Customer Relationship Manager(CRM) Interview Preparation Guide

CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management.

The literal and original meaning of the expression "Customer Relationship Management" was, simply, managing the relationship with your customer. Today it is used to describe IT systems and software designed to help you manage this relationship.

This is a most common interview question that is asked in almost every customer relationship manager job interview so you must be prepared about this very carefully. Here, I want to tell how you should get over this question easy and comfortably; many times we see that people respond this question talking about their personal life but that is completely wrong. By this question an interviewer wants to know about your abilities & how you demonstrate yourself so, you should start speaking from academics and end it on your last job profile & if you are a fresher then show off your strengths and about your projects and summer training that you've handled during the academics

This is another commonly asked question in any job interview. By this question about CRM interview question and answer interviewer wants to know about your financial need because everybody does work hard to be financially sound. But here rather saying that I was earning $25,000 - so, now I'm looking forward $30000. This is a wrong way; you should avoid saying exact number of your need.

You can say that "I am more interested in role than the pay so I could expect to be paid the appropriate amount for this role, based on my five years of experience.

First, I expect CRM to become much more commonplace. Players like Zoho and 37signals (Highrise) are knocking down barriers to entry. I also expect to see some consolidation. I think the bigger players, like Salesforce, Microsoft, and SAP, will buy up some of their smaller rivals to build into their suites and migrate their user bases. As long as the acquiring provider keeps the connections intact during the migration and meets a similar price point, it will be a win-win. I also think we'll be seeing more mobile-friendly applications, like Salesforce's Visualforce and NetSuite's iPhone, to maximize data access and timeliness.

In my experience, marketing is somewhat of a new concept in CRM. Sales is definitely involved, but most often it is operations leading the charge.

There can be multiple definitions of CRM from different perspectives −

From the viewpoint of the Management, CRM can be defined as an organized approach of developing, managing, and maintaining a profitable relationship with customers.

By equating the term with technology, the IT organizations define CRM as a software that assists marketing, merchandising, selling, and smooth service operations of a business.

As per Franics Buttle, World's first professor of CRM, it is the core business strategy that integrates internal processes and functions, and external networks, to create and deliver value to a target customer at profit. It is grounded on high quality customer data and information technology.

The primary goal of CRM is to increase customer loyalty and in turn improve business profitability.

Many organizations use Outlook BCM or Excel for managing their contacts, which offer no planning or setup process - just create a column or type in a field and get started. This causes problems when information is related and the flexible aspects of the previous solution are overlooked. There are real benefits that won't happen without understanding the new vernacular; the specific way the new solution describes the data. For example, an "account" in Salesforce may not be the same as an "account" in Highrise. In fact, it might have another name altogether, such as "company." Understanding how the particular vendor uses "leads" or "opportunities" will help to avoid a great deal of frustration.

CRM systems are divided based on their prominent characteristics. There are four basic types of CRM systems −

► Strategic CRM
► Operational CRM
► Analytical CRM
► Collaborative CRM

Marketing automation involves market segmentation, campaigns management, event-based marketing, and promotions. The campaign modules of Marketing Automation enable the marketing force to access customer-related data for designing, executing and evaluating targeted offers, and communications.

Event-based (trigger) marketing is all about messaging and presenting offers at a particular time. For example, a customer calls the customer care number and asks about the rate of interest for credit card payment. This event is read by CRM as the customer is comparing interest rates and can be diverted to another business for a better deal. In such cases, a customized offer is triggered to retain the customer.

The most prominent objectives of using the methods of Customer Relationship Management are as follows −

Improve Customer Satisfaction − CRM helps in customer satisfaction as the satisfied customers remain loyal to the business and spread good word-of-mouth. This can be accomplished by fostering customer engagement via social networking sites, surveys, interactive blogs, and various mobile platforms.

Expand the Customer Base − CRM not only manages the existing customers but also creates knowledge for prospective customers who are yet to convert. It helps creating and managing a huge customer base that fosters profits continuity, even for a seasonal business.

Enhance Business Sales − CRM methods can be used to close more deals, increase sales, improve forecast accuracy, and suggestion selling. CRM helps to create new sales opportunities and thus helps in increasing business revenue.

Improve Workforce Productivity − A CRM system can create organized manners of working for sales and sales management staff of a business. The sales staff can view customer's contact information, follow up via email or social media, manage tasks, and track the salesperson's performance. The salespersons can address the customer inquiries speedily and resolve their problems.