CRM is built on the premise of fostering long term relationships. Often however, personal information on prospects, customers, vendors, partners and suppliers eludes us. Most CRM systems have static information. The resulting profiles inevitably lack information about hobbies, interests, and relationships outside our native CRM. Applications and networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace are changing all that.

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When organizations implement their CRM, the concentration is often on demand generation and getting new customers. Attracting customers can be 10 times more costly than retaining your existing clients. How a company interacts with its customers across all touch points is important not just in terms of the customer experience, but also in tangible terms such as customer loyalty and retention. Customer loyalty is a tangible. If you doubt this, just calculate the average revenue each of your customers contributes to your profitability.

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