CRM
A system that centralizes customer relationships: contacts, conversation history, ongoing deals, and sales tasks, all in one place. Short for Customer Relationship Management.
CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is the software that acts as a company's commercial memory. Each contact has a record with data, source, history of emails, calls, and messages, and their position in the sales funnel, from first touch to close. Without a CRM, that information lives scattered across spreadsheets, inboxes, and each salesperson's head; when someone leaves the team, the history leaves with them.
The core uses are:
- Sales pipeline: viewing every deal by stage (prospecting, proposal, closing) and spotting where deals get stuck.
- Unified history: anyone on the team sees all previous interactions before talking to the customer.
- Tasks and follow-ups: automatic reminders so no one forgets to get back to a lead.
- Marketing and support integration: campaign leads land directly in the funnel; support conversations feed the customer record.
AI is being applied in CRMs to summarize conversations, suggest next steps, draft follow-up emails, and predict which deals are most likely to close. Concrete example: an agency logs every quote request in its CRM; the system reminds the salesperson to follow up in 3 days, shows the client has opened the proposal twice, and suggests the right moment to reach out.