CRM Paradigm Shift

Having watched the CRM (R)evolution for over a decade, I am very excited about the developments that have taken place over the last few years. Four important technological trends have the potential to fundamentally change the way organizations “manage” relationship with their customers and revolutionize CRM. These tech trends are:

• Social Media
• Smart Phones/Portable Devices
• Cloud Computing/SaaS
• Predictive Analytics

All these four independent trends are now converging to bring about a Paradigm Shift in CRM.

“Managing” customer relationships till now involved recording “transactions” between company and the customer over phone, email and web-site besides “snail” mail and face-to-face exchanges and using the “historical” or “past” information to better serve the customers. Company was in total control of this conversation with customer at every stage. Information was recorded using pre-determined fields in the database, by company employees (or by contractors trained by the company) using script in CRM application controlled by the company. Thanks to the convergence of cloud computing, social media, predictive analytics and smart phones, this …
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