ABSTRACT
Customer relationship management (CRM) was born out of the marketing concept. It is an extension of the marketing concept, which integrates a number of recent developments in marketing along with the increased technical capabilities open to marketing practitioners resulting from developments in the application of information technology. Parallel with the development of relationship marketing came the development of the internal marketing concept as management realised it was necessary to have the correct internal marketing culture if they were to successfully pursue any meaningful external relationship marketing strategy. CRM is a comprehensive approach that provides 'seamless' integration of every facet of business that relates to the customer whether this be marketing, sales, customer service or field support, through the integration of people, process and technology. In a very real sense the internal marketing is actually an intrinsic part of the relationship marketing and hence CRM, process.
