Customer Relationship Management: Strategies for Success
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
CRM is the process of building long-term relationships through continued dialogue and in-depth knowledge of the client. It involves solutions that improve relations between a company and its market, enabling more productive interaction with the client. The basic idea is to collect, analyze, and interpret data to:
- Communicate with the market constantly, individually addressing messages to customers more effectively.
- Understand the needs of each customer and anticipate their desires.
- Improve product development.
- Build customer loyalty.
- Focus marketing campaigns on a well-defined target audience.
- Reduce costs and improve investment returns.
- Develop a consistent service policy.
The objective is to maximize the value of the customer life cycle as a result of the interaction: action-sale, attention to the guest, and the use of communication tools and knowledge technologies.
Definition of Norms and Standards
The only way to control the supply is to develop and implement service and quality standards that define what is expected. Thus, ambiguity is limited, and quality becomes guidelines for concrete activities that can be observed and measured. The quality of a firm is measured by its effectiveness in meeting customer needs.
Many companies seek a competitive advantage by deploying a management system oriented to total quality. This is a strategic decision aimed at achieving maximum customer satisfaction.
The management system serves two basic principles: the responsibility of workers and listening to the customer.
Responsibility of Employees
Quality is everybody’s business and affects the entire organization. Quality improvement is not possible without the participation of all staff.
Listen to the Customer
The company must comply with the wishes of their customers, and everything must be done taking into account the needs of their users, since the perceived satisfaction by the client determines the quality of the organization.
Establishing a policy of managing for total quality often requires a change in organizational culture. Training for quality management and staff is crucial. In addition, one must be aware that:
- Workers hardly stick to changes in business direction if they are imposed, and if they do, it will be superficial, without excessive compromise. Changes should be desired and accepted.
- A change of culture in the workplace will only be possible if existing habits are taken into account.
Knowledge of the Competition
A good customer service program must include benchmarking activities. This is a management tool that involves an ongoing process to identify, compare, and learn from the best practices of other companies to apply to our business.
The aim is to find out how we can improve to compete. Discovering the success factors of competitors and reshaping the competitive strategies of the company are vital issues for the survival of the organization.
Control of Suppliers
Clearly setting out the requirements for each supplier is a priority.
Choosing reliable providers and achieving workable compromises with them is a vital decision for developing the service strategy.