Module 1

CRM DEF- CRM, or customer relationship management, is concerned

with the development and maintenance of mutually
beneficial relationships with strategically significant partners. Its
focus is the creation of long-term value, and not just short-term
profits, for the company and all it works with. The scope of CRM can
thus be defined according to its constituencies, how long-term value
can be created for and with them and the benefits of doing so.

The Importance(Purpose and benifits) of CRM Customer Relationship

Management
CRM Customer Relationship Management is one of the newest innovations in customer
service today. CRM stands for customer relationship management and helps the management
and customer service staffs cope with customer concerns and issues. CRM involves gathering
a lot of data about the customer. The data is then used to facilitate customer service
transactions by making the information needed to resolve the issue or concern readily
available to those dealing with the customers. This results in more satisfied customers, a more
profitable business and more resources available to the support staff. Furthermore, CRM
Customer Relationship Management systems are a great help to the management in deciding
on the future course of the company.

As mentioned, there is much data needed for the CRM system to work. These fields include the
customer name, address, date of transactions, pending and finished transactions, issues and
complaints, status of order, shipping and fulfillment dates, account information, demographic data
and many more. This information is important in providing the customer the answer that he or she
needs to resolve the issue without having to wait for a long time and without going to several
departments. With just a few mouse clicks, a customer support representative for example can track
the location of the customer's package or order. This is infinitely better than the cumbersome
process of tracking shipments previously. Furthermore, the customer service representative

CRM Customer Relationship Management systems are also important to the top management
because it provides crucial data like customer satisfaction and efficiency of service by the
frontline crews. A piece of customer relationship management software will also be able to
generate the needed reports for product development or new concepts. Furthermore, this
system will also be a great help for the top management in deciding the company's future
course of action, whether it involves phasing out one of the products on the shelves or
making adjustments to one of the products sold.

The reports generated by CRM systems are also invaluable to your advertising and marketing
planners, as they will be able to pinpoint which ideas works and which do not. Because of
 CRM systems, you will be able to release advertisements or plan marketing campaigns more
in tune with your target market. This will also lead to more responses to your advertisement
and a more effective marketing campaign.

Successful integration of a CRM Customer Relationship Management system in your

company, however, might not be as easy as it seems. The following might give you an insight
why CRM systems fail in some companies... Most companies fail to prepare for CRM
systems. By this, I mean that most companies fail to integrate all the departments that need to
share the information for it to be effective. Furthermore, CRM units scattered all over the
company's departments is often more effective than just making one big CRM department.
This will ensure that each department will get the information and data that they need.

A CRM system will also help you a lot in expanding your business. As CRM systems are
capable of handling enormous amounts of data, CRM systems will help you a lot in coping
with the increased numbers of customers and data. With a CRM Customer Relationship
Management system installed and properly utilized, you can be sure that all data is
maximized and used to ensure that your business will be successful and your customers a lot
more satisfied than before.

Types :-
Types of CRM:
1. Operational CRM
Operational CRM streamlines the business process that includes Sales automation, Marketing
automation and Service automation. Main purpose of this type of CRM is to generate leads,
convert them into contacts, capture all required details and provide service throughout
customer lifecycle.
Sales Automation:
Marketing Automation:
Service Automation:

2. Analytical CRM
Analytical CRM helps top management, marketing, sales and support personnel to determine
the better way to serve customers. Data analysis is the main function of this type of CRM
application. It analyzes customer data, coming from various touch points, to get better
insights about current status of an organization. It helps top management to take better
decision, marketing executives to understand the campaign effectiveness, sales executives to
increase sales and support personnel to improve quality of support and build strong customer
relationship.
Features of Analytical CRM:
Gather customers information, coming from different channels and analyze data in a structured way
Help organization to set business methodology in Sales, Marketing and Support to improve customer
relationship and loyalty
Improve the CRM system effectiveness and analyze key performance indicators, set by business
3. Collaborative CRM
Collaborative CRM, sometimes called as Strategic CRM, enables an
organization to share customers information among various business units
like sales team, marketing team, technical and support team. For example,
feedback from a support team could be useful for marketing team to
approach targeted customers with specific products or services. In real world,
each business unit works as an independent group and rarely shares
customers data with other teams that often causes business losses.
Collaborative CRM helps to unite all groups to aim only one goal use all
information to improve the quality of customer service to gain loyalty and
acquire new customers to increase sales.
Different types of CRM applications have different features and advantages.
So before implementing CRM system, it is very much important for a business
to decide future goal and strategy. If you want to choose the best CRM for
your business, read our article on How to choose the best CRM software for
your business.

CRM Decesions

Lets start from the beginning. What is a decision? A decision is the

transformation of information into action. And what is information?
Information is the raw material from which we can assess the options before
us, or even create new options.

Obviously, we can decide without the need for recourse to information, but
taking into account the complex and changing context in which we are
currently placed, probably this isnt the most appropriate.

So lets assume we use the information to make decisions. What information

we are talking about and where to find it?

Generally, companies have access to two main types of information. On one

hand, the activity generated by the company and their customers and, on the
other hand, the business environment. Regarding the activity of the
company, there are several sources of information: the CRM, databases,
comments of customers on social networks, the acquired knowledge from
team members, etc.

CRM Model
Principles of CRM

1. Continuously learn about your customers: From this principle,

everything else follows. When you know your customers, you
can make sound business decisions about how to develop
relationships with them.
2. Interact personally with your customers: Relationships result
from interaction. Knowing your customers is just the first step.
Use that knowledge to develop your relationships with your
customers whenever you interact with them.
3. Handle different customers differently: The power of this
principle lies in the potential for optimizing the value of each
customer relationship through differential treatment. Segment
customers sensibly effective customer relationship management
strategy ultimately seeks to optimize value.
4. Retain the right customers: Customer knowledge and the
capability for differentiated customer treatment significantly
improve many organizations capabilities to retain customers.
5. Anticipate customer needs and offer to fulfill them: Knowledge
of your customers presents new opportunities for making the
right offer or delivering the right service to the right person at the
right time.
6. Increase value for your customers and of your customers: It is
precisely because building customer relationships increases value
both for customers and the organization that it is such a
compelling strategy. When executed properly, the focus on
building relationships and brand loyalty is a win-win for
customers and the organization alike.
7. Present a single face to your customers to make their experiences
with your organization seamless: Seek to simplify the experience
for your customers. Take a holistic view of your customers and
consolidate information from across the organization, regardless
of geography, department, function, contact channel, social
community, or product line.
 8. Focus on revenue and retention more than on reducing costs: A
renewed focus on building relationships can require so many
organizationwide process changes that operational cost savings
may well be realized but keep your eyes on value, overall
revenue and retention first.
9. Enable information sharing and interaction across the
organization: It is both a requirement and a benefit of customer
relationship management that organizations improve their
internal communication processes. The only way to develop a
comprehensive view of each customers relationship with the
organization is with the full participation of every part of the
organization.
10. Create business rules to drive all customer relationship
management decisions and automation: Business rules codify and
automate processes, specifying what should happen in specific
situations, thus enabling both differentiated customer treatment
and automation.
11. Empower agents with information and training: Just as the
cockpit of an airplane displays all the information a pilot needs to
fly in any conditions, the contact management screen should pull
together cleanly and clearly all that the organization knows about
its relationship with that customer. Empowerment is a
complementary principle because no set of business rules can or
should fully anticipate every conceivable situation.
12. Remember that the effective management of customer
relationships is a way of doing business, not just a technology
project: Technology is an enabler, but as these 12 key principles
demonstrate, cultivating customer relationships is much more
than high-powered technology. Customer strategy must be the
way you do business.

Relationship Building Strategies

1. Communicate frequently. How often do you reach out to customers? Do

the bulk of your communications focus on product offers and sales? For best
results, it's important to communicate frequently and vary the types of
messages you send. Instead of a constant barrage of promotions, sprinkle in
helpful newsletters or softer-sell messages.

2. Offer customer rewards. Customer loyalty or reward programs work well

for many types of businesses, from retail to cruise and travel. The most
effective programs offer graduated rewards, so the more customers spend, the
more they earn.

3. Hold special events. The company-sponsored golf outing is back. With

the renewed interest in retaining and up-selling current customers, company-
sponsored special events are returning to the forefront.

4. Build two-way communication. When it comes to customer relations,

"listening" can be every bit as important as "telling." Use every tool and
opportunity to create interaction, including asking for feedback through your
Web site and e-newsletters, sending customer surveys (online or offline) and
providing online message boards or blogs.

5. Enhance your customer service. Do you have a dedicated staff or

channel for resolving customer problems quickly and effectively? How about
online customer assistance? One of the best ways to add value and stand out
from the competition is to have superior customer service. Customers often
make choices between parity products and services based on the perceived
"customer experience."

6. Launch multicultural programs. It may be time to add a multilingual

component to your marketing program.

7. Visit the trenches. For many entrepreneurs, particularly those selling

products and services to other businesses, it's important to go beyond
standard sales calls and off-the-shelf marketing tools in order to build
relationships with top customers or clients.

CRM by Customer Retention

So why should you bother with these existing customers?

Here are three reasons why you should care.

1. Achieve better conversion rates. Existing customers have already

bought from you, so if they had good experience they will buy from you
again. Trust and confidence has already been established and you
 know something about them already and therefore, its easier to identify
their needs.

2. Lower cost of marketing. Youll spend less time finding them and
convincing them that you are the one they should buy from. In addition,
existing customers can give you valuable feedback on your
performance. Was your customer service good enough? Did your
product meet their expectations? Was it good value for money? You
can use this feedback to continue to improve your product and service.

3. Increase profits. Selling to existing customers will be less focused on

price as opposed to new customers, as you might not need as many
discounts that you would usually use to attract new customers. And
since your existing customers trust you it may be possible to convince
the customer to become interested in even more of your products or
services through upselling and cross-selling.

Stages of Retention
1. Ask
Ask your customers what they want and what they like and dislike. Include customer surveys on
your website, at the point of sale, and in package inserts. You'll likely get "extreme" feedback
from customers who love you or hate you. Customers who are mildly satisfied are not as
motivated to speak their minds.

2. Evaluate
Evaluate your customer data to find out who your best customers are. That may sound obvious,
but the devil is in the details. There may be trends that you've overlooked.

And keep an eye on profitability, not just transactions. In the credit-card industry, for example,
deep spenders who pay off their balance each month usually are not as profitable as moderate
spenders who carry a balance.

3. Stimulate
If you have sold your customers a service and they're not using it, get them to activate (e.g.,
online bill pay, long-distance service, and credit and debit cards).

At the start of a new relationship, there's that warm and fuzzy feeling when new customers sign
on. You got them to say yes. Four months later, you're wondering why those customers don't
love you. Is it something you did?
No. It's something you didn't do: You sold to them and moved on. You assumed that they would
fend for themselves and figure out all the great things about doing business with you.

4. Reward
Reward your customers with meaningful perks for doing business with you. It seems like
everyone has a loyalty program these days. Customers are getting weary of "me too" programs
that don't offer substantial value.

Instead of always giving customers what they expect, give them the unexpected.

5. Aggregate
Try to get all the customer's eggs in your basket. In other words, cross-sell other products and
services. Doing so is much easier when you already have a relationship with the customer. Offer
customers one-stop shopping, consolidated billing, free postage, and other benefits for giving
you more of their business.

6. Take action
A great product and great customer service are the foundation for customer retention. And
positive word-of-mouth is by far the best marketing tool in your arsenal. But you can't control
when that happens, so you need a marketing plan to keep the customers you want.

5 Techniques That Will Keep Your

Customers from Defecting to the
Competition
1. Know your customer: Who are these people,
anyway?
I advocate for absolute and thorough knowledge of your customer. You should know your

customer even if its in profile form only like you know your best friend. (After all, they are

kind of like your best friend. Sort of.)

2. Know your competition: Know who youre dealing

with.
Do you know where your departing customers are going?

Dont make assumptions. Assumptions are dangerous.

Your first goal is to discover which of your competitors the customer prefers, and why he prefers

it. Finding out who your customer is switching to shouldnt be hard. Just ask them.
 3. Beat your USP into their heads.
This sounds a tad violent, but I wanted to overstate it to make my case.

Your customers need to know your USP your unique selling proposition. They need to

understand it, act on it, and cling to it.

Your USP is what makes your business unique. Its the reason why your product or service is

different. The difference, then, is what makes your customers prefer you more than the other

alternatives available to them.

4. Make your customers spend more.

I could write article after article about upselling your customers. (I already have.)

This article isnt about upselling per se. But it is about holding your customers tight. And one way

that you hold your customer tight is by upselling.

5. Incentivize them in exchange for action.

This technique is marvelous, because youre accomplishing three things.

1. You are preventing your customers from defecting by giving them something tangible.

2. You are preventing your customers from defecting by creating buy-in.

3. You are adding more customers through the marketing efforts of your existing customers.

CRM Applications

Module 2

Objectives of Crm Process

Objectives of CRM

CRM, the technology, along with human resources of the company, enables the company to
analyze the behavior of customers and their value. The main areas of focus are as the name
suggests: customer ,relationship , and the management of relationship and the main
objectives to implement CRM in the business strategy are:

To simplify marketing and sales process

To make call centers more efficient
 To provide better customer service
To discover new customers and increase customer revenue
To cross sell products more effectively

The CRM processes should fully support the basic steps of customer life cycle . The basic
steps are:

Attracting present and new customers

Acquiring new customers
Serving the customers
Finally, retaining the customers

Benefits

The following are the benefits of adopting CRM processes:

Develop better communication channels

Collect customer related data
Create detailed profiles of individual customers
Increased customer satisfaction
Access to customer account history, order information, and customer information at all touch
points
Identify new selling opportunities
Increased market share and profit margin
Increased revenues
More effective reach and marketing
Improved customer service and support
Improved response time to customer requests for information
Enhanced customer loyalty
Improved ability to meet customer requirements
Improved quality communication and networking
Reduced costs of buying and using product and services
Better stand against global competition

eCRM vs mCRM
E-CRM

The eCRM or electronic customer relationship marketing concept is derived from e-commerce. It also
uses net environment i.e., intranet, extranet and internet. Electronic CRMconcerns all forms of
managing relationships with customers making use of information technology (IT).

Electronic customer relationship management (e-CRM) involves the integration of Web channels
into the overall enterprise CRM strategy with the goal of driving consistency within all channels
relative to sales, customer service and support (CSS) and marketing initiatives. It can support a
seamless customer experience and maximize customer satisfaction, customer loyalty and revenue

E-CRM is enterprises using IT to integrate internal organization resources and external marketing
strategies to understand and fulfill their customers needs. Comparing with traditional CRM, the
integrated information for eCRM intraorganizational collaboration can be more efficient to
communicate with customers.

As we implement eCRM process, there are three steps life cycle:[11]

1. Data collection: About customers preference information for actively (answer knowledge) and
passively (surfing record) ways via website, email, questionnaire.
2. Data aggregation: Filter and analysis for firms specific needs to fulfill their customers.
3. Customer interaction: According to customers need, company provide the proper feedback
them.

M-CRM or Mobile CRM

One subset of Electronic CRM is Mobile CRM (mCRM). This is defined as "services that aim at
nurturing customer relationships, acquiring or maintaining customers, support marketing, sales or
services processes, and use wireless networks as the medium of delivery to the customers.

However, since communications is the central aspect of customer relations activities, many opt for the
following definition of mCRM: "communication, either one-way or interactive, which is related to sales,
marketing and customer service activities conducted through mobile medium for the purpose of
building and maintaining customer relationships between a company and its customer(s). [29]

eCRM allows customers to access company services from more and more places, since
the Internet access points are increasing by the day. mCRM however, takes this one step further and
allows customers or managers to access the systems for instance from a mobile phone or PDA with
internet access, resulting in high flexibility.

Advantages of mobile CRM

1. The mobile channel creates a more personal direct connection with customers.
2. It is continuously active and allows necessary individuals to take action quickly using the
information.
3. Typically it is an opt-in only channel which allows for high and quality responsiveness.
4. Overall it supports loyalty between the customer and company, which improves and
strengthens relationships.

CRM Cycle and its Phases

Modules in CRM
4Cs Elements of CRM Process
Four Cs(elements) of CRM Process:
Correlate:
series of transaction & interaction that makeup a dialogue between
customer/channel/end user/ org. I.e.data is collected from all
contact points.

Combine:
mapping & management of interaction pointsbetween a customer
customer/channel/end user/ org.

Cognize
(to know):insight gained through capture &analysis of detailed
information is to create continuouslearning from data warehouse.

Connect:
application of insight to create relevantinteraction with consumers,
customers,channels, suppliers,partners that build value
relationships

Module 3

The Best Way To Manage

Customer Relationships
Expensive CRM packages are good for something: They make
big companies look like small ones that stay close to their
customers and solve their problems quickly. There's a reason
"Don't worry, I know the owner" is a common boast in
American society; it means the customer is connected and
valued, and can get a favor done or a problem fixed without
fuss.

Small companies that forget this do so at their peril. Service is

their single most potent competitive advantage over larger
companies. Consider that Citibank has 200 million customer
accounts, according to its Web site; American Express claims to
have 87 million "cards-in-force" and hundreds of thousands of
merchant partnerships. With so many people and multiple
points of contact to track, these behemoths desperately need to
organize their customer service operations with nifty software.

The good news is entrepreneurs dont need to invest in

expensive systems to stay connected with their clientle.
Central Sales and Leasing has thousands of customers--a
healthy list, but not millions. Calling everyone monthly "just to
check in" was a simple matter of dividing up the list among
company employees, logging the call results in an Excel
spreadsheet and solving any problems that came to light.

Before you shell out for a new CRM system, try these
inexpensive customer management tools first:

--A database of your customers, in ACT, Excel or wherever, that

can be sorted and updated and includes a comments section.

--Follow-up steps, including "Thanks for your time" letters or e-

mails.

--An inexpensive e-mail vendor such as ConstantContact,

SwiftPages or any other similar online service that can cost as
little as $15 per month to manage up to 500 contacts.

--A solid communication schedule, with a customer feedback

loop that captures and logs in the customer contact history.

--Buy-in from every employee in your company to execute the

strategy.

All of this might amount to an initial investment of $1,000--less

if you already have a database up and running. As you grow and
have more money to invest, consider an automated Contact
Management System (a stripped-down CRM for small-business
software) that can be had for a lot less than full-boat CRM
packages. The cheapest I have seen, from AppShore in
California, would organize your contacts and communications
for about $2,300 per year for a staff of 10. Other reputable
vendors sell solutions with price tags from $3,600 to $15,000
per year.
Relationship Marketing
Relationship marketing is a facet of customer relationship management
(CRM) that focuses on customer loyalty and long-term customer
engagement rather than shorter-term goals like customer acquisition and
individual sales. The goal of relationship marketing (or customer
relationship marketing) is to create strong, even emotional, customer
connections to a brand that can lead to ongoing business, free word-of-
mouth promotion and information from customers that can generate leads.

Relationship marketing stands in contrast to the more

traditional transactional marketing approach, which focuses on increasing
the number of individual sales. In the transactional model, the return
on customer acquisition cost may be insufficient. A customer may be
convinced to select that brand one time, but without a strong relationship
marketing strategy, the customer may not come back to that brand in the
future. While organizations combine elements of both relationship and
transactional marketing, customer relationship marketing is starting to play
a more important role for many companies.

1 - Know your potential customers.

Before you start building your business; you need to determine your targeted market and know your potential

customers. Learn how to know your customers to develop effective tactics for delivering your message to them.

You can start getting to know your customers by taking some very simple steps.

- Determine in advance where your potential customers congregate. - What newsletter they read? - What forums

they visit and post to? - What else might do while surfing the net?

2 - Show your expertise.

The majority of business people, never completely and clearly display their knowledge to potential customers.

Show to your targeted market you are the leader in your industry and they will follow you.
People like to learn about your experience. They like to follow the expert's steps to avoid mistakes and reach

success the easy way with less investment in time and money.

3 - Start a dialog to establish trust.

Set up a continuing dialog to establish trust. Trust is a vital step to building long-time relationship. This dialog

should starts as soon as your visitors submit information along with their email addresses. This explains their

interest in your business. In return, you give them what promised when they subscribed and keep contacts at

periodic intervals by sending quality information to your subscribers.

Your goal is to create long term relationships marketing with your subscribers. To do that you must invest time to

gather available sources and high quality information and put it at your prospects' disposal to help them succeed.

Remember, maintaining customer enthusiasm and creating customer loyalty is your key to success.

4 - Follow up

Dialog leads to follow-up. Hook your subscribers with your follow up messages series. Set up a series of follow

up messages to send quality information to every new subscriber. Professionalism is the key to successful

relationship.

The main purpose of follow up is to remain visible to your subscribers so, when the need arise and your prospect

wants to make a purchase, your product will be the first one the subscriber thinks of.

If you want to make good money your mission will not cease at selling your product. Going after one sale is

worthless. Following up with your customer after the sale is made is a great tactic. This important step will help

you strength your relationship, decrease the refund proclamations and keep your customer baying from you

again and a gain.

Keep following up; don't stop and be creative. Don't send your customers only sales messages. From time to

time send free useful product they don't find elsewhere that can help them make money and/or save time. Send

special offers with discount for loyal customers only. Keep them up to date and to the point with latest news, etc...

5 - Offer good customer service.

Some people will start an online business and only focus on what services or products they can sell to make

good money. They are not worried about establishing good relationship with their customers and potential clients.

- Answer your prospects' requests as soon as you receive them.

- Replay to every email within 24 hours with the needed response whether it is a question, concern or simply

someone looking for more information.

- Treat your customers right. Even if you offer the best products or services, most customers will evaluate your

business by how they were treated while doing business with you. For that reason, it's important to take care of

your customers and give them the best product or service they want.

6 - Educate your subscribers.

Put at your customers disposal manuals, frequently asked question (FAQ) web page, articles, etc... to help them

learn how to use your product or service perfectly. Educate your subscribers to help them build interest and

loyalty for your business.

Lifetime clients want you to be their trusted advisor. The more you educate your customers by offering them a

variety of options, the greater your chance to earn their lifetime business. Education strengthens relationship

marketing with clients.

7 - Sell or recommend only quality products.

Sell quality products that have value, plus offer a guarantee and stand behind it. One of the quickest ways to

destroy a business relationship is selling poor quality products and not standing behind what you promise.

If you want to promote other marketers' affiliate programs from your website, take the time to investigate the

companies you advocate. Promote only products from legitimate companies with solid Internet presence.

Remember the companies you suggest will have an impact on your business reputation.

Managing Customer as an asset

A successful customer experience management strategy isn't just about

quickly processing transactions. It's also about managing technical support,
training call center agents and using more than surveys to solicit customer
feedback.

In fact, CEM(Customer Experience Management) encompasses those

issues and a lot more -- from a product's user-friendly packaging and a
website's ease of use to even the legibility of a billing statement.

To make the most of CEM, businesses should start from the inside out,
analysts recommend. That means involving employees from all
departments to determine how they should handle customers. It also
means treating customers like any other asset: keeping the more valuable
ones by shaping customer experience management procedures around
their needs.

What are customer touchpoints?

Customer touchpoints are your brands points of customer contact, from start
to finish. For example, customers may find your business online or in an ad,
see ratings and reviews, visit your website, shop at your retail store, or contact
your customer service. Seems like a long list, but these are just a few of your
touchpoints!

So what are touchpoints?

Touchpoint definition: A touchpoint is any time a potential customer or

customer comes in contact with your brandbefore, during, or after they
purchase something from you.

Identifying your touchpoints is the first step toward creating a customer

journey map, and making sure your customers are satisfied every step of the
way.

Heres how to take all of your touchpoints into account so you dont miss an
opportunity to listen to your customers and make improvements that will keep
them happy.

Consumer privacy is a form of information privacy concerned with the

relationship between business or merchant collection and dissemination of data and the
public expectation of privacy, and the legal and politicalissues surrounding them. Consumer
privacy concerns date back to the first commercial couriers and bankers who enforced strong
measures to protect customer privacy. In modern times, the ethical codes of most professions
very clearly specify privacy measures beyond that for the consumer of any service,
including medical privacy, client confidentiality, and national security. Since most organizations
have a strong competitive incentive to retain an exclusive access to these data, and since
customer trust is usually a high priority, most companies take some security
engineering measures to protect customer privacy.
Consumer privacy protection is the use of laws and regulations to protect individuals from
privacy loss due to the failures and limitations of corporate customer privacy measures.
Corporations may be inclined to share data for commercial advantage and fail to officially
recognize it as sensitive to avoid legal liability in the chance that lapses of security may occur.
Modern consumer privacy law originated from telecom regulation when it was recognized that
a telephone company had access to unprecedented levels of information. Customer privacy
measures were seen as deficient to deal with the many hazards of corporate data
sharing, corporate mergers, employee turnover, and theft of data storage devices (e.g., hard
drives) that could store a large amount of data in a portable location.

Module 4

Customer acquisition strategies

Customer acquisition is the lifeblood of any company. It's common sense. You can't
make money without customers. You can't grow and prosper without customers. In
fact, without customers, you don't have a company at all. So, to say customer
acquisition is important is underplaying the value of the most vital marketing
campaign any business can put out there.

Customer Acquisition Methods.

Any form of advertising or marketing is designed to attract people to it, and to become
brand loyalists. However, some methods are more successful than others, and some
can provide the advertising agency or brand the insights they need to know how
successful the campaign was.

Above the line advertising, such as billboards, television and radio spots, posters, print
advertisements and cinema spots do a great job of getting the brand in front of
millions of eyes. But they rarely close a sale, or have methods to track customer
conversion.

Through the line and below the line is where the process becomes much more
scientific and informative. For instance, a direct mail pack that contains phone
numbers or mailing addresses provides the advertising agency with data that can tell
them:

How many pieces were mailed out

How many pieces were opened and responded to
How many pieces resulted in a sale, or conversion

However, these days customer acquisition is finding its home in social media, with
Facebook and Twitter, in particular, being great resources for outreach. Here, you can
target customers and keep them informed of great offers or new product lines. You
can make them feel valued, talk one-on-one with people, and share insights that build
the brand.

Customer Retention Strategies

 1. Set customer expectations
The first step to building better customer retention is to set client expectations early.
The earlier the better. Dont wait.

By setting expectations early and a tad lower than you can provide, you can
eliminate uncertainty as to the level of service you need to offer to ensure your
clients are happy. This clear vision enables your company to build KPIs around
specific expectations and ensure you are always over delivering.

Clients tend to remember negative experiences. So if you have over delivered on

the past 20 occasions, but, once, you undelivered your client will no doubt quote
that negative experience as a reason to cancel his or her contract with you.

2. Be the expert
Small and medium-sized businesses are becoming more and more dependent on
services to run their operation. No matter what industry you occupy, if you can be the
expert in your particular field, you will likely retain more customers.

Becoming your customers trusted advisor will build customer loyalty and reduce
customer churn.

3. Build trust through relationships

As the age old saying goes, you do business with people you trust. Trust is
essential in business, and building relationships with clients will garner that trust.

4. Implement anticipatory service

Anticipatory service is a proactive approach to customer service. Instead of
waiting for problems to occur, a company that implements anticipatory service can
eliminate problems before they happen.

5. Make use of automation

Automation tools allow for time-consuming tasks requiring manual intervention to be
standardized into repeatable processes. Companies that leverage automation are
able to minimise downtime and keep clients networks performing at their best.

Companies are typically bound by contracts that guarantee their services and make
them accountable to clients. By leveraging automation tools and streamlining
repeatable processes, companies can better meet their commitments.
 6. Build KPIs around customer service
A great way to improve customer retention is to improve customer service. As
outlined at the beginning of this post, 68% of your customers leave because they
are dissatisfied with the service.

7. Build relationships online

Your clients are online, so lets start building relationships with them while they are
glued to their computer screens. With the rise of social media, connecting with your
clients through these mediums makes sense. I would focus my efforts on building
social profiles on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. The majority of your clients will
have active profiles on at least one of these Web sites.

Add on Selling

Defining Add-On Selling

Tom Duncan, author of "Principles of Advertising & IMC," defines upselling as encouraging
customers to buy a more expensive product than they had in mind. While this can mean
suggesting a more expensive model, it typically calls for the salesperson to offer the customer
related products. For example, clerks at a bookstore might ask customers if they also want to
purchase a bookmark. The addition of a bookmark makes the book buyers reading experience
easier, while also increasing the size of the sale.

Benefits

The primary benefit and goal of add-on selling is an increase in the total purchase amount.
Businesses that employ effective add-on selling also benefit from increased customer loyalty.
Customers who view businesses as providing good service, such as making useful suggestions,
tend to return to those businesses for future purchases. The business serves as a resource for
information or advice, rather than just a place to shop.

Customer equity is a result of customer relationship management. Customer

equity is the total of discounted lifetime values of all of the firms
customers. In layman terms, the more loyal a customer, the more is the
customer equity. Firms like McDonalds, Apple and Facebook have very high
customer equity and that is why they have an amazing and
sustainable competitive advantage.

Customer Equity is made up of three components. Value Equity, Brand Equity

and Relationship Equity.
Value Equity One of the common terms used in marketing is Value for
Money also known as VFM. Thus Value equity is the customers assessment
based on the offer, its price and its convenience. Thus if all the three match for
the customer, the firm is said to have high value equity. McDonalds is a fast
food item, it is available in most places and its price is considerable highly
reasonable.

Thus it has high value equity because it is value for

money product. Reebok and Adidas are available at select malls, they are
perceived as the leaders in sports shoes and people are ready to go out of the
way to get a reebok and adidas shoe. Thus even Reebok and Adidas have
value equity. Value equity is especially important in Industrial markets mainly
because B2B customers are highly aware of the convenience
and pricing parameters for high cost products.

Customer metrics

Customer metrics are techniques for measuring the value of

customers to you and your value to them. They include factors such
as customer satisfaction and loyalty measurements that are known
to correlated with revenue growth and margin improvement. The
following are common types of customer metric.

Brand Awareness
Brand awareness measures customer's awareness of your brand
initiatives. For example, an automotive company that has spent a
great deal of money to develop an exceptionally safe car, may run
surveys to see if customers have noticed.

Brand Engagement
Measurements of interactions with customers such as visits to retail
locations or social media conversations.

Brand Perceptions
Perceptions are similar to awareness. Awareness metrics involve
specific questions to directly measure a strategy. Perception related
questions are more general and flexible. A question such as, "Are
you satisfied with our quality?" is an example of a perception
survey.

Churn Rate
The percentage of your existing customers that you lose in a period
of time. Easily measured for service subscriptions. Other businesses
may measure lost customers by tracking purchases with methods
such as loyalty cards. For example, a customer that hasn't made a
purchase in a year might be defined as a lost customer.

Customer Acquisition Cost

The average cost of acquiring a customer including advertising,
marketing expenses, sales commissions and any additional costs
such as a welcome gift granted to customers.
Customer Complaints
The total number of customer complaints often reported by severity.
Can be represented as a percentage of customers. For example, 6%
of customers had a complaint.

Customer Lifetime Value

The projected lifetime value of a customer calculated as average
future net profit per customer discounted to a present value.

Customer Loyalty
Customer loyalty is typically measured by repeat purchases. For
example, a metric may capture the percentage of customers who
make at least one purchase a month.
Customer Payback Period
The time it takes for the cost of acquiring a customer to payback.
Most relevant to a service contract with monthly fees. For example,
if it costs $50 to acquire a customer and they each generate $10 net
profit per month, you break even in 5 months.

Customer Satisfaction
Asking customers as directly as possible how satisfied they are with
your products or services. Known to correlate with long term
financial performance in many industries.
Customer Service Satisfaction Rate
Satisfaction with a particular service interaction such as complaint
handling. Often more useful than customer service metrics that are
focused on time such as first response time and resolution time.
Keeping interactions short doesn't necessarily translate to satisfied
customers.
Goal Completions
The number of goal completions in total or as a percentage of
customers. A goal completion is anything that you'd like customers
to do, such as signing up for your loyalty program.
Large Account Revenue
The percentage of your revenue that comes from the top 10% of
your accounts by revenue.
Repeat Purchase Rate
The percentage of customers who make more than one purchase.
Revenue By Customer Segment
Revenue by type of customer. For example, the percentage of your
revenue that comes from corporate as opposed to individual
customers.
Revenue By Satisfaction
The percentage of revenue that comes from your top 20% most
satisfied customers. May highlight the value of customer
satisfaction improvement initiatives.
Revenue Per Customer
The average gross or net revenue per customer for a period of time.
 Share Of Wallet

The percentage of customer spend on a particular category of goods

and services that goes to your company. For example, the
percentage of your customer's annual shoe budget that goes to your
shoes.

Customer lifetime value

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In marketing, customer lifetime value (CLV or often CLTV), lifetime customer value (LCV),
or life-time value (LTV) is a prediction of the net profit attributed to the entire future relationship
with a customer. The prediction model can have varying levels of sophistication and accuracy,
ranging from a crude heuristic to the use of complex predictive analytics techniques.
Customer lifetime value can also be defined as the dollar value of a customer relationship, based
on the present value of the projected future cash flows from the customer
relationship.[1] Customer lifetime value is an important concept in that it encourages firms to shift
their focus from quarterly profits to the long-term health of their customer relationships. Customer
lifetime value is an important number because it represents an upper limit on spending to acquire
new customers.[2] For this reason it is an important element in calculating payback of advertising
spent in marketing mix modeling.

Ways of measuring customer satisfaction include:

1. Survey customers.
2. Understand expectations.
3. Find out where you are failing.
4. Pinpoint specifics.
5. Assess the competition.
6. Try to measure the emotional aspect.
7. Loyalty measurement.
8. A series of attribute satisfaction measurement.
Basic Steps for Effective Complaint Management
Designate a Location to Receive Complaints

Consumers need to know where and how to file complaints or make inquiries.

o Select a place to receive complaints that is visible and accessible to consumers.

o Publicize the complaint system to encourage consumers to voice their dissatisfaction and to make the good
intentions of the company apparent.
Develop a System for Record-keeping
 Prepare forms for recording, categorizing and filing complaint records. Design the system to perform functions
such as the following:

o communicating complaint data to top management;

o permitting swift identification and response when complaints need to be reported to other departments or
companies in the distribution network, or to law enforcement or regulatory agencies;

o providing market research through complaint trends; and

o enabling management to monitor the efficiency and effectiveness of the complaint management system.
Process and Record Complaints
o Log in the complaint and any relevant data.

o Categorize it for resolution and record-keeping. Categories must be clearly defined and exclusive of one
another.

o Assign the complaint to one person for handling.

o Forward the complaint to another level of authority, if appropriate.

Acknowledge Complaint
Consumers do not register complaints with only a casual interest in their disposition. Complaining involves
some inconvenience and, possibly, expense. Loyal customers with strong feelings are often involved.

o Personalize the response.

o Talk to the customer, if possible, by phone or in person.

o Use letters when necessary, but avoid impersonal form letters.

o Take extra time, if needed, to help consumers with special needs, such as language barriers.

Investigate and Analyze the Complaint

o Be fair.

o Get both sides of the story.

o Keep records in the complaint file of all meetings, conversations or findings.

Resolve the Problem in a Manner Consistent with Company Policy

o Forward the complaint to the appropriate level of authority for resolution.

o Keep the consumer informed through progress reports.

o Notify the consumer promptly of a proposed settlement.

Follow-Up
o Find out if the consumer is satisfied with the resolution. Was it carried out?

o Refer the complaint to a third-party dispute-resolution mechanism, if necessary.

o Cooperate with the third-party.

Prepare and File a Report on the Disposition of the Complaint, and Periodically Analyze and
Summarize Complaints
o Circulate complaint statistics and action proposals to appropriate departments.

o Develop an action plan for complaint prevention.

o Make sure the consumer viewpoint is given appropriate consideration in company decision making.
Defining CRM functionality

As the requirements define the what functionality defines the how. Each function should map
back to a business requirement. Identify the best way to map the functionality to business process. To
illustrate how this works, consider the following example. A major bank was discovering that many of
its customers did business with other financial institutions and already had the product being
marketed. If the banks customers did not opt for the first marketed alternative, telemarketers would
have the option, depending on the customers interest level, to make subsequent recommendations.
The bank decided to use CRM to generate a list of five different product recommendations for each
customer, based on that customers likelihood to buy them.

For this to work, the process had to involve these steps:

1. Analyse customer purchase history to understand the most frequently purchase products by
other like customers
2. Score the likelihood that a customer will buy an individual product
3. Communicate resulting customer list and product scores to call center application system.
4. Collect response rates
5. Refine scores based on campaign results.
Requirements + process = functionality

Best way to find the CRM products that offer your required functionality

CRM conferences
Analysts firms specializing in CRM such as Yankee group, META group
Trade shows
Consulting firms specializing in CRM
Trade publications, particularly those that perform product reviews such as Intelligent
Enterprise
Internal IT organization
Vendors seminars
CRM websites
Business magazines, particularly those that review IT vendor companies

CRM implementation Roadmap

Step 1
Business Planning
CRM strategy
 CRM business plan
Process planning and identification
ROI
Step-2
Architecture/Design
Project prioritization
Staff planning
Pre-implementation checklist
Step-3
Technology selection
Vendor evaluation
Technology alignment
Product installation
Step-4
Development
Customization/development
Process integration
Prototyping
Database design
Step-5
Delivery
Deployment
Documentation
User training
Internal PR
Step-6
Measurement
Evaluate metrics

CRM Roadblocks

CRM roadblocks are the obstacles occur during the business planning or requirements gathering
which do not allow the CRM to set right thing at right time
Four Ps of CRM roadblocks

1. Process: Many companies make the mistake of purchasing a CRM tool that supports
repeatable processes only to discover that their business processes are not defined well
enough to be repeatable. Some companies are slow or unwilling to modify their business
processes to support better customer relationship
2. Perception: After CRM has been deployed business people should be able to accomplish the
same work in less time or be able to perform new tasks that ultimately make their jobs easier
and at the same time enhance customer relationships. And customer perception, after all a
customer perception of the company is the basis for whether she will return to your web site
or store. CRM can either deliver or destroy a customers high opinion of your company and its
offerings.
3. Privacy: Consumers are more likely to share their personal information with your company if
they receive something valuable in return. Incorporate this into your CRM planning to ensue
that customers are sufficiently motivated to continue interacting with you at every
touchpoint. Understand permission marketing and the trade offs between asking customers
to opt in versus opt out. Customer can log on to a secure website and actually change their
own profiles benefiting both parties. Appoint a chief privacy officer to enforce a corporate
privacy policy and communicate then both internally and externally.
4. Politics: It involves the development of a data warehouse or other CRM related technology
solution and labeling it CRM without defining a clear CRM strategy, planned process
improvements, organizational changes or business participation. Declaring an activity or
technology project to be CRM does not make it so and risk tampering the high impact business
message of any bonafide CRM project awaiting approval. CRM in a vaccum simply does not
work long term and can actually delay or destroy an entire CRM program.
Future of CRM

1. The customer as Subject Matters Expert(SME)

a. Companies asking customers how to plan their CRM strategies
b. Rendering customers as subject matters expert
c. Leveraging customers to improve business process and recording the feedback of
customers who have taken the time to participate
d. Customers helps in prioritizing the tasks
2. The Rise of intermediaries
a. Intermediaries act to simplify the purchase process by acting as one stop information
resources.
b. Companies try to keep pace with their customers purchases and feedback
intermediaries triangulate a two way interaction between company and customers
c. Intermediaries help identify purchases and feedback as part of customers overall
profile.
3. Digital and Broadband Revolutionize Advertising
a. Enable advertisers to send personalized commercials to households that fit a certain
desired customer profile
b. Allow companies to target market in real time
c. Supports mass marketing with customized manner
4. The threat and promise of customer communities
a. Communicate improvements
b. Virtual meeting place of buyer and sellers
c. Communicate experiences
 d. Streamlined supply chains
5. CRM goes global
a. Country specific strategy
b. Direct mail communication
c. Expensive
d. Multi language support
e. Serve a growing base of international customers
6. The Coming CRM backlash
a. Improve customer experience
b. Increasing expectations for CRM
c. Increases customer satisfaction
d. Improved customer perceptions