Customer Relationship Management

chapter one Customer relationship management demystified

What is customer relationship management?

You may have read other books and articles about customer relationship management, it is one of those phrases that are difficult to escape from hearing in business today – but what exactly is it? It seems to have a different meaning depending on whom you talk to. Is it a way of computerising your business? Is it a series of tools and techniques? Is it a marketing programme designed to attract customer loyalty? In its simplest form it is an attitude, a mindset, a value that you place on your business and its relationship with its customers. It is a methodology, a way of creating and evolving your organisation in the marketplace and at the same time in the mind of each individual customer. It must look at the whole process of what you’re involved in, whether this is a product or a service driven organisation and it must involve every aspect of what you do – from suppliers through to the end application, from your internal staff through to your customer’s customer. In its simplest form it recognises that each customer is an individual and has a choice. It looks at ways to treat customers more as individuals and to exercise their choice positively towards your organisation. It also embraces many current marketing and management methods, such as customer loyalty and marketing database management. There are three main elements to consider when aligning your business towards a customer relationship format. The first is to do with retention. Imagine that you were never to gain another new customer, this would probably be a horrifying thought for most businesses, but when you considered it carefully you would realise that if you just kept the customers that you have then you would probably be able to grow and prosper in much the same way as you are now. There are of course exceptions. Most businesses only get a small percentage of the share of each of their customers. In...