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One facet of the CRM (Customer Relations Management) exercise that has been generally overlooked, is what a poor job executive management has done in persuading their customers to love their products.

Managing customer-relations is never straightforward. (For governments, “customer-relations” is the same thing as “public-relations”, since we the public are all customers for our governments’ policies.)

The most basic rule is to target each category of customer with a specially tailored approach. Whether you’re selling cars or clothes, your pitch will be a bit different to men, women, teenagers, and older people – and perhaps to different social groups as well.

If you’re selling the virtues of a plan to increase the protection of one ethnic group in a community from free competition, then you have to tailor your pitch differently to the beneficiaries. It doesn’t take a genius to see that.

The success or failure of any customer-relations program is a fair measure of general managerial competence. If management does not support a CRM system full force than failure of the plan is inevitable.

Contact dotNet Framework Solutions for you CRM consultation.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) programs are an essential part of any business operation. An effective CRM program will increase the company’s revenue by enabling its marketing department to focus on the customer through a variety of means - finding new customers, building customer loyalty through increased customer satisfaction, and growing business from existing customers. The end result of an effective CRM program is increased revenue, a loyal customer base, and lowered costs.

It’s not easy, nor is it cheap, to start up a CRM program. However, the benefits your company will reap from an effective program are far-reaching and include:

Better relations with your existing customers

Increased customer satisfaction should be the goal of any company. It results in increased sales through cross-selling other products to already-satisfied customers, as well as through recommendations to other potential customers.

Improved customer communication

Effective communication with your customers is essential in creating customer loyalty and satisfaction. A customer relationship program will help to improve communication with your existing customers so you can better meet their needs.

More effective marketing strategies

A customer relationship management program will help to better identify what marketing strategies are successful for the company and what strategies need to be revamped. In addition, the improved communication allows for marketing targeted to the customer’s specific needs.

New products and services

By developing better relationships with your currents customers and learning what their needs are, you can provide new products and services that meet their needs, ultimately increasing revenue.

Cost-effectiveness

You company will enjoy an increase in value with your current products as well as a reduced cost of supporting and meeting the needs of your customers through a customer relationship management program.

Reputation

Through a CRM program, customers and potential customers will see your commitment to customer satisfaction, thereby enhancing your reputation.

Access to more customers

Once you feel like your customer service efforts are up to speed and you know your customers and their needs, you can begin to expand your market. A better relationship with your customers allows you to identify prospective customers.

Contact dotNet Framework Solutions for your CRM consultation.

How can a vendor bring innovations in to the product with open source development model?

Customer loyalty can be defined as a customer’s sustained commitment to a company as demonstrated by repeat purchases, increased wallet share, and positive word-of-mouth referrals. Research indicates that when a company can command such loyalty, the benefits include, but go considerably beyond, incremental revenue.

Customer loyalty might be the only sustainable competitive advantage, especially in challenging economic times, yet, so few businesses understand how to create customer loyalty. The average U.S. company loses half of its customer base every five years. Hence the need for a systematic approach to this competitive differentiator and for a methodology that can help companies identify and improve their key drivers.

Customer loyalty depends on providing satisfaction not simply to customers themselves—although this is critical—but also to those employees and partners who can positively (or negatively) influence the customer relationship. Effectively managing relationships with all three of these constituents is the key to customer loyalty, competitive advantage, and financial stability.

For a company to sustain customer loyalty it must identify “loyalty drivers”—the key business attributes that have the greatest impact on the satisfaction of customers, employees, and partners. While certain factors can be considered valuable to customers everywhere, a company gains competitive advantage only when it can identify, measure, and track the loyalty drivers for the three constituents in its specific industry and field of operations. To achieve a competitive advantage, companies must adopt a satisfaction measurement system that is empirical, integrated, and customizable. This system must also provide real-time feedback to enable corrective action.

Contact dotNet Framework Solutions for your CRM consultation.

The Customer Perception

The customer’s interactions with a company form the perceived values of that company.  The “customer relationship” is how the enterprise should create and manage it processes to provide an exemplary experience from the purchase to delivery. How does the enterprise drive a customer to loyalty? Customer Loyalty Drivers

Let’s look at a true story that took place with a Hilton Hotel guest: a guest arrived at a
Hilton Hotel and was met at the door by the manager, who whisked the person to the restaurant for a get acquainted reception with the new staff and then served dinner on the house. Breakfast the next morning was also compliments of Hilton. It was just to say “thanks” for the customer’s frequent stays.Why would Hilton do that? To make guests feel so welcome and loyal that they wouldn’t consider the competition—and will enthusiastically recommend the hotel to others. If you where treated in this way by an enterprise wouldn’t you tell about your – experience.

Statistics show that customers relate to the following items in the order written when considering loyalty to an enterprise:

·  Quality interaction with people and systems

·  Superior product or service

·  Price or cost of ownership

As charted (courtesy of Right Now Technologies):

Creating and Managing the Drivers As the enterprise creates it business processes a key element that is a must additive is customer relations interaction. The activity of a process should provide for customer interaction so that the experience is pleasurable throughout the entirety of the transaction. Have you every encounter an experience with customer service or a process of the enterprise where you felt that you where a bother for calling or asking questions concerning your transaction? Have you every conducted a internet transaction where there was not enough information pertaining to a particular function to complete your purchase?  Theses type of processes where not designed to drive customer loyalty.

As the enterprise creates it business processes a key element that is a additive is customer relations interaction. The activity of a process should provide for customer interaction so that the experience is pleasurable throughout the entirety of the transaction. Have you every encounter an experience with customer service or a process of the enterprise where you felt that you where a bother for calling or asking questions concerning transaction? Have you every conducted a internet transaction where there was not enough information pertaining to a particular function to complete your purchase? Theses type of processes where not designed to customer .Business processes and Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) solutions should have CRM elements build into them to accurately capture the pulse of the customer so that management can create and adjust strategies like those of our Hilton story. Management must constantly review their processes for peak customer as well as business centric performance. This is a very delicate balance to maintain. 

In Summary

The enterprise must create in its Enterprise Architecture Plan (EAP) a strategy of designing and implementing customer loyalty drivers to enhance the performance of the enterprise.  With these drivers build into the plan; then to which are implemented in it processes; the enterprise increases its competitive advantage over it competitors.

As the pulse of the customer is captured by the BAM and customer information derived that provides provisions of enhancing the EAP would in terms increase customer loyalty.

Contact dotNet Framework Solutions for your CRM consultation.