You have probably noticed that on my blog, you'll find most of the time the term "customer relationship management" more often than crm. It might seem obvious that CRM are the initials of customer relationship management, but in fact, I like to dissociate both.
Gestion de la relation client
In French, we have two terms for customer relationship management. "Gestion de la relation client" litteraly customer relationship management, and CRM. CRM has in French a great connotation of IT, and are linked with CRM softwares. But Gestion de la relation client is a wider term that defines the whole customer relationship management strategy a company could have. It is the idea of the customer focused company, which has been organized to provide a great customer experience.
CRM VS Customer Relationship Management
In English, the difference might not seem that obvious, but I have noticed that most of the CRM blogs speak mainly of CRM softwares and CRM technologies. I'd rather focus on this blog about CRM strategy, and how it implicates different departments (such as sales, marketing, and IT), to have as ultimate goal customer satisfaction.
Don't get me wrong, CRM software have sort of the same kind of goal, but it is limited, as a CRM strategy implies branding and market research for instance.
Hence, I use both terms, but I wanted to make it clear that CRM must be understood as a whole enterprise strategy, and not only as defining a great softwared which would provide analytics to sales and marketing departments.
