Customer relationship management (CRM) is basically the function of building a long standing relationship with a customer. This maximizes profits, since it is cheaper to retain a current customer than it is to find a new one.

It also consists of the processes a company uses to track and organize its contacts with its current and prospective customers. CRM software is used to support these processes; information about customers and customer interactions can be entered, stored and accessed by employees in different company departments. Typical CRM goals are to improve services provided to customers, and to use customer contact information for targeted marketing.

While customer relationship management can be implemented without major investments in software, software is often necessary to explore the full benefits of a CRM strategy.