Customer Relationship Management (henceforth 'CRM') is crucial to e-commerce. The aim of CRM is that of optimising the relationships between a company and its customers in order to increase the size of the company's customer base and to keep customers loyal to the company. As such, marketing strategies for gaining and retaining customers, and for winning back customers who have stopped interacting with the company, are central to CRM 1). Attention to marketing, to branding, and to the targeting of specific groups of customers in particular ways, are all important ways in which CRM can enhance relationships between corporations and their clients.
Mobile CRM is an exciting development within the wider field of CRM. It is a tool which utilises available technologies to gather and evaluate customer data online. As well as providing statistical computerised analysis of customer data, this form of CRM also enables companies to communicate more effectively with their customers by using messaging services online 2).
The deployment of Mobile CRM for sales people is the hallmark of a truly international company, or at least of a company with global aspirations. This is because one of the key advantages of this form of CRM is that it enables a versatile and mobile connection to the totality of customer data from anywhere in the world. This also entails that, once gathered, new customer data can be inputted into a company's system from anywhere in the world. This enables a company's branches to benefit from strategies of information-sharing. Greater knowledge about a company's potential and actual customers enables that company to tailor its branding and marketing strategies to suit the preferences of those customers, thus increasing the company's sales (often by very large amounts indeed).
Social media content has, in recent years, emerged as a crucial source of customer data. Social media sites have also proved to be a very effective way for companies to reach out to both potential and existing customers. Several companies already use Mobile CRM and social media in conjunction to great effect.