FREE online courses on CRM - The Importance of Customer Relationship - How to Manage Customer Relationship

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) concerns itself with the ability to collect, analyze and track customer information. Creating customer loyalty is one of the outcomes of CRM program. This is possible if customer's needs are being met. One has to make an impact on the customer's attitude to do business.

Here are the six steps in CRM

Define Objectives

Managing customer relationship should be a part of an overall audit of customer management.

·                     Competitors attempt to target your best customers.

·                     Customers switching away from your product and services.

·                     Fall in the repurchase rates among your best customers.

·                     Fall in the rate of customers desiring to do business with you and not with your competitors.

The objectives are defined from the information received from the audit.

1.                 Understanding customer's needs

Certain in formations could be helpful;

·                     Which of the customers are important for business?

·                     What's the propensity of these groups to respond to different marketing strategies?

·                     How do they respond in quantitative terms?

Such a research helps to find the loyalty position of its profitable customers.

2.                 Develop the Approach

This concerns tailoring the approach effectively to build loyalty of the customers. The customers should be talked to and information should be exchanged with them. It should be notified that it costs less to sell more to existing customers. They are easy to be accessed than spending on acquiring new customers.

3.                 Define the Segments

Here comes the profile of the best customers. It tracks their purchase history, transactional values and promotional responses. A team should work out which groups of customers it wishes to provide the benefits.

4.                 Deliver the Service

The required infrastructure utilities need to be concentrated upon –

·                     Staff knowledge;

·                     Skills and attitudes;

·                     Pervading service culture;

·                     Organizational policies;

·                     Product development and

·                     Communication among other things.

5.                  Measure the Effectiveness

The CRM program should be shaped so as to produce better business and profits. A periodic assessment should be mode to visualize the profits earned from market segments.