The transformation in marketing research, the emergence of various sales methods leads to a change in relations with consum-ers. CRM systems are a relevant tool for managing customer relationships. More and more enterprises are using it in practice, however many Russian businessmen, as research shows, still do not use CRM in their business activities. The article discusses the genesis of CRM systems. Various ap-proaches to the definition of the system of relationships with customers in domestic and foreign sources are investigated. The classi-fications of CRM systems are presented ac-cording to: installation method, purpose, lev-el of information processing and architec-ture/availability. The current state of the CRM systems market in Russia has been studied using Google Trend and WordStat.