Business Sales & Customer Success

Customer Relationship Management: Building Stronger Customer Connections

Practical CRM strategies for organizing customer data, improving retention, and driving revenue growth

Customer Relationship Management: Building Stronger Customer Connections logo
Quick Course Facts
16
Self-paced, Online, Lessons
16
Videos and/or Narrated Presentations
5.0
Approximate Hours of Course Media
About the Customer Relationship Management: Building Stronger Customer Connections Course

This course on Customer Relationship Management helps you build stronger customer connections with a clear, business-focused approach to managing sales, service, and marketing data. You’ll learn practical CRM strategies for organizing customer data, improving retention, and driving revenue growth so your Business can operate more efficiently and respond to customer needs with confidence.

Strengthen Business Relationships With Smart CRM Strategies

  • Learn the foundations of Customer Relationship Management and why CRM matters across the customer lifecycle
  • Build practical systems for organizing contact data, pipeline activity, and follow-up workflows
  • Improve sales, service, and marketing alignment with CRM goals that support Business growth
  • Use reporting, automation, and segmentation to create more targeted and effective customer communication

A practical course on Customer Relationship Management for improving customer data, retention, and team alignment

This course takes you through the full CRM process, starting with the basics of Customer Relationship Management and moving into customer journey mapping, data collection, and pipeline management. You’ll see how to define CRM goals that support sales, service, and marketing, while also learning how to build a clean, usable contact database that your team can actually rely on.

As you progress, you’ll explore customer segmentation, workflow design, support operations, and automation strategies that keep communication personal and effective. The course also covers dashboards, metrics, and retention planning so you can measure what matters and make smarter decisions for your Business. Along the way, you’ll learn common CRM mistakes, how to improve adoption across teams, and how to evaluate the right platform for your organization.

By the end of the course, you’ll be able to turn CRM from a simple system into a Business asset that supports stronger customer relationships, better team coordination, and more consistent growth.

Course Lessons

Full lesson breakdown

Lessons are organized by topic area and each includes descriptive copy for search visibility and student clarity.

CRM Foundations

1 lesson

Customer relationship management is the discipline of organizing and using customer information to build stronger relationships, improve service, and support revenue growth. In this lesson, you’ll lea…

Customer Journey Mapping

1 lesson

Lesson 2: The Customer Lifecycle and Relationship Stages

18 min
This lesson explains the customer lifecycle as a practical CRM map: how people move from awareness to advocacy, and what a business should capture, track, and act on at each stage. You will learn how …

Business Alignment

1 lesson

Lesson 3: Defining CRM Goals for Sales, Service, and Marketing

17 min
This lesson helps learners define clear CRM goals for sales, service, and marketing so the system supports real business outcomes instead of becoming just a database. Students will learn how to transl…

Data Essentials

1 lesson

Lesson 4: Core CRM Data: What to Collect and Why

20 min
This lesson explains the core CRM data every business should collect: who the customer is, how to contact them, what they buy, where they came from, and how they interact with your team. The goal is n…

Data Organization

1 lesson

Lesson 5: Building a Clean and Usable Contact Database

18 min
A clean contact database is the foundation of an effective CRM. In this lesson, you will learn how to organize customer and prospect records so they are accurate, easy to search, and ready for action.…

Sales Pipeline Management

1 lesson

Lesson 6: Lead Management and Opportunity Tracking

20 min
This lesson shows how to turn incoming leads into organized, actionable opportunities inside a CRM. You will learn how to capture lead data consistently, qualify prospects, assign ownership, update op…

Customer Segmentation

1 lesson

Lesson 7: Segmenting Customers for Targeted Communication

18 min
Customer segmentation is the process of grouping customers with similar needs, behaviors, or value so you can communicate with them more effectively. In CRM, segmentation helps teams send the right me…

Workflow Design

1 lesson

Lesson 8: Designing Follow-Up Workflows That Actually Get Used

19 min
Follow-up workflows only work when they are easy to trigger, easy to understand, and easy for the team to complete. This lesson shows how to design CRM follow-up sequences that fit real sales and serv…

Support Operations

1 lesson

Lesson 9: CRM for Customer Service and Case Management

18 min
This lesson shows how CRM systems support customer service and case management by turning every inquiry, complaint, and follow-up into an organized workflow. Learners will see how to capture issues co…

Automation Strategy

1 lesson

Lesson 10: Using Automation Without Losing the Human Touch

20 min
Automation can make CRM faster and more consistent, but it should never make customer interactions feel cold or generic. In this lesson, you will learn how to use automation for routine tasks such as …

Performance Measurement

1 lesson

Lesson 11: Reporting, Dashboards, and CRM Metrics

21 min
This lesson explains how to turn CRM data into clear performance reports, useful dashboards, and measurable business decisions. Professor Nathan Ward walks through the core CRM metrics that show wheth…

Customer Retention

1 lesson

Lesson 12: Improving Retention and Loyalty Through CRM

19 min
This lesson shows how CRM helps you keep customers longer and turn one-time buyers into repeat buyers. You will learn how to identify retention signals, segment customers by behavior and value, automa…

Change Management

1 lesson

Lesson 13: CRM Adoption: Getting Teams to Actually Use the System

18 min
This lesson explains how to get a CRM adopted by the people who must use it every day. The focus is change management: reducing friction, building trust, and making the CRM part of existing workflows …

Risk Reduction

1 lesson

Lesson 14: Common CRM Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

17 min
This lesson focuses on the most common CRM mistakes that reduce adoption, distort customer data, and limit business value. You will learn how to spot weak CRM habits early, correct process gaps, and b…

Platform Selection

1 lesson

Lesson 15: Choosing and Evaluating the Right CRM Platform

20 min
Choosing a CRM platform is less about finding the most feature-rich product and more about finding the best fit for your team, workflows, and growth plans. In this lesson, you will learn how to define…

Implementation Planning

1 lesson

Lesson 16: Building a CRM Action Plan for Your Organization

22 min
This lesson helps you turn CRM goals into a practical action plan your organization can actually execute. You will learn how to define business outcomes, identify the customer data and processes that …
About Your Instructor
Professor Nathan Ward

Professor Nathan Ward

Professor Nathan Ward guides this AI-built Virversity course with a clear, practical teaching style.