Page 189 - DMGT308_CUSTOMER_RELATIONSHIP_MANAGEMENT

Customer Relationship Management

Notes CSS applications are helping organisations make a transition from cost centres to profit centres.
Moreover, when these applications get fully integrated with sales and marketing applications,
they can provide unique opportunities for organisations to up-sell and cross-sell additional
products into their customer base.

Basic Requirements of e-CRM

A company can approach e-CRM from different evolutionary paths, but they all need to proceed
toward the same objective of optimising the value of customer relationships.
1. Electronic Channels: New electronic channels such as the Web and personalized
e-Messaging have become the medium for fast, interactive and economic customer
communications, challenging companies to keep pace with this increased velocity.
2. Enterprise: Through e-CRM, a company gains the means to touch and shape a customer’s
experience across the entire organisation, reaching beyond just the bounds of marketing
to sales, services, and corner offices – whose occupants need to understand and assess
customer behaviour. An e-CRM strategy relies heavily on the construction and maintenance
of as data warehouse that provides a consolidated, detailed view of individual customer
behaviour and communication history.

3. Empowerment: In this new age, e-CRM strategies must be structured to accommodate
consumers who now have the power to decide when and how to communicate with the
company and through which channel, which ability to opt for or out of. Consumers decide
which firms earn the privilege to “talk” with them. In light of this new consumer
empowerment, an e-CRM solution must be structured to deliver timely, pertinent, and
valuable information that a consumer accepts in exchange for his or her attention.
4. Economics: Too many companies execute communication strategies with little-effort or
ability to understand the economics of customer relationships and channel delivery choices.
Yet customer economics drives smart asset allocation decisions, directing resources and
efforts of individuals shall provide the greatest return on customer communication
initiatives.
5. Assessment: Understanding customer economics relies on a company’s ability to attribute
customer behaviour to marketing programs. A company should evaluate customer
interactions along with various customer touch-point-channels and compare anticipated
ROI against actual returns, through customer analytical reporting. Evaluation of results
allows companies to continuously refine and improve efforts to optimize relationships
between companies and their customers.
6. Outside Information: The use of consumer-sectioned external information can be employed
to further understand customer needs. This information can be gained from sources such
as third-party information networks and Web-page profiler applications, under the
condition that companies adhere to strict consumer opt-in rules and privacy concerns.

Conscious of each requirement that will shape its future business, a company builds an e-CRM
solution in order to optimize relationships between itself and its customers. For each company,
optimization might have different and multiple objectives such as:
(a) Increasing the number of customers;
(b) Increasing customer profitability;
(c) Growing revenue;
(d) Driving customers through cost effective channels; and

(e) Cross-selling for retaining customers.

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