1) Introduction
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has become a main focus for businesses with today’s markets becoming more saturated and competitive.
‘Customer Relationship Management is the ultimate challenge for marketing experts in any business. A successful company will use customer information wisely to build relationships with their customers, on the level that together they will work together towards a long-term relationship.’ (Xu et al. 2002)
High customer Intimacy can be produced from these processes and strategy. ‘Customer intimacy is an essential factor in the Customer Relationship Management value chain’ (Buttle, 2004). This marketing strategy consists of a business using ways to get close to clients
…show more content…
In addition, to further improve customer intimacy, a company can target a customer and send offers for the products they buy most through email or by post all of which strengthens this bond between customer and company. Here we see a table which shows us the ladder of customer loyalty. With an increase in customer intimacy, a business can take prospecting purchaser and convey them into a loyal customer (Christopher at al, 1998).
2.2) The Cooperative Membership Card
The company to demonstrate is The Co-operative Food. Retail chains are at the fore-front for advances in technology and are competing for ways in which to understand their customers and use the strategies to improve customer intimacy. The purchasing behavior in food retail is the most repetitive of all (Manas, 2011), so to get this customer intimacy correct has never been more important. The Co-operative Food (Co-op) uses their loyalty strategy by having membership scheme available to all colleagues and customers. This card acts as most retail cards do in that they collect a customer’s information which is then fed to the company’s data base. There is a number of ways in which this card creates an improvement in customer intimacy. First of all, unlike all of the other schemes available, twice a year the Co-op gives a share of its profits through the post to all of the members of the scheme. ‘You can enjoy your share of the profits along with exclusive member discounts and offers’
Given such a turbulent business environment, building relationships with important stakeholders is crucial to a firm’s well-being. Both customers and employees are major concerns for firms that want to develop loyalty and competitive advantages. The challenge for long-run success in business is to continually increase the customer’s dependence on the company to provide products in an environment of mutual respect and perceived fairness. Creating mutually beneficial exchange relationship with customers mean that both parties work together to understand needs and develop trust.
Through sustaining the customer relationships, leaders of the company have realized that “becoming nearer to the consumer” is vital for the progression.
Customers want to get exactly what they need, even if they have to pay a higher cost or wait a little longer. Companies which serve these types of customers are committed to improving “customer intimacy”. For example, Honda, British Airways.
Customer relationship management is a business strategy that attempts to ensure every customer interaction that is appropriate and consistent regardless of the communication channel and that CRM is a core business strategy for managing and optimizing customer interactions across the public or private’s institutions’ traditional and electronic interfaces. CRM can be used to gain clearer insight and more intimate understanding of customers' behaviours and in helping to build an effective competitive advantage and its relationship to the e-business process (Khirallah 2000) and that committed customers can be viewed as company assets who are likely to be a source of favourable referrals and are more resistant to competitors' offers (Khirallah 2000).
For most business owners, they would all be in agreement and say that the connection they have with their customers is very important to them because it decides if the business is going to be a great success, or if the business is going to take a nose-dive. As a result, of an increase in customer standards and financial difficulties most firms no matter how big they are, they are taking a second look and thinking about how technology can help them to develop healthier and stronger relationships, and how to capitalize on their business. The best way to handle this situation is to choose a good customer relationship management system this can help a business they can become more efficient while maximizing their productivity. However, CRM systems could only be used by enterprise organizations; that has all changed this system is now being used as an influential factor when determining how well an organization will do (Saab, 2011).
These personnel could include front office, sales staff, and customer support and service. In each interaction opportunity with customers, CRM data is used by staff to produce rapid, informed, and, desirably, helpful decisions in order to both satisfy the customer in the present, and maintain their loyalty in the future. Though there are many approaches and techniques for CRM, all successful applications have three things in common. First, it is important to recognize that people are the most vital link between an organization and their customers. Second, the process of CRM must be tested and sophisticated, as well continuously improving. Third, there is usually a relatively large degree of technology integrated into the
An effective Customer Relationship Management (CRM) program can be used to identify, retain, satisfy and obtain customers by using technology to optimize strategies for understanding customers’ needs to manage business interactions with current, former, and prospective customers. Additionally, CRM also enables companies to maximize internal, external, marketing and customer service operations to better address the needs of the customer building a better relationship with customers that a more profitable. (Ahmad & Buttle, 2001)
Nowadays, more and more enterprises, especially hotels, put specific emphasis on the management of customer relationship. They start to notice that today’s market is no longer the enterprise-oriented market, while turns to be customer-oriented. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a series of commercial activities that are designed to help a company obtain and maintain the closer and long-term relationship with customers, so as to understand more about each individual, and then create value for them. Thus, customers can be more valuable to the company as well. In order to implement CRM strategies, the company needs to utilize advanced information
The main goal of Customer relationship management is to create a strong bond between customers and the company. The strong bond can be build by focusing on the two main objectives of CRM. Providing the organization and all of the employees that treat customers with a single and complete view of every customer at every touch point and across all channels and providing the customer a single and complete view of the company and its extended channels (O’Brien, A & Marakas, G. 2004).
Today, customer relationship management is very important to the business world. Most of the companies established a department and the programs to manage their relationship with the customers. Customer relationship management (CRM) is a business strategy which designed to help a company to understand and look forward to the needs of its potential and current customers (Anderson & Stang, 2000). Customer data is being collected in several different areas of the company, stored in a central database, analyzed, and distributed to key points (Anderson & Stang, 2000).The business world once was “product-centric”, the companies just provided what they could produce. However, it is now become “customer-centric”, they provide products and service
In a second paper, we’ll analyze CEM from the enterprise perspective, and highlight performance gaps and methodologies to improve customer experiences while driving loyal and profitable relationships. Consider what customers had to say in our recent survey. Some key findings include the following: In earning their loyalty, customers rate their quality of interactions with an organization as equally important to the quality of the goods or services purchased. Off-shoring and IVR initiatives, popular methods to cut the cost of customer interactions, have not improved customer experiences for more than 90 percent of survey respondents. In contrast, investing in employee training and Internet-based sales and support has generally had a more positive effect, improving customer experiences more than a third of the time. Post-sales service/support activities are the most likely to generate a “memorable” experience, either positive or negative, because of the strong emotions that often result in problem situations. Memorable experiences build loyalty—31 percent of customers in the survey recommended the company to a friend or colleague, and 19 percent increased their purchases. “Well-trained and helpful employees” is the top attribute of companies that provide “consistently excellent” customer experiences.
It’s very important to a business to have good customer relationships; CRM Software’s main objectives are to attract new customers while maintaining and satisfying their current customers and trying to win back the trust of former customers. Customers are one of the most important variables for a business owner to pay attention to, when trying to create a profit. Customer Relationship Management software keeps track of customer information to help the company maintain a strong relation with the customers. Good CRM Software brings together information from all databases within a company and gives
For many reasons, customer’s relationship management in marketing financial services gives a whole host of suggestions as to how companies can improve their Customer Relationship Management and achieve their anticipated returns on investment. It shows how to avoid the main problems and challenges some of the conventional wisdom about what is happening in the financial services market.
In an industry that is more and more competitive every day hospitality organizations like any other business have to find ways to build a client base as well as keep their current clientele loyal. A guests experience when traveling, dining out, or planning their special event is of utmost importance when it comes to the success of the individual organizations that they visit or rely on to provide the service needed. Building a positive customer relationship is beneficial to the customer as well as the financial performance of the organization. In order to build and maintain this positive relationship an organizations marketing department employs a marketing strategy referred to as Customer Relationship Management (CRM). The term CRM can be defined and interpreted in many different ways Reinhartz et al (2004) define CRM as a “process to manage customer relationship initiation, maintenance and termination across all customer contact points to maximize the value of the relationship portfolio”. The way an organization implements CRM is their individual strategy and this strategy can include one or many different approaches. An organizations customer service philosophy should be centered on information that is collected through the use of CRM; therefore, CRM is not only a marketing strategy but also an overall customer-centric business strategy. The purpose of this paper is to identify different types of CRM strategies, their benefits, how these strategies fail as well as
We will establish more intimate relationship with our customers than we have not had ever before. Traditionally, our interaction with customers was limited to purchases made once every ten years (see report 1 “War on Waste” Section). Our solution is to introduce guided and