Worldwide CRM market revenue totaled $9.15 billion in 2008. That's a 12.5 percent increase from 2007 revenue of $8.13 billion, according to Gartner. Enterprise investments in technologies focused on customer retention, analytics and on-demand solutions drove the growth even as new strategies emerged in 2009.

"Despite financial market volatility, the worldwide CRM market enjoyed its fifth consecutive year of double-digit growth as businesses continued to invest in solutions across all subsegments," said Sharon Mertz, research director at Gartner. "Actual market growth was moderated by a stronger dollar but reflects higher contributions from emerging markets."

The bottom line: CRM continued to grow through 2009 because it adds value to the bottom line of enterprises looking to do more with less. Three keys to CRM success in a down economy are perfecting low-cost customer service, analyzing and optimizing marketing, and finding warm sales leads through social-networking platforms. This combination, experts agreed, is making CRM software an indispensable tool in the enterprise.

Critical Customer-Retention Strategies

In a down economy, two factors are vital to every business: Providing superior customer service at a lower cost and understanding customers' needs.

Superior customer service is critical to retaining the customers you already have -- especially if those customers represent long-term value -- rather that acquiring new customers, explained Vinay Iyer, vice president of enterprise marketing, CRM solutions, at SAP.

"Providing superior customer service requires companies to go the extra mile to understand customers' needs, resolve their issues quickly, and offer them more value beyond the product itself, such as initiating a customer community to share knowledge," Iyer said. "However, companies need to do this at lower cost of service so they can still be profitable. Here's where making available self-service capabilities -- portals, or social-media communities -- can be big cost-saving opportunities."

Understanding customers' needs means offering tailored products, packages and pricing. Because customers in a downturn do not want to be oversold items they don't really need, he explained, companies need to listen to customer sentiment -- both by leveraging direct customer feedback as well as by listening in to social-media conversations -- and determine what best to manufacture, package, price, sell and so on. By being responsive to customers' current needs, Iyer said, companies can gain great credibility and trust. (continued...)

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