When I first heard of the term Customer relationship management I thought that it had to do with the public relation aspect of business, but in fact that is not the case and I set about my research. Customer relationship management is in fact an internal function, I will try my best in layman’s terms to describe what it is and how it can affect your business- as well as some of the negative aspects of Customer relationship management.

Customer relationship management, is a business strategy for managing more effective interactions between the business and the customers, mainly through the sales function. It is a highly precise function which uses technology (software) to gather and organize information about clients and buying behavior. The technology than takes that information and then organizes the information for the purpose of either finding new clients, winning over potential clients or keeping existing clients happy. I am going to give you a very simple example of what I am talking about.

Suppose you have a corner pharmacy in your home town. Now let us suppose that you have quite a regular flow of customers into your pharmacy- some are loyal customers while others just pass by. Now let us imagine that you want to be more informed about the ailments of your frequent customers, so that you can let them know when a new medicine or treatment has come in which might help them. You would have to have some sort of system with their information about the ailments and also their contact numbers. Now if you decide to call in a CRM expert, they will set up the software and guide you as to how to enter the information of the customer so that when a new product comes in you can contact that client, with the new information and they will also train the staff as to how to integrate the systems, so that everybody knows what to do. This will lead to an increase in sales, based on the facts that you have identified a need of the customer and also how to satisfy that need. The customer who feels you know their case personally will also be more loyal to your pharmacy.

This is a simplistic example of how the customer relationship management function can help you to do deliver better customer relations whilst boosting your business sales. Now it goes without saying that a major corporation, would have a much more intricate, plan, which would involve many of the other departments if not all of the other departments. All of these departments need to work in harmony to achieve the objectives of Customer relationship management. The IT department as well needs to be up to speed with all the processes.

The reason for some of the challenges when implementing the Customer Relationship Management is this. In order for CRM to work, it has to be implemented by everyone and it needs to be done properly. Now some of the employees find some of the tools are difficult initiate or they simply do not put any effort into the proper functioning of the system. Poor planning and poor integration can cause this system to fail, and it is unfortunate because if run properly it can result in a big increase of sales.
Customer relationship management can, if implemented properly have a big positive effect on sales, and it can also reduce the work load of staff. But it needs to be researched, communicated and tested properly in order for it to be successful.

Tags: HMJProject.com

Tagged with: •

Filed under: Uncategorized

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!