Advertisment

CRM: Do You Get Along with Your Customers?

author-image
DQI Bureau
New Update

Most companies considerthemselves customer-focused and believe that in being

so they are servicing the customer. But essentially, being customer-focused

means to have a consistent, dependable and convenient interaction with customers

in every encounter. Some facts to chew before we get started:

Advertisment
  • It costs six

    times more to sell to a new customer than to sell to an existing one

  • A company can

    boost profits by 85% by increasing annual customer retention by just 5%

  • 70% of customers

    will do business with the company again if it quickly takes care of a

    service snafu.

Out of this comes electronic customer relationship management

(e-CRM). CRM is typically defined as an integrated sales, marketing and service

strategy that precludes lone existence and depends on coordinated actions among

the customers, the suppliers, partners and vendors. E-CRM goes a step ahead and

adopts a Web-centric approach that synchronizes customer relationships across

communication channels (like the Web, e-mail, fax and phone), business functions

(sales, marketing and customer support) and audiences.

CRM is an integrated framework, or a business strategy, and

putting it into place will require a set of integrated applications that will

address every aspect of business functions and the customer. CRM tools help

companies understand their customers from a multifaceted perspective: who they

are, what they like, and what they do...

Advertisment

CRM everywhere

By investing in CRM or e-CRM applications, companies are

looking at retaining existing customers and converting potential customers into

lifetime customers. In certain industries, customer retention is a key driver

for profitability. Also, with the advent of new technologies, it is critical for

any business to meet the expectations of the customers (that is changing ever so

fast…).

For long, only large enterprises thought of such applications

as part of their business processes. But today, with competition being the ‘key’

word in every industry, even the small and medium businesses have realized the

importance of customer-related activities and are adopting these technologies at

a fast rate. Also not to ignore, advancement and choice of technology have

permitted the cost of these technologies to fall to an affordable rate.

Companies that have fewer than 100 employees can now adopt and implement these

applications.

Advertisment

Various studies have reflected that the CRM industry is

poised to grow at an exponential rate. According to a recent study by McKinsey,

solutions based on e-CRM already account for a third of the $100-billion global

market for customer care.

Through this column, we plan to touch upon the various

issues, concerns and apprehensions that customers and companies have towards

adopting e-CRM products as part of their value offering to their customers. We

will also touch upon the future trends and technology breakthroughs that the e-CRM

sector will face over the next couple of months.

Arun Maheshwari is CEO,

TriVium India Software



First published at www.ciol.com

Advertisment