Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is an integrated approach aimed at
             improving the customer's total experience. This holistic endeavor involves
             understanding and optimizing customer interactions across all touchpoints
             such as Web sites, retail outlets, call centers, help desks and kiosks,
             across all company divisions or departments such as sales, marketing,
             accounting, customer service, and purchasing, and across all stages of
             company interaction such as presales, product/service and post-sales
             experiences. The goal of CRM is not only to obtain new customers and to
             increase the likelihood of sales, but also to reduce costs through
             developing more efficient business processes, improving customer
             relationships and increasing customer loyalty.
             The value of a unified customer view is tremendous. First, it makes
             it easier to customers to conduct business because all company
             representatives have access to customer data across all channels. The
             benefit for customers is that they do not have to provide duplicate data
             for multiple transactions, saving time and improving data quality. And,
             the employee interacting with the customer can more quickly respond to the
             customer request by having a better understanding of the customer's
             history. With a complete picture of customer interactions, companies can
             greatly improve their ability to market to customers by providing
             personalized Web and email content and tailored services that the customer
             will value. It's also easier to reward loyalty with affinity and retention
             programs designed specifically to meet the customer's needs.
             In the world of electronic commerce, self service is a must-have
             feature. This requires an integrated view of all customer data and
             transactions such as credit card data, shipping and billing addresses,
             order status and invoices. Besides being more loyal, customers may be
             willing to pay more for th...