Customer relationship management (CRM) has existed since people first started selling things. The first shopkeeper who stopped to chat with their customers, who knew them by name, and perhaps gave them a small ‘freebie’ for continually using their services, was practicing a form of customer relationship marketing by making customers feel special. They were also probably seeing the favourable impact on their bottom line. It helped that customers were being served directly by the business owner. This meant it was easy for a shopkeeper to grow their brand perception and value through direct interaction with customers.

Today, with businesses becoming more digitally remote and with person-to-person contact becoming sporadic, CRM is more important than ever. We need to build and maintain relationships with our customers. A faceless company is not personable or engaging and therefore has to work harder to fill the gap between attracting and retaining customers (and their goodwill). The relationship a customer builds with a company and/or brand is often the reason they return. Building those relationships today is more difficult than ever. Customers are smart and exercise their right to choose, and a competitor can be just a click away. Users expect companies to engage with them, interact and share meaningful content.

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, their future purchases, 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 maximise ROI.