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Chapter 12 • Customer Relationship Management 341

Management
Sales Analysis
Identify

Customer Data
Shopping patterns,
Company information, Attract
Retain Preferences, Warranty
Service/Product
Agreement, Service and
Support History

Engage
Customer
Service Marketing

FIGURE 12-2 CRM Components.

MARKET RESEARCH The two key functionalities here are campaign management and market
analysis. Campaign management provides support for preparing such things as marketing
budgets, ad placement, sales targeting, and response management. Marketing analysis tools
provide statistical and demographic analysis, Web site traffic monitoring, and profiling tools.
With the amount of data collected today, these tools provide sophisticated segmenting and targeting
capabilities in real time.

SALES FORCE AUTOMATION (SFA) Sales force automation software has been around since
long before CRM became a buzzword. Some of the current CRM vendors were originally in the
SFA market. SFA tools provide basic functionality for sales personnel to automate sales lead
distribution and tracking, sales reporting, pipeline management, contacts centralization and
management, and group collaboration. In addition, they include such software for sales
managers and executives as opportunity management, forecasting, reporting, analytics, and
customizable dashboard capabilities so that they can be confident that their teams are producing
at their full capacity. The goal of SFA software is to give businesses the upper hand with their
sales data and to empower sales reps to spend more time selling and less time on administration.

CUSTOMER SERVICE AND SUPPORT The customer service function has gone through major
changes since the advent of the Internet. Online help desks have become a common source for
customers to find quick answers to complex technical questions. Customer service originally
consisted of setting up a call center with access to a customer database and the frequently asked
questions (FAQs) Web site page. Today, with sophisticated CRM back ends, companies have
been able to consolidate the two areas into help desk support centers. Customer service function-
ality typically includes help desk ticket management software, e-mail, interactive chat, Web
telephony, and other interaction tools connected to a fully integrated customer database, which is