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CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT

A long term relationship with customers to nurture its stability in today’s
blooming market. Today’s customers are more discerning, and wish best
products and services. They also need a face-to-face business in which they
want to receive exactly what they demand and in a quick time. CRM is a a
conscious business strategy directed to understand, anticipate and respond
to the needs of an enterprise's current and potential customers in order to
grow the relationship value.
CRM is an upright concept or strategy to solidify relations with customers
and at the same time reducing cost and enhancing productivity and
profitability in business.
A CRM is crucial to all organization whether small or big as the main goal is
to assist the customers efficiently. The Customer Relationship Management
is the procedure that is crucial for every business. As the customer is the
most important part of the business.
Customer relationship management consists of different components
including key customers, customer relationship management organization,
knowledge management, and technology. This categorization is derived from
this fact that the successful customer relationship management is resulted
from four areas including strategy, employees, technology, and
process. Businesses are in a better position to gain competitive advantage
through coordinating these strategic areas (Salomoun, et al,2015)

What is CRM
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has the business purpose of
intelligently finding, marketing, selling to and servicing customers. CRM is a
broadly used term that covers concepts used by companies, and public
institutions to manage their relationships with customers and stakeholders.
Technologies and internal processes must support this business purpose
that would help to capture, storage and 8 analysis of customer,
vendor, partner, and internal process information. Functions that
support this business purpose include Sales, Marketing and Customer
Service, Training, Professional Development, Performance Management,
Human Resource Development and compensation.
CRM is a comprehensive approach for creating, maintaining and expanding
customer relationships‘. Significance of the words used in the definitions:

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 i. Comprehensive: CRM does not belong to just sales or marketing.
It is not the sole responsibility of customer service group or an IT
team; i.e. CRM must be a way of doing business that touches all
the areas.
ii. Approach: An approach is broadly a way of treating or dealing
with something. CRM is a way of thinking about and dealing with
the customer relationship. We can also use the word strategy‘
because CRM involves a clear plan. In fact, CRM strategy can
usually serve as a benchmark for other strategies in your
organization, because any strategy sets directions for your
organization. We can also consider this from a department or
area level. Just as a larger organization have strategies for
shareholder management, marketing etc. Each strategy must
support managing customer relationships. Thus CRM is strategic.
To realize this, one can make a list of key strategies, to brief your
area of responsibility. Then write down organizational approach
towards customers. Compare the CRM strategies with other
strategies. They should support each other. External customers
are those outside the organization who buy goods and the
services the organization sales.

Internal customers‘ is a way of defining another group in some

organization whose work depends upon work of your group.
Therefore, they are your customers. It is your responsibility to
provide what they need so that they can do their job properly.

iii. Customer relationship: In today‘s world where we do business

with individuals or groups with whom we may never meet and
hence much less know in person-to-person sense. CRM is about
creating the feel of comfort in this high tech environment.
Essentially, CRM is a about providing Convenience, Assessable
and Reliable (CAR) experience for your customer

Need for CRM

The experience from many companies is that a very clear CRM

requirement with regards to reports, e.g. output and input
requirements, is of vital importance before starting any
implementation. With a proper demand specification a lot of time
and costs can be saved based on right expectations versus
systems capability. A well operative CRM system can be an
extremely powerful tool for management and customer

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 strategies. CRM is not just a technology, but rather a
comprehensive approach to an organization‘s philosophy in
dealing with its customers. This includes policies and processes,
front-of-house customer service, employee training, marketing,
systems and information management. Hence, it is important
that any CRM implementation considerations stretch beyond
technology, towards the broader organizational requirements.

The objectives of a CRM strategy must consider a company‘s

specific situation and its customers‘ needs and expectations. The
data gathered as a part of CRM must consider customer privacy
and data security. Customers want the assurance that their data
is not shared with third parties without their consent and not
accessed illegally by third parties. Customers also want their
data used by companies to provide a benefit to them.

The components of customer relationship management

Customer relationship management consists of different
components including key customers, customer relationship
management organization, knowledge management, and
technology. This categorization is derived from this fact that the
successful customer relationship management is resulted from
four areas including strategy, employees, technology, and
process. Also it is should be remembered that it is possible to
achieve a competitive advantage through coordinating these
strategic areas (Salomoun et al,2005).

Key customers focus

The identified customers are defined as the ones that the

information is accessible for recognizing and contacting them in
the company. Also key customers includes the identified ones
that provide more values for company through providing more
profits, active long-term relationships, powerful leadership for
the company (Akroush, 2011) .

A. Customer relationship management organization

This means fundamental changes in the organizing
methods of business processes. Based on the customer
relationship management, main dimensions of successful
organizational organizing include organizational structure,
organizational resources commitment, and human

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 resources management commitment. Contacting the
individuals is the most difficult stage in customer
relationship management process. Internal marketing
plays the most important role of customer oriented and
customer services delivery in every organization. Internal
marketing is resulted from interaction between human
resource management and marketing (Akroush [Link], 2011)
.

B. Knowledge Management
In today‘s competitive world, knowledge is considered as
one of the competitive factors in global economy. It is
necessary to consider the customer as another important
factor in order to enter today‘s dynamic market
successfully. Customer knowledge management refers to
acquiring, sharing, and developing the customer knowledge
among employees for making profit to the organization and
customers. In order to improve the organizational efficiency
and effectiveness, insure from delivering desirable products
and services to the customers and acquire their
satisfaction, it is necessary to manage the organization‘s
knowledge about customers. Therefore, it can be concluded
that knowledge management is an integrative part of
customer relationship management (Salomoun et al,2005).

C. Technology
Development of every organization in information
technology area improves its capability in collecting, saving,
analyzing, and sharing knowledge about customer. This
leads to increase the organization‘s capability in responding
the customers‘ needs and maintaining them. The customer
values analysis and services personalization, that are the
results of advances in information technologies revolting
from traditional approach to the integrated marketing
systems, can be accessible through customer information
system and automation of customer support processes.
Customer relationship management refers to the
information-based technologies that utilize information
technologies for creating relationships with customers.

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