CRM as a marketing attitude

Effective CRM systems, or customer relationship management, relates to the aspects of exchange that a business has with its customers. But CRM isn’t just a piece of software – it covers all aspects of an organisation which has a relationship with the customer.

CRM examines how a business works with its customers, solves their problems, and encourages them to buy products and services. CRM covers all aspects of customer transactions and connects all internal customer-related elements of an organisation through an intelligent approach. Some professionals believe CRM also includes business processes, technology and laws to assist with the customer relationship through different stages of the business cycle. The more customer-related data it contains, the more effective a CRM system will be to help provide a better understanding of these processes.

Effective CRM systems: As a marketing attitude

When it comes to increasing market share, traditional marketing strategies have had the four Ps as their focus. These are price, product, promotion and place. The marketer’s goal was to increase the volume of transactions between the seller and the buyer. This volume provided a good measure on the standing of marketing strategies and techniques.

With CRM, we are moving beyond just increasing the volume of transactions. CRM’s objective is to increase the customer’s profit, income and satisfaction. A range of tools, technologies and company procedures that promote relationships with customers to increase sales needs to happen. Therefore, CRM is a strategy and a process viewpoint rather than a technical one. CRM as a strategy creates and maintains long-term relationships with profitable customers.

A successful CRM starts from a business strategy and philosophy, which focuses all company activities on customer needs. CRM takes a customer-centric approach to business.

So let’s break down the components of an effective CRM customer relationship management system

1. Customer

The customer is the organisation’s only source of present profitability and future growth. A good customer who produces more profit with fewer costs and resources is always rare, because customers are intelligent and competition is uncontrollable. It is also sometimes hard to distinguish a true customer, as buying decisions are often joint activities of decision-making partners. Information technologies might improve the organisation’s ability to distinguish and manage customers. CRM may be regarded as a marketing attitude based on the customer’s information.

2. Relationship

The relationship between a company and its customers involves a reciprocal connection. A relationship may be short- or long-term, continuous or discontinuous, repetitive or non-repetitive. It may be psychological or behavioural. The more positive the customer’s view of the products, the more dependent purchasing behaviours are on the conditions. For example, the purchasing patterns for plane tickets will be different depending on whether the tickets are bought for a family vacation or a work trip. CRM involves the management of this relationship, which includes benefits for both organisation and customer.

3. Management

CRM is not an activity limited only to the marketing department. In fact, it involves sustainable, integrated improvement in the entire organisation’s culture and processes. Customer data is collected to create an integrated picture of the customer. CRM often needs a comprehensive change in the organisation and its employees. Software used to support the management process covers:

• Services sector
• Electronic order
• Self service
• Catalogue management
• Invoice display
• Marketing plans
• Analysis.

All these techniques, processes and approaches are aimed at promoting and improving sales and marketing activities.

Effective CRM systems: Rethinking customer relationship management

CRM is the design of an organisation’s structure to establish a relationship with the customer and create reciprocal value through this process. This cannot be done with a software package alone.

A comprehensive business CRM model is made up of a variety of components that provide and classify experiences, and creates significant value in the relationship with the customer. Through this model, the organisation defines a strategy for how to behave with the customer, and describes how to deal with the customer and its efficiency in a specific behavioural section. The team members perform coding through the analytical data environment and the regulations on how to deal with specific customer strategies. In this stage, team members make significant use of strategy tools.

The executive tools of this strategy can make better use of stored and assessed data and specific decisions of the plan in support of a mutual relationships with the customer. Mutual customer relationships are established through the interactions with the customer and through customer-related contacts.

All the necessary information, business rules and strategy executive services are provided through the enterprise application integration layer. This makes it possible for the customer to find specific continuous experiences, which are suitable for him to establish a relationship. During this time, the customer never considers the contact point. As soon as the mutual relationships are established and the strategies are implemented, the organisational goal is specified. Now, conclusions will be drawn in order to choose the best way to increase the value in providing service to the customer and satisfying his needs.

Content relationship management subsystems

Effective CRM systems are divided into three main subsystems: operational, analytical and collaborative.

Effective CRM systems: 1. Operational CRM

This includes software such as sales force automation, business marketing automation, and customer support automation and involves activities related to customer services such as orders, sales automation and marketing. This is among the primary applications of CRM. In dealing with operational CRM, one can combine it with financial affairs and human resources. This is what is being done by enterprise resource planning software such as PeopleSoft and SAP. Many CRM projects fail because they cannot be combined with previous systems, so a system that is comprehensive can be very useful.

Effective CRM systems: 2. Analytical CRM

Analytical CRM obtains, stores, extracts, interprets and reports on customer data. Change is inevitable in today’s world, and the speed of change directly affects all aspects of business. As a result, an organisation’s sections that are accountable for such changes and the related data requirements also change. A key solution for today’s business challenges is to implement data infrastructure that assists fast fulfilment of the needs under competitive pressures and leads to the organisation’s survival. An organisation’s CRM depends on data infrastructures that store, analyse and manage customer-related data at a wide level. The four main parts of data technology in a CRM are:

• Data warehousing
• Database management system
• Data mining
• Business analysis software

Inside these main parts are applied systems and software that manage a part of the actions related to CRM. All of this software makes it possible for the CRM system to analyse the data.

Effective CRM systems: 3. Collaborative CRM

This type of CRM involves the different communications between the organisation and the customer such as email, telephone and web pages. Software such as partner relationship management software is introduced here. Collaborative CRM is in fact a communication centre which provides paths such as neural networks between the customer and suppliers. It can serve as a road to enter partner relationship management software or the customer interaction centre. Any action of CRM is on its own an interaction with the customer and a communication channel. CRM communication tools can include:

• Project management
• Project collaboration
• Internet chat and instant messaging
• E-learning systems
• Web cast systems
• Broadcast tools
• Web audio and radio
• Web video and cams
• Customer support
• Interactive sales support

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References

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