For instance, if a customer contacts a company's call center and then sends them an e-mail a week later, she wants the company to have acted upon her request or at least be aware that communication was initiated. Delivering consistent customer service across all touch points gives companies a strong market advantage. CRM breaks down the barriers between departments within an organization. When everyone in a company is on the same page, existing customers remain loyal and new customers are attracted by high-quality service. The discursive exchange between customers and companies is mutually beneficial.
Customers offer information in return for customized services that meet their needs.
While successfully implementing CRM is the foremost challenge facing businesses today, most companies are falling well short of the mark. Contributing to the confusion is extremely fragmented nature of the CRM market. There are hundreds of vendors and over 50 different classes of CRM applications. For example, CRM products can capture everything from sales leads to clickstream analysis on Web sites and everything in-between. Furthermore, no single vendor can provide everything a company needs because business requirements vary from one company to another.