What is Customer Relationship Management (CRM)?

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is an approach businesses take to strengthen their relationships with prospects and existing customers. However, CRM is often also used to refer to customer relationship management (CRM) software, which is a tool organizations use to automate the relationship management process.

Customer relationship management (CRM) software manages leads throughout the entire sales process. Basic data about the lead (such as name, location, email address, etc.) is loaded into the CRM system, and that record is updated as the sales team develops the relationship. Alerts can be set up in the CRM to notify the sales team when they need to contact the lead. The customer relationship management (CRM) system automatically enters a date stamp of the call, the salesperson can add notes about what was discussed, and the system can even record the call and add that to the customer's history. If anyone but the original salesperson has to speak to the lead/customer, they have the history at their fingertips within the CRM system.

Customer relationship management (CRM) software in the contact center

Integrating the vast amounts of customer data and history tracked in customer relationship management (CRM) software is invaluable for contact centers to deliver personalized customer experiences and drive agent efficiency. For example, when the phone system looks up the incoming phone number against the CRM database and finds a match, that customer's screen will automatically "pop" for the agent’s desktop, empowering the agent to greet the customer personally, see their previous history and understand the context of the call.

Agents can also access purchase history, previous interactions, service agreements, warranty information and more. For example, if a CRM tracks premium customers – say ones with a paid service agreement, or ones who are high-volume purchasers – the contact center can leverage that CRM data to ensure those interactions are prioritized in the contact center queue or route them to a dedicated team for a higher level of service.

How NICE inContact can help

NICE inContact CXone is the market leading call center software in use by thousands of customers of all sizes around the world to help them consistently deliver exceptional customer experiences. Our solutions include the ability to integrate with market-leading customer customer relationship management (CRM) systems including Salesforce, Oracle, Zendesk, Microsoft Dynamics, ServiceNow and many more.

CXone is a cloud native, contact center platform that provides a unified suite of applications that empower a company deliver exceptional experiences. Cxone includes:




CXone also offers Voice as a Service (VaaS), and pre-defined CRM integrations and UCaaS integrations with most leading solutions on the market. These integrations provide a holistic call center software solution capable of elevating customer experiences for companies of all sizes.