Customer Relationship Manager

The most prominent objectives of using the methods of Customer Relationship Management are as follows −

Improve Customer Satisfaction − CRM helps in customer satisfaction as the satisfied customers remain loyal to the business and spread good word-of-mouth. This can be accomplished by fostering customer engagement via social networking sites, surveys, interactive blogs, and various mobile platforms.

Expand the Customer Base − CRM not only manages the existing customers but also creates knowledge for prospective customers who are yet to convert. It helps creating and managing a huge customer base that fosters profits continuity, even for a seasonal business.

Enhance Business Sales − CRM methods can be used to close more deals, increase sales, improve forecast accuracy, and suggestion selling. CRM helps to create new sales opportunities and thus helps in increasing business revenue.

Improve Workforce Productivity − A CRM system can create organized manners of working for sales and sales management staff of a business. The sales staff can view customer's contact information, follow up via email or social media, manage tasks, and track the salesperson's performance. The salespersons can address the customer inquiries speedily and resolve their problems.

Marketing automation involves market segmentation, campaigns management, event-based marketing, and promotions. The campaign modules of Marketing Automation enable the marketing force to access customer-related data for designing, executing and evaluating targeted offers, and communications.

Event-based (trigger) marketing is all about messaging and presenting offers at a particular time. For example, a customer calls the customer care number and asks about the rate of interest for credit card payment. This event is read by CRM as the customer is comparing interest rates and can be diverted to another business for a better deal. In such cases, a customized offer is triggered to retain the customer.

There can be multiple definitions of CRM from different perspectives −

From the viewpoint of the Management, CRM can be defined as an organized approach of developing, managing, and maintaining a profitable relationship with customers.

By equating the term with technology, the IT organizations define CRM as a software that assists marketing, merchandising, selling, and smooth service operations of a business.

As per Franics Buttle, World's first professor of CRM, it is the core business strategy that integrates internal processes and functions, and external networks, to create and deliver value to a target customer at profit. It is grounded on high quality customer data and information technology.

The primary goal of CRM is to increase customer loyalty and in turn improve business profitability.

F. Robert Dwyer, a marketing professor at Lindner College of Business states five phases through which a customer-supplier relationship evolves

Awareness − The parties come in contact with each other and see each other as a possible customer or supplier.

► Exploration − The parties find out more about one another's capabilities and business prospects. Trial purchasing takes place and performance is assessed. If deal is not smooth then the relationship terminates with the damage of less costs.

► Expansion − It is composed of attraction, communication, bargaining, development of rules, and development of expectations from each other.

► Commitment − Trust begins to develop and deals are executed as per the norms and expectations. Mutual understanding and cooperation develops, and number of transactions start building up.

► Dissolution − Not all relationships can survive. Some relationships are terminated either bilaterally (both parties agree to end) or unilaterally (one party decides to end). If it is bilateral decision then both parties retrieve the invested amount and resources. Supplier exits relationship in case of failure to contribute sales volume or profit. Customer ends relationship unilaterally due to changes in product requirement, repeated servicing failure, etc.

Dissolution can be avoided by reducing cost-to-serve.

Many organizations use Outlook BCM or Excel for managing their contacts, which offer no planning or setup process - just create a column or type in a field and get started. This causes problems when information is related and the flexible aspects of the previous solution are overlooked. There are real benefits that won't happen without understanding the new vernacular; the specific way the new solution describes the data. For example, an "account" in Salesforce may not be the same as an "account" in Highrise. In fact, it might have another name altogether, such as "company." Understanding how the particular vendor uses "leads" or "opportunities" will help to avoid a great deal of frustration.

In such a situation, it's critical to look at a couple of things:

1. The current size of the customer vs. it's growth potential going forward.

2. The brand value that this customer brings to your organization.

3. The level of commitment that this customer has shown towards your organization since they've been on-board.

With these points in mind, one could argue the ROI of such a request with the internal Product Management teams. Internally, you'd need to evaluate the long term implications of developing such a feature. Does this feature have widespread requirement? Would this enable your sales team to close more deals? How well does this new ability resonate with your other customers? and finally, is this feature a logical extension of your company's vision for the product?

There's no Yes or No answer to such a situation. It'll all depend on the outcome of all the above mentioned scenarios.

This is a tricky situation. While on one hand, this might seem like easy money. Your team wouldn't have to spend too much time making this happen, but you know for a fact that this won't be helpful for the customer in the long run. Here's how I choose to answer this question:

It's critical to understand the end goal that the customer is trying to achieve. At times, the goal itself may be irrelevant and you as an RM would have to politely educate the customer of the long term implications of such a goal. Contrarily, you could leverage this opportunity to prove to the customer that you're not just in it for the money, but for a long term partnership based on trust and ethics. You'd have to give the customer the complete picture of why you think this wouldn't be a wise investment of their money. Here, it's very important to suggest alternatives to your customer, if you think that their need is genuine, but the solution approach needs to be changed.

Remember, you might gain this extra money today, but potentially lose your customer in the long run.

Here are some of the ways that I've experimented with:

1. A bi-monthly newsletter highlighting some specific features of your solution. The audience would be the end users.

2. Sharing a new release video with your end users.

3. Creating a custom video for your users talking about the overall benefits of using your solution.

4. Usage analysis to gauge end user adoption of your product. Identify the power users and encourage them to work with their un-adopting peers. Offer a small reward or recognition in return for helping you.

5. Offer quick training on specific features.

6. Engage with both the top level management, and the end users, all the time. Make sure you're all on the same page.

7. Keep an eye for growing the footprint, and any other competitor lurking in the background. Make friends with the end users who wouldn't hesitate to give you some of the internal details of conversations.

SFA is the application of technology to manage selling activities. It standardizes a sales cycle and common terminology for sales issues among all the sales employees of a business. It includes the following modules −

Product Configuration − It enables salespersons or customers themselves to automatically design the product and decide the price for a customized product. It is based on if-then-else structure.

Quotation and Proposal Management − The salesperson can generate a quotation of the product prices and proposal for the customer by entering details such as customer name, delivery requirements, product code, number of pieces, etc.

Accounts Management − It manages inward entries, credit and debit amounts for various transactions, and stores transaction details as records.

Lead Management − It lets the users qualify leads and assigns them to appropriate salespersons.

Contact Management − It is enabled with the features such as customers' contact details, salespersons' calendar, and automatic dialing numbers. These all are stored in the form of computerized records. Using this application, a user can communicate effectively with the customers.

Opportunity Management − It lets the users identify and follow leads from lead status to closure and beyond closure.

A business needs to consider the following points while selecting a CRM software −

► Business strategy and processes − It helps to automate a customer management strategy. Hence before selecting a CRM software, a business should be clear with its strategies and desired processes.

► Business requirements − CRM systems range from domain specialty solutions that focus on solving a specific area such as sales force automation, marketing automation, services automation, partner management, etc., to complete enterprise management solutions.

► Size of business − Small businesses require tools that are easy to learn and can handle a wide range of the most common tasks. Large businesses opt for applications that handle more complex tasks and thousands of users.

► Customer base − The size of the customer base a business is required to handle.

► Budget − A business needs to set a budget prior vendor selection. The budget allocated for CRM varies according to the degree of customization required.

► Context − The context in which a business is functioning, e.g., B2B or B2C, determines which CRM the business should go for.

► Sales channels − The sales channels a business is employing: Direct sale, channel sale such as distributors, or Direct to customers via retail. They matter while selecting the most suitable CRM software.

► System integration − All the interfaces the business needs and the CRM vendor can support without requiring too much custom services effort.

► Strength of partners − The partners must be able to provide a business with additional support, or help to implement the CRM successfully.