What is CRM?

CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management both a business strategy and the software that implements it.

As software, a CRM is a central platform storing all customer data: contact information, purchase history, complaints, sales conversations, contracts, and support tickets. Everyone in the company sales, marketing, support works from the same system.

Core benefits:

• No information gets lost when a salesperson leaves
• Managers see the health of the sales pipeline at any moment
• Marketing teams segment customers and target communications precisely
• Support teams see a customer's full history before responding

Common platforms: Salesforce (largest), HubSpot (popular with smaller businesses), Zoho CRM, Microsoft Dynamics.