Customer relationship management

Customer relationship management CRM is a multifaceted process mediated by a set of information technologies that focuses on creating twoway exchanges with customers so that firms have an intimate knowledge of their needs wants and buying patterns. In this way CRM helps companies understand as well as anticipate the needs of current and potential customers. Functions that support this business purpose include sales marketing customer service training professional development performance management human resource development and compensation. Many CRM initiatives have failed because implementation was limited to software installation without alignment to a customercentric straty.There are many aspects of CRM which were mistakenly thought to be capable of being implemented in isolation from each other. From the outside of the organization a customer experiences the business as one entity operating over extended periods of time. Thus piecemeal CRM implementation can come across to the customer as unsynchronized where employees and web sites and services are acting independently of one another yet together represent a common entity.CRM is the philosophy policy and coordinating straty connecting different players within an organization so as to coordinate their efforts in creating an overall valuable series of experiences products and services for the customer. The different players within the organization are in identifiable groups customer Facing Operations The people and the technology support of processes that affect a customers experience at the frontline interface between the customer and the organization. This can include face to face phone IM chat email web and combinations of all media. Selfservice kiosk and web selfservice are doing the job of vocals and they belong here. Internal Collaborative Functional Operations The people and technology support of processes at the policy and back office which ultimately affect the activities of the customer Facing Operations concerning the building and maintaining of customer relationships. This can include IT billing invoicing maintenance planning marketing advertising finance services planning and manufacturing.

External Collaboration functions

External Collaboration functions The people and technology support of processes supporting an organization and its cultivation of customer relationships that are affected by the organizations own relationship with suppliersvendors and retail outletsdistributors. Some would also include industry cooperative networks . lobbying groups trade associations. This is the external network foundation which supports the internal Operations and Customer facing Operations. Customer Advocates and Experience Designers Creative designers of customer experience that meet customer relationship goals of delivering value to the customer and profit to the organization or desired outcomes and achievement of goals for nonprofit and government organizations. Performance Managers and Marketing Analysts Designers of Key Performance Indicators and collectors of metrics and data so as to executeimplement marketing campaigns call campaigns Web straty and keep the customer relationship activities on track. This would be the milestones and data that allow activities to be coordinated that determine if the CRM straty is working in delivering ultimate outcomes of CRM activities market share numbers and types of customers revenue profitability intellectual property concerning customers preferences. Customer and Employee Surveyors and Analysts Customer Relationships are both fact driven and impression driven the quality of an interaction is as important as the information and outcome achieved in determining whether the relationship is growing or shrinking in value to the participants.

The basic building blocks A database for customer lifecycle time series information about each customer and prospect and their interactions with the organization including order information support information requests complaints interviews and survey responses. Customer Intelligence Translating customer needs and profitability projection into game plans for different sments or groups of customers captured by customer interactions Human automated or combinations of both into software that tracks whether that game plan is followed or notand whether the desired outcomes are obtained. Business Modeling Customer Relationship Straty Goals and outcomes Numbers and description of whether goals were met and models of customer sments and game plans worked as hypothesized. Learning and Competency Management Systems Customer Capacity and Competency Development Training and improving processes and technology that enable the organization to get closer to achieving the desired results. Complex systems require practice in order to achieve desired outcomes especially when humans and technology are interacting. Iteration is the key to refining improving and innovating to stay ahead of the competition in Customer Relationship Management. Successful tools technology and practices will be copied by the competition as soon as they are proven successful. The building blocks can be implemented over time separately but eventually need to be dynamically coordinated. The ongoing alignment of the basic building blocks distinguishes an elant seamless CRM implementation which successfully builds mutually valuable relationships.

Operational CRM

Operational CRM provides support to front office business processes including sales marketing and service. Each interaction with a customer is generally added to a customers contact history and staff can retrieve information on customers from the database when necessary. One of the main benefits of this contact history is that customers can interact with different people or different contact channels in a company over time without having to describe the history of their interaction each time. Consequently many call centers use some kind of CRM software to support their call center agents. Operational CRM processes customer data for a variety of purposes Managing Campaigns Enterprise Marketing Automation Sales Force Automation Analytical CRM Analytical CRM analyzes customer data for a variety of purposes Design and execution of targeted marketing campaigns to optimize marketing effectiveness Design and execution of specific customer campaigns including customer acquisition crossselling upselling retention Analysis of customer behavior to aid product and service decision making . pricing new product development etc. Management decisions financial forecasting and customer profitability analysis Prediction of the probability of customer defection churn analysis Analytical CRM generally makes heavy use of data mining.

Customer Interaction System

The function of the Customer Interaction System or Collaborative Customer Relationship Management is to coordinate the multichannel service and support given to the customer by providing the infrastructure for responsive and effective support to customer issues questions complaints etc.Collaborative CRM aims to get various departments within a business such as sales technical support and marketing to share the useful information that they collect from interactions with customers. Feedback from a technical support center for could be used to inform marketing staffers about specific services and features requested by customers. Collaborative CRMs ultimate goal is to use information collected from all departments to improve the quality of customer service. Geographic CRM Geographic CRM GCRM is a customer relation management information system which collaborates geographic information system and traditional CRM.gCRM combines data collected from route of movement types of residence ambient trading areas and other customer and marketing information which are matched with relevant road conditions building formations and a floating population. Such data are conformed with a map and is rionally analyzed with OLAPOnLine Analytical Processing for visualization. This enables a company to examine potential customers and manage existing customers in the rion.Several commercial CRM software packages are available which vary in their approach to CRM. However as mentioned above CRM is not just a technology but rather a comprehensive customercentric approach to an organizations philosophy in dealing with its customers. This includes policies and processes frontofhouse customer service employee training marketing systems and information management. Hence it is important that any CRM implementation considerations stretch beyond technology towards the broader organizational requirements.The objectives of a CRM straty must consider a company’s specific situation and its customers needs and expectations. Information gained through CRM initiatives can support the development of marketing straty by developing the organizations knowledge in areas such as identifying customer sments improving customer retention improving product offerings by better understanding customer needs and by identifying the organizations most profitable customers.CRM straties can vary in size complexity and scope. Some companies consider a CRM straty to only focus on the management of a team of salespeople. However other CRM straties can cover customer interaction across the entire organization. Many commercial CRM software packages that are available provide features that serve sales marketing event management project management and finance.

CRM projects

While there are numerous reports of failed implementations of various types of CRM projects these are often the result of unrealistic high expectations and exaggerated claims by CRM vendors.Many of these failures are also related to data quality and availability. Data cleaning is a major issue. If the company CRM straty is to track lifecycle revenues costs margins and interactions between individual customers this must be reflected in all business processes. Data must be extracted from multiple sources . departmentaldivisional databases including sales manufacturing supply chain logistics finance service etc. requiring an intrated comprehensive business processing system to be in place with defined structures and data quality. If not interfaces must be developed and implemented to extract data from different systems. This creates a demand far beyond customer satisfaction to understand the full businesstobusiness relationship. For this reason CRM is more than a sales or customer interaction system.The experience from many companiesattribution needed is that a clear CRM requirement with rard to reports . input and output requirements is of vital importance before starting any implementation.citation needed With a proper demand specification a great deal of time and money can be saved based on realistic expectations of systems capability.citation needed A well operating CRM system can be an extremely powerful tool for management and customer straties.Privacy and data securityOne of the primary functions of CRM software is to collect information about customers. When gathering data as part of a CRM solution a company must consider customer privacy and data security with respect to lal and cultural environments. Some customers prefer assurance that their data is not shared with third parties without their consent and that it cannot be illicitly accessed by third parties.

Customer service

Customer service also known as Client Service is the provision of service to customers before during and after a purchase.According to Turban et al “Customer service is a series of activities designed to enhance the level of customer satisfaction that is the feeling that a product or service has met the customer expectation.” Its importance varies by product industry and customer. As an an expert customer might require less prepurchase service i.e. advice than a novice. In many cases customer service is more important if the purchase relates to a “service” as opposed to a “product.Customer service may be provided by a person . sales and service representative or by automated means called selfservice. s of self service are Internet sites.Customer service is normally an integral part of a company’s customer value proposition.The quality and level of customer service has decreased in recent years. This can be attributed to a lack of support or understanding at the executive and middle management levels of a corporation.