point.

Customer data can also be aggregated to populate incentive compensation modeling, sales forecasting, territory segmentation, campaign design, product innovation, and other sales, marketing, and customer service activities. CRM tools and software help you streamline the customer engagement process, close more sales deals, establish strong customer relationships, build customer loyalty, and ultimately increase sales and profits.

CRM tools help your business to:
- Offer and sell new, add-on products—at the right time in the right way at the right price
- Help customer service teams resolve issues faster
- Help development teams create better products and services
- Manage customer data
- Automate the sales process
- Personalize marketing campaigns
- Align sales and marketing

CRM as a tool to improve customer experience
A complete customer view is necessary for business success and growth. Without a CRM system, you'll struggle to develop that much-needed 360-degree view of the customer that you need to:
- Personalize customer interactions
- Automate business processes (with appropriate CX integrations)
- Track all customer interactions

CRM software solutions help sales reps organize their leads, automate follow-ups, and manage their opportunities and pipeline. But sales isn’t the only department within your organization that can benefit from your CRM platform. Marketing, customer support, product development, content management, and HR can all achieve high ROI from a CRM solution.

For example, since your solution holds essential information about every customer, your customer support teams can put that customer data to good use. With CRM data, your customer support reps have more insight into who your customer are, their needs and motivations, and what type of relationship they've had with your brand in the past. This information gives your customer service reps context when interacting with those customers.