Customer relationship management (CRM) software is a digital tool designed for businesses to efficiently organize, monitor, and maintain data about their existing and prospective customers. The best CRM software centralizes data from various lead generation, traffic, campaign, and acquisition sources and creates records and profiles. The software has a repository of a complete customer database, which stakeholders use to manage long-term customer contracts and relationships.

CRM software enhances customer experience by streamlining customer support, email marketing, sales outreach, and sales cycles.

CRM software can be integrated with call center infrastructure platforms, digital marketing services, ERP systems, e-commerce platforms, marketing automation software, and CPQ software to reduce the risk of data silos and give real-time updates on the customer journey. Customer journey and funnel are categorized into different sub-processes in the CRM software where sales and marketing can access the data, build communication, and drive them forward to final deals.

There are many different types of CRM software provide a collection of integrated customer-related functions or all-in-one functionality, such as marketing automation, help desk, e-commerce tools, ERP, project or website management, to replace the need for additional solutions and better serve small and mid-market businesses. Standalone CRM solutions, however, focus primarily on sales-related functions such as contact, account, and pipeline management and do not offer extensive marketing help.

The software also has help desk escalation, email automation, sales dispositions, automation workflows, and lead scoring and calling histories to help sales teams navigate to the current lead progress and establish contextual communication.

To qualify for inclusion in the CRM category, a product must:

• Provide a bounded set of sales-related functions
• Provide lead, contact, account, and opportunity management functions
• Capture and store sales activities and interactions performed
• Consolidate customer history and transactions into a single interface
• Track prospects and contacts throughout the sales pipeline
• Facilitate communication at all phases of the customer lifecycle
• Provide reporting features to track sales performance
• Provide workflow automation capabilities to streamline sales processes
• Integrate functions into a unifying database and platform