Customer Relationship Management ( CRM )

Customer Relationship Management ( crm )

What is customer relationship management?

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is about maintaining the organization’s existing and potential customers. The customers should be managed properly using the databases and by maintaining a good relationship. The purpose of Customer Relationship Management is to improve business relationships with customers, create customer loyalty to the brand and increase the number of repeat customers and to eventually increase the sales and market share for the product.

The concept of customer relationship has been started in the early 1970s where the organizations identified the importance of keeping the customers loyal to the brand. Customer satisfaction was evaluated by conducting surveys and directly taking feedback from the customers. Eventually, the concept of Database Marketing has become popular where the organizations started to store their customer details in their database. This started to create a feeling of specialty and belongingness in the customers when the organization is caring about their needs and trying to provide their best products to loyal customers.

Over the time, the connection between the customer and the organization has improved and now the organizations are maintaining a separate record for each customer and the records are used to maintain a quality relationship with the customer, to provide them a satisfactory service and to analyze the customer information and data throughout the customer life cycle.

Customer Relationship Management Methods

Several methods can be used by the organizations to reach out to the customer to evaluate their experience with the product or service and allow the customers to raise their concerns about the product they purchase.

  • Contact Center – Almost all the products available in the market have a customer service hotline marked in the product for the customers to reach out to an authorized party about the product and raise their concerns or provide feedback.
  • Social Media – With the increase of social media use, organizations are using social media to get customer feedback on their product. Even though this can be considered as a place in which the organization can get reputational damage, the high usage of social media creates a better platform to gather customer insights about the product.  Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn are the most popularly used social media platforms in managing customer relationships.
  • Mobile CRM – Customer Relationship Management using mobile phones is an easier way to get customer details when the responsible person does not have the required data. The mobile option allows the responsible person to access the organizational network using the mobile device and access the customer details and maintain an updated relationship with the customer.
  • B2B CRM practices – Business to business customer relationship management helps to monitor the sales of the organization when providing to another business for selling purposes. The sales will be monitored and necessary feedback will be given through the implemented B2B sales platforms.

Importance of Customer Relationship Management

Customers are the most important segment for any organization. Due to the increase in the competition, organizations should invest in retaining the customers with the product. Customer Relationship Management works to retain customers with the product by providing them superior service and by creating customer trust and satisfaction.

When the organizations are trying to create brand loyalty, maintaining a closer customer relationship is important. This can be achieved by rewarding the customers, Personalizing them and by taking their feedback and use those feedback to improve the product benefits.

Customer Relationship Management has become a vital area in any organization as it is the glue that holds the customer to the product when there are many rival products in the competitor market. Any organization needs to maintain the right level of customer relationship with the right customer to create success through loyalty.

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