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Encyclopedia > Relationship management

Customer relationship management (CRM) is a broad term that covers concepts used by companies to manage their relationships with customers, including the capture, storage and analysis of customer information. A company in the broadest sense is an aggregation of people who stay together for a common purpose. ...

Contents

Aspects of CRM

There are four aspects of CRM, each of which can be implemented in isolation:

  1. Active CRM: Centralized database which facilitates organization of data and automate business processes and common tasks.
  2. Operational CRM: automation or support of customer processes that include a company’s sales or service representatives
  3. Collaborative CRM: direct communication with customers that does not include a company’s sales or service representatives (“self service”)
  4. Analytical CRM: analysis of customer data for a broad range of purposes

Active CRM

  • Centralize: Gather data for prospects, customers, and ordering information in one system.
  • Organize: Segment, manage, track and analyze data to improve customer relationships and targeted marketing campaigns to maximize revenue
  • Automate: Automate business tasks and processes based on data source or data type.

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 customer's contact history, and staff can retrieve information on customers from the database as necessary. Front office is an integrated CRM software. ... Wikibooks has more about this subject: Marketing Look up marketing in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...


Collaborative CRM

Collaborative CRM covers the direct interaction with customers. This can include a variety of channels, such as internet, email, automated phone/ interactive voice response (IVR). It can generally be equated with “self service”. In telephony, interactive voice response, or IVR, is a computerized system that allows a person, typically a telephone caller, to select options from a voice menu and otherwise interact with the computer phone system. ...


The objectives of Collaborative CRM can be broad, including cost reduction and service improvements. Driven by authors from the Harvard Business School (Kracklauer/Mills/Seifert), Collaborative CRM seems to be the new paradigm to succeed the leading Efficient Consumer Response and Category Management concept in the industry/trade relationship. Many organizations are searching for new ways to achieve and retain a competitive advantage via customer intimacy. Collaborative CRM gives a 360 degree feedback of the customer, industry and trade are pooling their respective customer data in the different sales and communication channels and therefore generate better customer insight.


Collaborative CRM also includes Partner Relationship Management (PRM) which enables companies to reach out to End Users with the help of Partners (Resellers and Distributors)


Analytical CRM

Analytical CRM analyzes customer data for a variety of purposes including:

  • design and execution of targeted marketing campaigns to optimize marketing effectiveness
  • design and execution of specific customer campaigns, including customer acquisition, cross-selling, up-selling, retention
  • analysis of customer behavior to aid product and service decision making (eg pricing, new product development, etc)
  • management decisions, e.g. financial forecasting and customer profitability analysis
  • risk assessment and fraud detection, in particular for credit card transactions

Analytical CRM generally makes heavy use of Predictive analytics. Look up acquisition in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Cross-selling is the strategy of pushing new products to current customers based on their past purchases. ... Up-selling is a sales technique, where a salesman attempts to have the consumer purchase more expensive items, upgrades, or other add-ons in an attempt to make a better sale. ... Instance of retaining (e. ... Predictive analytics encompasses a variety of techniques from statistics and data mining that process current and historical data in order to make “predictions” about future events. ...


Strategy

Several commercial CRM software packages are available which vary in their approach to CRM. However, CRM is not just a technology, but rather a holistic approach to an organization's philosophy in dealing with its customers. This includes policies and processes, front-of-house customer service, employee training, marketing, systems and information management. Hence, it is important that any CRM implementation considers not only technology, but furthermore the broader organizational requirements. Holism (from holon, a Greek word meaning entity) is the idea that the properties of a system cannot be determined or explained by the sum of its components alone. ... A customer is someone who makes use of or receives the products or services of an individual or organization. ...


The objectives of CRM strategy must consider a company’s specific situation and its customers' needs and expectations.


Technology considerations

The technology requirements of a CRM strategy are very complex and far reaching. The basic building blocks include:

  • A database to store customer information. This can be a CRM specific database or an enterprise data warehouse.
  • Operational CRM requires customer agent support software.
  • Collaborative CRM requires customer interaction systems, eg an interactive website, automated phone systems etc.
  • Analytical CRM requires statistical analysis software, as well as software that manages any specific marketing campaigns.
  • Support CRM systems require interactive chat software to provide live help and support to web site visitors.

The term or expression database originated within the computer industry. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...

Successes

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.


In contrast there are a growing number of successes. One example is the National Australia Bank (NAB) which has pursued a CRM strategy for over ten years and has won numerous awards for its efforts. [1] [2] The National Australia Bank or nab (ASX: NAB, LSE: NAB, NYSE: NAB, TYO: 8637 ) colloquially the National or the NAB. The NAB is part of the NAB Group it is the largest bank in Australia and 28th largest in the world. ...


Privacy and Data Security

The data gathered as part of CRM must consider customer privacy and data security. Customers want the assurance that their data is not shared with 3rd parties without their consent and not accessed illegally by 3rd parties. This article or section should be merged with Consumer privacy Customer privacy measures are those taken by commercial organizations to ensure that confidential customer data is not stolen or abused. ... Data security is the means of ensuring that data is kept safe from corruption and that access to it is suitably controlled. ...


Customers also want their data used by companies to provide a benefit for them. For instance, an increase in unsolicited telemarketing calls is generally resented by customers while a small number of relevant offers is generally appreciated by customers and consumers.


Customer relationship management software

Customer relationship management software is defined as business management and automation of the front-office divisions of an organization. CRM software is essentially meant to address the needs of Marketing, Sales & Distribution and Customer Service and Support divisions within an organization and allow the three to share data on prospects, customers, partners, competitors and employees. The purpose of CRM software is to manage the customer through the entire lifecycle, i.e. from prospect to qualified opportunity to order.


CRM software automates many of the needs of Marketing, Sales and Support users, such as Telephony, or the ability to conduct phone calls and manage call data, and tools to capture, share and manage automated alerts on lead data as it passes through the sales pipeline. CRM software provides a standard framework for pushing leads through a sales pipeline and managing it amongst many stakeholders in real time, in order to provide better customer relations and grow revenues by creating more sales, and losing fewer customers.


CRM software helps organizations achieve their customer relations goals by measuring key performance indicators collected by the CRM software about customer lifecycle behaviour. Benefits include isolating those marketing campaigns that drove the most and best quality leads, improving internal efficiency, complete customer histories and the ability to provide appropriate support and consequently retain customers.[citation needed]


References

  1. ^ http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/3520/53/
  2. ^ http://www.ifslearning.com/events/financial_innovation_awards/fia_winners_2006.cfm

See also



 

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