Allocation rules for CRM: Despite the immense benefits that the CRM solutions can deliver, they

are not entirely without their share of problems. Many organizations have burned their fingers trying to implement the technology and manage costs. To successfully undertake CRM initiatives it is essential to Clearly define the management objective & strategy Evolve the right process around it Identify the right software solution for implementation Understand the hidden costs and hurdles Back it up with good training and support While selecting the software solution for your implementation, ensure that It can manage both your data and process It is easy to implement and roll out It is simple to use You understand the total cost of ownership You evaluate the risk exposure

Customer Satisfaction Surveys Successful customer satisfaction surveys maximize the retention of current customers, and help enterprises to better position themselves among prospective clients. However, customer satisfaction surveys that do not uncover customer perceptions or needs, improve customer loyalty, or help the enterprise to make improvements are essentially useless. To develop successful customer satisfaction surveys, executives and their staffs should learn how to plan, design, implement, and manage survey questions that lend themselves to effective trend analysis. This will help ensure that customers are completely satisfied with enterprise offerings and/or support, and identify areas of potential improvement. Business Imperatives:
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Customer satisfaction surveys are important vehicles for enterprises, as they measure customer satisfaction, and therefore help to determine customer loyalty. However, with the advent of globalization and the Internet, today's customers expect more from the enterprise.. Historical data tracking is crucial in the customer satisfaction survey system. If an enterprise does not manage customer data, it cannot analyze responses over a given time, making it difficult to see if products, services, and/or support are improving, worsening, or remaining stagnant. Successful customer satisfaction surveys require clear and well-understood processes. This means that executives , and their employees need to set concrete and realistic objectives, and to understand different sampling, methodology, and design issues. Moreover, survey developers should understand customer satisfaction question creation, and how each question helps to attain the desired objectives.

In an era of high competition and expectations, customer satisfaction surveys are essential tools for listening to customers about their satisfaction levels, and for developing strategies for improvement. Knowing what customers think about the

enterprise's product(s), service(s), and/or support, as well as their opinions of competitors' offerings, is crucial for survival. Consequently, the primary reasons for assessing customer satisfaction are to maximize customer retention, and to gain and build customer loyalty. It is important to realize that customer satisfaction does not equate to customer loyalty. Merely satisfied customers will switch to a competitor that will exceed their expectations, especially in a highly competitive market, within the blink of an eye. True competitive advantage therefore requires that customers are completely satisfied. In addition, it is important to inform customers that their opinions matter, and that their responses will instigate change within the organization. Before a customer satisfaction survey can be designed, it is necessary for executives and their staffs to have a clear process in place. The first step is to establish comprehensive and realistic objectives. If objectives are not set, the survey will be of little to no value. As a result, survey developers should ask themselves why they are conducting the survey, and what do they want to learn from it. Moreover, if a process is not in place, objectives cannot be met, and survey developers will see results they do not want to see.

Key elements to unlocking the value of customer satisfaction surveys, include: - Adherence to measurement principles - Responding to immediate customer needs identified during the survey process - Implementing customer-focused changes - Implementing account strategies - Management review and assessment

Contact Management

Success depends on well-organized contact data. Daily communication with clients means frequent meetings, calls, and e-mail, as well as interactions through web sites, mobile phones, and the like. An effective contact management, sales force automation, and customer relationship management solution stores this important information, letting you retrieve it quickly and easily. By using the right contact management software, you can avoid wrestling with data and focus on your clients instead. Management CRM will make you successful at acquiring, retaining, and servicing your customers advising you on effective Sales Force Automation Customer Relationship Management CRM strategies and enabling technologies.

main features

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requires minimal training time and set-up organizes and schedules activities with ease conducts customer-contact activities delegates contacts from sales managers to salespeople completes sales-management reporting offers group e-mailing and letter generation has a user-friendly interface

The Future of Customer Relationship Management We are swiftly moving from a predominately seller-driven economy to a predominately buyer-driven economy. Companies are reinvesting in hardware and software technologies to improve communications with their customers. CEOs like Michael Dell and Tom Siebel realize that building a customer focus requires companies to look through the eyes of the customer and think more like a customer. Youve got to sell the way customers want to buy. More and more companies will soon get their customers more involved in their strategic planning processes to lay out CRM plans as well as suggest new products and customer support improvements. During these sessions, customers will be encouraged to put forward their opinions on what the companys priorities should be and the improvements that need to be made. CRM is becoming the buzzword of the day If a company spends vast amounts on advertising, it will rethink its approach. It makes sense today to spend more on a few clients whereby the overall cost comes down. Less expensive, more personalized methods of communication via broadband, digital cable and database technologies makes sense. Television audiences may be targeted with specific advertising messages depending on the consumer groups. Commercials can be targeted at specific types of households, based on their histories and viewing trends and the sales can be monitored. If the sales do not increase, the advertising expenses for the product can be reduced or a different product can be advertised. Depending on responses, advertisers can refine their understanding of customer purchase preferences. Custom advertising and then more immediate consumer feedback on a per-household basis is the aim of the industry. CRM software is evolving from a generic CRM market to specialized vertical markets that will cater to different types of customers, business models and selling strategies. Industries will not have to customize a CRM tool to its processes but vendors will provide customized solutions specific to vertical industries. CRM projects will be forced to integrate customer touch points or fail. While taking care of customer requirements it will become equally important to be sensitive to all customer complaints and feedback as part of understanding a customers overall profile.

Some analysts predict that the focus will shift toward touch point technology. And the new paradigm will be, 'Now that we know who you are, how do we get access to you wherever you are?' One thing is certain the customer will be at the center of the enterprise. The B2B CRM markets are demanding multifunctional technologies and products and small and big vendors alike will compete for technological leadership in the development of CRM suites. In an e-business economy, customer satisfaction, product quality, product delivery time, response time to customer inquiries, as well as the various means of analyzing customer buying behavior and forecasting products/services are going to be in highest demand. To deal with the vast amounts of data that will pour in, knowledge management components will need to deliver organizational knowledge to the customer on demand, anytime anywhere. Analysts predict a shift from a transaction-oriented relationship to one that is mutually beneficial to vendors and customers, where information is freely available and both parties can share information and develop an equal relationship. Future CRM applications will be developed on modular architecture, such as the Java paradigm or Microsoft .NET. and so will become less complex. Customer Relationship Management till now has been all about the customer, selling to the customer, analyzing the customer, communicating with the customer but has never really been about listening to the customer. In fact some vendors have already anticipated this need and are already actively developing customer voice management applications, which actually capture the customers voice into new product development processes and product management. Some vendors are working on applications that will actually track attitudes, stated preferences and opinions. While traditional CRM only measures actions, future applications will measure attitude, monitor what certain customers are buying and even send out an alert when the company is about to lose a customer Customer Service y Define Customer Service y Describe the process of customer service Customer service is defined as an organization's ability to supply their customers' wants and needs. Excellent customer service is the ability of an organization to constantly and consistently exceed their customer's expectations. For a company to consistently exceed customers' expectations, they have to recognize that every aspect of their business has an impact on customer service, not just those aspects of their business that involves face-to-face customer contact.

There are several reasons why companies are continuously looking to maintain and improve their customer service. The cost of acquiring new customers is higher than the cost of maintaining existing customers One can get additional sales from the installed base Existing customers can be used as references for prospective customers Improves the organizations understanding of customer needs which in turn can help drive efficiency improvements in the supply chain process After sales service revenue can be a continuous source of revenue in some businesses

y y y y y

Let us explore the business processes that occur once a customer has bought a product. The after sales process of most companies include: y y y y Delivery and installation Registration Warranty support & help desk Post-warranty maintenance support The delivery and installation process for a product is normally handled by a separate division in the sales department, typically this is a technical support and logistics team. Very often, management of the delivery and the installation processes are a big source of customer dissatisfaction. For e.g., when a person purchases a product, lets say a television, the sales person promises that the new television will be delivered in time for the upcoming sports event, but the delivery organization fails to deliver, this leads to a very dissatisfied customer. This instance is typically caused by a poor supply chain performance which result in giving the customer unrealistic promises. Organizations that provide an integrated sales and delivery process can give the customer an overall satisfactory experience which then leads to retaining customers. Product registration is a very common procedure for consumer durables and industrial products. Manufacturers can identify the end-user through the use of product registration every time a product is sold through a dealer or a distributor channel. Most manufacturers use product registration information for providing warranty support and to keep track of any repairs/exchanges etc. that take place during the warranty period By having a good registration automation process a company can obtain valuable inputs for selling additional products to their existing customers.

Companies that offer product warranties provide customer support during the warranty period A help desk is very useful when customers start using the product; especially when the products have several available options that need to be configured or programmed for use. With improvements in product quality, the need for such support has significantly come down in the past few years. Good preventive maintenance support when offered for expensive products can significantly contribute in building a long lasting relationship with the customer. For products that have a long life, like consumer durables, many manufacturers offer support after the warranty period has expired. This support is chargeable to the customer and can be a significant source of revenue for an organization. Support can be provided via dealers as in the case of cars or directly by the manufacturer as in the case of home appliances. Apart from this being a fairly lucrative source of revenue, this process can also provide significant product replacement sales opportunities. In recent years, call centers have gained popularity as cost-effective avenues for selling and servicing customers. It has been estimated that 70 per cent of all business transactions are executed over the phone, making this the primary form of customer contact today. Call centers play a very important role in managing the customers relationship with the organization. In several product companies the call center representative is the first contact that the customer makes with the organization and this form of customer service is extremely important in influencing the customers view of the organization. Well-managed call centers can significantly enhance the customer perception, just as poorly handled calls can cause customer dissatisfaction, which ultimately leads to a company losing customers. Many companies outsource their call center needs in order to drive down the costs of providing support. It is important to ensure that the quality of customer support does not drop when it is outsourced, otherwise there will be a significant long term impact on the customers relationship. The internet has provided an alternate way of providing customer support. Many organizations allow customers to record calls whether they are complaints, new product enquiries or product usage questions via their web site. Web support can be a cost-effective way for handling a large customer base. Small organizations that do not have a physical presence in many countries find web support a good way to service international customers. Amazon.com is a company that does most of its business through the web and they are one of the leaders in the internet business practice. However, it is important that web operations are backed up by strong brick-and-mortar logistics and delivery functions. When a company provides support through multiple channels, it is important for them to have an integrated view of all customer interactions. Very often companies use multiple technology applications to capture their interactions with their customers for example, one company can have a separate call center application, a web support application and a field service application for their products.

In order for organizations to get a single-view of their customer, many companies are also implementing business intelligence and data-warehousing applications. In the future, these unified customer interactions are going to be critical in managing the organizations relationship with its customers. Customer Relationship Management and B2B The business-to-business environment is a highly complex one when compared to the processes in the business-to-consumer segment. On the Internet, big businesses and small compete on a more equal footing. How would you know or care if the guy on the Internet selling you a washing machine is a big guy or a small one? Located in a fancy store in the hottest part of town or on a small side street on the outskirts? Your only concern apart from the product and the price, is the kind of service the store offers you. The differential in this scenario is very likely to be the quality of customer service. In other words, more and more companies need to look to their relationship with their customers to retain them.

Imagine a sales representative out on a call a few years ago. He had to listen carefully to all the subtleties of his clients communication, put them down as accurately as possible but in as few words as possible then get back to his office and expand all the information again to compile a good report. The more clients the company had, the more difficult the work of managing accounts, monitoring the sales pipeline and organizing the client contact list grew. The rate at which information was transferred and compiled became far too slow to keep up with business needs. When a client could make his purchase at the click of a mouse, he naturally came to expect that his requirement would also be fulfilled with comparable speed and facility. It was no longer tolerable for a response to take a few days everything now had to happen in hours. CRM tools analyze and predict customers requirements. They track buyer and seller bids, search for bidders that match the suppliers needs and select bids that satisfy an immediate requirement at the best possible price. Integrated automated response systems send out targeted responses to the right individuals. CRM leverages the power of Internet technologies to achieve all this by automating key areas in the supply chain system to help reduce the frequency of human errors and minimize wastage. Web sites allow live exchange of information or real-time trading of products and services. In the late 1990s, when e-commerce came into prominence many thought that the business of resellers and distributors would slowly be replaced and that manufacturers would now be able to reach their customers directly. E-commerce sites in the Verticals specifically met the needs of a particular industry, such as retail, which feature industry news, articles, and discussion groups; while the

Horizontals provided products, goods, materials, or services that are not specific to a particular industry or company. The Internet is leveraged to provide a common forum for small and big players alike to compete with best-of-breed partners and build successful business relations with them. Companies give restricted access to partner companies to collaborate and communicate through extranets or other Web sites that allow live exchange of information or real-time trading of products and services. With more companies taking their business online and offering new and improved services, every company in the business-to-business environment needs to increase customer satisfaction and encourage customers to stay with them. As the competition gets stiffer it becomes a necessity for companies to change the way they have been doing business.

The dynamic quality of the Internet has accelerated most manual business processes, which in a traditional setup would have taken months to accomplish. Now the same processes take only a few hours. Development cycles are much shorter and customers expect to be delivered information on demand, anytime, anywhere.

The better the customer service offered the more likely clients are to stay with a company. Only in recent times have companies tried analyzing why customers left and sought ways to make them stay. Companies are now able to calculate individual Customer Lifetime Value, that is, identify which customers represent the most long-term value and prioritize resources wisely. In the business-to-business environment, investing time and money on the few high value customers rather than on the many low value ones is makes greater sense. Customer value is based on the real cost and profitability of each customer. Applying the 80/20 rule, if all customers were arranged in order of value, 80% of the value would come from only 20% of the customers. Using the metric of Customer Lifetime Value companies can now invest the majority of their time in their best customers. IBM estimates that only 7% of the information available in corporate databases is used. This leaves 93% of the information untouched! Companies need more efficient tools to comb through their data warehouses and find the information that will give them a competitive edge.

Customer Relationship Management tools work on two levels operational and analytical.

At the front-office level it is called Operational CRM where the customer is directly in contact with the company. These interactions are referred to as touchpoints and maybe inbound when the customer accesses the company support center or website, or outbound when a sales representative makes a sales call or emails a marketing message.

Analytical CRM also known as back-office or strategic CRM detects patterns from the various customer touchpoints and provides an analysis of the data to help customer service, sales and marketing departments to personalize communications with their customers.

All information that is stored on a central datawarehouse is updated dynamically when new data is entered and facilitates business analysis. The advantage in a common repository is that everyone has access to consistent information.

The information gathered by sales executives is critical to understand the changes that are taking place in the sales lifecycle. Since they are the ones in touch with the actual customer they are the ones who know immediately when the customer needs something or desires something and conversely, when he thinks something unnecessary. This data is useful to customer service representatives to communicate effectively with customers. Customer service data regarding satisfaction reports and feedback from customers could benefit the marketing department when devising targeted marketing strategies and promotions.

As the e-marketplace gets busier, companies are looking to consolidate their existing customer base. They need to determine customer value and how even a lapsed customer has some potential for future purchase. This information helps companies to appropriate their recovery resources and identify which lapsed customers are more valuable than others.

Many CRM tools include a Knowledge Management package to collect, store and disseminate data within organizations. These Knowledge Management tools allow users to add, edit or delete documents, provide a history of modified material and search for material by keyword. The mode of storage and dissemination of this information is also critical for staff members to whom it may be useful and could save useful hours otherwise spent on doing the research themselves.

Especially in times of fewer opportunities for growth, the need to retain existing customers becomes crucial. Businesses that act fast to change strategies and adopt

a solid customer focus will be able to stay ahead of competition compared to those that resist change.

The early adopters of CRM were seen in the B2C segment. CRM showed signs of emerging in B2B, early in the year 2000.

CRM improves opportunities for cross selling and up selling, that is, if you like this product, how about trying this one or this? Leveraging data warehousing capabilities to store information on millions of clients and dynamically updating information every day, CRM has helped companies to analyze the data and identify the customers most likely to buy certain products, predict their next purchase and the probability of scaling up their purchases. Call center staff use the information to help them cross-sell and up-sell additional products over the phone.

Internet technologies have enabled even brick and mortar companies to go online in order to provide additional services to their customers and gain more visibility. Shoppers can buy from the physical shop or from the electronic one more options! Retail outlets gather large amounts of data from their website and merge it into the main CRM warehouse. This has helped to provide an integrated view of customer transactions through both channels. More data to examine means more information which translates to greater opportunities.

The concept of Customer lifetime value means that customers who buy more than one product from a vendor, tending to make a relationship stronger and last longer. The ability to converse more closely with customers increases customer interactions. With CRM, companies are able to communicate the right message to attract the right customers at the right time. CRM virtually has its beginnings in Sales Force Automation. Customer focused projects all lead to improving a customers experience while dealing with an organization and the front line of any organization is its sales force. Providing the sales force of a company with technology support in order to improve the efficiency of the selling process is called Sales Force Automation. SFA products are increasingly focused on nurturing customer relationships.

Integrated CRM tools have helped service organizations greatly improve efficiencies by integrating the web contact center with the call center. With the introduction of Internet banking and automated email, many banks web contact

centers received on an average, 20,000 emails every month. Some 45 per cent of these are responded to automatically. Companies have realized payback from controlling staff expansion, customer contacts have increased fourfold, but the number of operators has only doubled. To migrate from a product-centric to a customer-centric approach, companies are getting their customers involved in CRM initiatives to improve customer support and develop new and improved products. This implies drastic alterations in the rigid supply chain with the customer having a key role to play in the productivity cycle. Building long-lasting relationships with customers has gone beyond trying to understand the behavior of the customer, it is now recognized as looking at a product or service through the eyes of a customer. There is a growing population of multinational companies owing to the increasing numbers of mergers and acquisitions around the world. A global presence emphasizes the importance of technological considerations like access to a centralized database from remote locations, wireless applications, country-wise customer tracking, multi-lingual support and vendor capabilities. There is a growing need to integrate business intelligence into CRM applications. Microsofts customer relationship management application includes business intelligence capabilities like reporting, analysis, and information-delivery technology. These reports help sales managers develop revenue forecasts, monitor customerservice activity, and analyze product pipelines. Sales representatives can produce reports on their sales and customer-service activities. Global CRM can be a very daunting venture yet profitable if you have understood the business processes in different countries. The privacy rules differ from country to country. Some countries forbid a company from giving incentives to consumers to do business with a partner company, as with car-rental frequent flier miles. In some countries, a direct mail communication will be ignored unless preceded by a personal contact. Unless information exchange is absolutely essential to your companys success and requires such complex infrastructure requirements global CRM could be very expensive and it is best left to the individual country to handle customer communication.