| | NOVEMBER 20208CIOReviewIN MY OPINIONCRM AND CUSTOMER EXPERIENCECRM, as the name suggests is a set of tools and processes which helps a company manage their Customers, their ongoing relationship and communication with them effectively. It provides the sales, marketing and services teams in better understanding of their existing and potential customers so that they can align their products, services and communications with them accordingly.In it's very simple form CRM sits in-between the customer interactions with the company, people, brand, it's products or services and combines/synthesizes that information with other data dimensions (financial, behavioral, social, operational and competition info). The information coming out from CRM tools and processes is then utilized to drive decisions which informs what better to offer our customers which in turn influences their decisions to engage with our brand, product and services. It's a cyclic "continuous improvement" undertaking, which if done right provides bedrock for ongoing revenue and customer experience improvements for a given organization.CRM covers a vast set of customer interactions, tools and processes, and have come a long way since its humble beginnings of being a tool just to centralize customer information and used by sales teams for lead management. Today CRM is used by marketing, customer experience, service, loyalty, social, product and strategy teams to get relevant information to drive their roadmap and strategy. The end goal of a CRM system is to use it effectively to drive revenue, customer experience, growth and retention.CRM today is not just one team looking after a product and its output but a combination of multiple teams working across different parts of the organization collaborating together to utilize different insights from their CRM system to drive the bottom line and customer experience.Another big shift which has happened in CRM space in past decade has been to look customer touch points as journey. Customer engagements have shifted from transactional to be more interactive through social and multi-channels. Customers themselves have evolved and have moved beyond price and quality. They want to know where products are made, what the working conditions are, how materials are sourced, what environmental impacts are and how the customer experience is. Customers will pay more and stick with a specific company or brand if they find these attributes. These changes have pushed the CRM systems and processes to evolve and capture more information about customer behaviors and attitudes, apart from simple demographics and sales. Those days are gone where a shop felt happy after the customers paid them and walked away. Today's organizations need to have By Ashok Dhiman, Director, Enterprise Customer Experience and Data Integration, The Hartford [NYSE: HIG]
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