Customer relationship management or CRM refers to all of the processes that an organization makes use of to organize and track its contacts or relationships with prospective and current customers. Hence, CRM covers quite a wide array of activities, departments, and processes, from front desk or first line interactions to analytical and behind the scene procedures. These varied practices are sometimes tracked and monitored using so-called key performance indicators or KPI practices are sometimes tracked and monitored using so-called key performance indicators or KPIs. There will be a good variety of CRM KPI to consider, associated with the different aspects of the entire customer relationship management paradigm.
CRM can be more or less divided into four separate but interrelated aspects: front office operations, back office operations, business relationships, and analysis. Front office operations would refer to that part of the system involving dealing with customers directly, whether face to face or through the phone or the Internet. Back office operations, on the other hand, vary from business to business, and involve those processes necessary to provide the appropriate products or services to the customers. Business relationships, the next aspect of customer relationship management, involve, as the term implies, forming working relationships with other companies and organizations as opposed to clients or customers. That is, these would be the firms that a business finds itself working with, as a manufacturer would work with a distributor, and so on.