CRM Assignment

Joined and Placed Category

Question Paper – Dec 2018

Q1. Elaborate the significance and objectives of CRM. Explain customer touch
points.
Ans. Significance of CRM:
1. Increased Sales:
With the introduction of CRM, the business develops healthy relations
with the customers. As they receive advice based on their preferences,
they are easily convinced to buy the product or use the service which
ultimately leads to increase in sales for the business as a whole.
2. Elevated Customer Satisfaction:
Great marketing techniques prove to the customer that they are our prime
focus and as they get personal attention and all their issues are addressed
directly they feel satisfied and thus they do not think of switching over in
any scenario. CRM can be useful in such scenario. It helps your support
team to track the customer queries. Also, it is helpful for customers as
well to generate and track the status of their query.
This situation is noteworthy for a business as it is obvious that if
customers are happy, business is also going well. ! You can implement
such marketing techniques easily with the help of your CRM.
3. CRM for Enhanced Communication:
In the absence of CRM, there used to be issues where a specific employee
used to handle a customer and in case of this employee’s unavailability,
the customer had to explain all the matter to someone new. A Fresh start
was to be done. But now, with the presence of CRM, the whole Customer
Data is on Cloud and there can never be any pauses or gaps due to the
absence of an employee. Thus, the communication becomes very simple
and effective and the process hassle-free.
4. Cost Effective:
Implementing CRM strategies is not an easy task. A lot of resources are
utilized such as money, time and employees. Various techniques would
have been considered and then analyzing the cost-benefits for CRM. The
initial investment for CRM would be considered as too high but the
benefits are even higher in which makes it cost effective in the long run.
5. Automation of Daily Tasks:
Achieving the sales targets is not an easy task. Numerous activities form
part of a single sale. Once a sale is done it’s not just that a product is gone
and money comes in. Various documents, invoice, etc. are to be
generated and then a single transaction is completed. We can imagine the
level of these routine activities as there are too many sales in a single day.
 With the integration of CRM, all these things can be done automatically.
The sales team can focus on bringing in more customers instead of
worrying about the daily tasks.

Objectives of CRM:
1. Improved Customer Satisfaction:
Happy customers are loyal customers and they also offer good word of
mouth advertising, which can be invaluable. Making customer
satisfaction the primary goal of your CRM campaign is the surest way to
improve your bottom line. This can be achieved by fostering increased
customer engagement via social networking sites and various mobile
platforms. You can consider implementing surveys or creating an
interactive blog. Actively soliciting feedback from your clients will help
you determine which actions and activities will make them more content
with the services or products they are receiving. One of the major benefits
in mapping out your CRM plan with increased customer satisfaction as
your primary goal is the fact that all other goals and objectives will
invariably support this effort. In this way, each method that you use or
measure that you take will share a symbiotic relationship with the rest. As
a result, all of your investments in CRM will be supporting your goals in
a balanced and seamless fashion. 
2. Improve The Efficiency Of Your Business:
CRM can help you eliminate redundancies in your marketing campaigns
by allowing you to intuit which stage of the purchasing process each
returning customer is in. You can send out marketing materials that are
targeted to specific interests and purchasing abilities, rather than
transmitting general messages that are far less likely to generate an
optimal amount of attention. A good CRM platform will collect and
organize a wealth of data pertaining to individual and group consumer
profiles. Another part of these endeavors can be the implementation and
use of knowledge management systems that increase the speed at which
customer inquiries are addressed and problems are resolved. Greater
levels of efficiency will also lead to improved client satisfaction. This is
additionally a very proactive form of reputation management, both online
and off and thus, it is certainly a worthwhile goal to pursue. As an added
benefit, some of the most innovative efforts to improve the overall
efficiency of your business can also support the branding process.
Showing yourself as being transparent, easy to connect with and ready to
provide rapid support and services will foster the development of a strong
and appealing brand image. Given that branding is one of the most costly
and time-consuming aspects of building your business and garnering
more attention for it, seeking to improve overall efficiency in a way that
will foster a better reputation is a vital addition to your top CRM
 objectives and goals. 
3. Expand You Customer Base:
It is important to note that CRM is not just for managing the customers
you already have. A CRM program that is linked to a high-quality
knowledge management platform will allow you to stay in contact with
prospects that have yet to convert. It will also allow you to identify
commonalities and relationships among the clients that you already have,
so that you can hone and improve your future efforts in outreach. A larger
customer base will allow for increased continuity in profits, even in a
seasonal industry. Having goals like this one as part of your CRM plan is
also a great way to devise a system that is wholly self-supporting in the
financial sense. By streamlining your marketing efforts for faster and
increased conversions, you can cut costs in a number of areas while
increasing your profits. Moreover, all of your new and most recent
converts can be quickly funneled into a system that allows you to keep in
touch and to keep your services and products fresh in their minds. This
ensures that your CRM budget is never exhausted. 
4. Enhance Your Sales And Support Teams: 
One of the most important CRM objectives to consider is enhancing your
team. By better learning the needs of the people you service, you can
become increasingly adept in identifying the right talent to provide these
services. Talent management software, HR management software and
other cloud-based tools can help you increase the value of your trained
employees. Much like your current customers, your talent is among your
top assets. Whether CRM helps you replace undesirable additions to your
team or gives you a framework for increasing the customer service skills
of existing employees, it is certain to improve the benefits that hired
workers are providing. More importantly, CRM will give you a guideline
for any professional development plans that you wish to implement and
make mandatory among all employees. The data that your CRM system
collects can be used as part of employee reviews and employee rewards
or incentive programs. Tracking customer feedback in relation to the
workers who have supplied customer service will allow you to make
highly informed hiring, firing and promotion decisions. It will also give
you an in-depth guide for sharing with any recruitment agencies that you
are working with or for bolstering your own in-house recruitment
teams. Many companies are heavily reliant upon cloud-based and
integrated systems. With knowledge sharing solutions, you can get
optimal benefits from each and every aspect of these endeavors. Best of
all, with goals that foster and support each other as the basis of this
system, each of your investments in CRM is guaranteed to provide
phenomenal returns. After having determined your CRM objectives and
goals, you will need to start looking for the right tools and resources for
 bringing these to fruition.

Customer Touch Points:

Customer Relationship Management software helps sales organizations keep
track of their clients and manage leads through their sales pipeline, which
makes selling easier and more effective.
While technology continues to make this process easier, there’s no way to fully
automate the human touch that’s so necessary to effective sales. In each step of
your sales process, you should be making direct contact to educate your buyer,
inform them about your product, and establish trust.
1. The Potential Buyer Makes Contact:
Your first opportunity to create a connection with your buyer is during
their initial contact.
At this point, the buyer has visited your website and has shown an
interest in your company or your solution. For example, they may have
filled out a form for a free resource like an eBook or they may have just
contacted you directly with any questions they have.
This is your first chance to speak to their needs and create a good
impression.
It’s important to realize that in most cases, now is not the time to make a
pitch. The buyer has simply shown interest, so it’s your job to figure out
what exactly they’re looking for and how you can help.
You may decide to follow up directly and if you do, you’ll want to
identify the following:
o Why did the buyer come to your website?
o How did the buyer find your website?
o What caused them to reach out?
o What problems are they having?
This is a chance for you to better understand the buyer’s needs, wants,
and pain points. You can then decide if your company is a fit and suggest
ways you can help.
In addition, you can also direct the buyer to other helpful resources, such
as videos, blog posts, case studies, and FAQs.
You can also ask if they want to sign up to your email list if they didn’t
already when reaching out or signing up for your free offer. This way,
you can send them your best content and keep them engaged with your
company.
Most importantly, you have to be available when the buyer has questions
and wants to talk to someone. Make sure that you can be reached via
phone, email, and possibly even live chat, and include all of your contact
details in your email signature so that the buyer can easily find your
contact info.
2. The Buyer Is Evaluating Your Solution:
 Once the buyer understands how your solution can address their pain
point, they advance to the mid-to-late stages of your sales funnel, where
they’ll likely be evaluating your solution against similar options.
So what can you do to persuade them into choosing your company? What
further information does the buyer need in order to make a decision?
Every situation will be different, but the key decision factors boil down
to:
o Does your solution meet the buyer’s needs?
o Does your solution make financial sense?
o Will going with your company make them more successful?
Now is your opportunity to address each of these questions.
To answer the question “Does your solution meet the buyer’s needs?”,
you can:
 Set up a call or product demo. This will allow you to speak directly
with the buyer and show them how your solution can address the specific
needs that they have. You will have the opportunity to ask exactly what
they are looking to do and show them just how to do it with your
software, solution, product, etc. You can use tools like Google
Hangouts, Soapbox by Wistia, or Invision to set this up.
 Invite the buyer to a webinar. A webinar is an alternative to a one-on-
one product demo where you can invite multiple prospects. This option is
best served for demonstrating a few key features of your solution and
explaining how these features will benefit the user. Tools
like WebinarJam and Demio can help you set this up.
 Invite them to use a test account or sign up for a free trial. This will
allow the buyer to try your solution on their own. You can then follow up
to answer any questions they may have.
To answer the question “Does your solution make financial sense?”, you
can put together a personalized plan that fits the buyer’s budget. This will
allow them to see the exact costs for your solution and everything
included in that plan.
Additionally, you can take this time to clear up any misunderstandings
about your pricing.
To answer the question “Will going with this your company be the right
choice?”, you can place confidence in the buyer’s decision by:
o Providing case studies
o Providing positive testimonials
o Referring them to clients who will speak positively about your company
on your behalf
Finally, even after all of this, you may need to give the buyer a bit of a
“nudge” in order to choose your solution. Of course, you should continue
to follow up via email or phone. However, if it’s been some time since
 the buyer first considered your company, you may reach out with a new
offer.
Including a bonus, unexpected item in the original plan you offered or
creating a limited offer (for example, save 10% during the next two days)
can be a last-ditch effort to secure the sale.
3. After the Buyer Has Purchased Your Solution:
The buyer has decided to go with your company and has purchased your
solution. Congratulations! You’ve won the sale. However, that doesn’t
mean your sales process is over and that it’s time to move onto the next
qualified lead.
Customer retention should be your next step in developing the buyer
relationship. Since it can cost anywhere from five to 25 times as much to
attract a new customer than it does to keep an existing one, it’s vitally
important to place just as much, if not more effort to keep customers
happy, versus simply pursuing new business.
At this point, you want your recent buyer to feel comfortable that they’ve
made the right decision so that they continue to stay with your company
and you can start to build a long-lasting business relationship.
So what can you do to ensure they are satisfied and you are doing
everything you can to make their transition a smooth one?
You’ll want to make sure that you:
 Thank the buyer. A simple thank you can go a long way and show that
you actually care about building a relationship.
 Provide fast delivery. The buyer shouldn’t have to wait for days or
weeks to receive your product or get access to your software.
 Help the buyer set up your solution. If you sell software, you can help
the buyer set up their account and even walk them through using it if you
haven’t already.
 Reach out frequently to see if they need help. Make sure to follow up
routinely to ask how everything is going and see if there is anything you
can help with.
 Make sure you’re easily available. The buyer should be able to contact
you easily via multiple communication methods and they shouldn’t have
to dig for your contact information.
 Send use cases. This can help the buyer to learn your product or solution
better and discover different ways they can meet their goals.
 Send surveys. By sending surveys, you can find out questions such as:
o How satisfied are customers with your solution?
o How satisfied are customers with your support?
o How easy or difficult do they find your solution to use?
o What unexpected problems are they experiencing?
4. Going Beyond the First Purchase (Continuing the Relationship):
 The final customer relationship management touchpoint is continuing
your relationship going forward. One of the biggest reasons customers
leave is because they believe the company doesn’t care about them.
So what can you do in the days, weeks, months, and years after purchase
to ensure you keep the buyer happy?
Some of the same ideas listed in the section above will still apply, but you
can also:
 Create a loyalty program. This type of program rewards your customers
for completing certain actions such as continuing to buy from your
company or even completing a survey or sharing your content. This is
another great way to keep your customers engaged.
 Set up a referral program. A referral program rewards customers for
referring new business to your company. For example, you might award a
customer a $100 gift card for every new sign up that they refer.
 Send them freebies. You can send your customers unexpected freebies
such as free eBooks or PDFs, or even a free gift.
 Upsell or cross-sell them on your other offerings. Existing customers
spend 67% more than new customers. This is a great opportunity to upsell
your current customers on upgraded plans or cross-sell them
complimentary products.

Q.2 “Most of the successful organisations have one thing in common; they are
good in retaining their customers.” Justify this statement and explain various
retention strategies.
Ans. Customer retention is the capacity a company has to keep customers
engaged with its product or service. It also acts as a business strategy in
customer relationship management that seeks to increase customer loyalty and
reduce customer churn. Customer retention techniques include creating a loyalty
or VIP program, personalizing the customer experience, re-engaging at-risk
customers and placing a high value on customer service.
Customer retention is important because it provides organizations insight into
their performance. And, like many other things, it’s rooted in data.
Customer retention refers to the activities and actions companies and
organizations take to reduce the number of customer defections. The goal of
customer retention programs is to help companies retain as many customers as
possible, often through customer loyalty and brand loyalty initiatives. It is
important to remember that customer retention begins with the first contact a
customer has with a company and continues throughout the entire lifetime of the
relationship.

Customer Retention Strategies:

1. Build a Robust Customer Journey:
Your customers are on a journey to achieve a particular goal. And like
 Frodo on his way to Mordor, they won’t get there alone. That’s where
your company comes in.
The problem is, you won’t be an effective guide unless you first map out
the customer journey. Doing so lets you determine why they’re coming to
you in the first place, and how you’re uniquely positioned to help them
reach their goal. Only then can you gauge whether they’re actually
achieving their goal, which is important because you want to be seen as
the best solution for their particular type of problem.
The customer journey includes the various touch points customers have
with your company. It starts when they first interact — seeing an ad or
reading a blog post, for example — and continues through the process of
nurturing them down the funnel and into the post-purchase phase.
At first glance, it might not be obvious how that contributes to customer
retention. But think of it this way: Mapping the customer journey allows
you to get a visual understanding of how customers interact with your
brand. You can use that information to optimize each touchpoint, which
enhances the overall experience so customers will see your company in a
positive light.
Furthermore, the journey doesn’t stop once they make the first payment.
You can strengthen customer loyalty by using customer journey mapping
to understand their evolving needs and how you can meet those.
2. Let Data Do the Legwork:
Do you know who’s going to win the next Super Bowl? I’m guessing not.
Even if you’re a student of the sport and can make an educated guess, it’s
still that. A guess.
The good news is that you don’t have to worry about the same thing with
your business. Your retention strategy need not (and shouldn’t) amount to
a guess. Rather, it should be grounded in hard data that drives informed
decisions.
You have a wealth of customer information at your fingertips. An
effective strategy will take advantage of that rather than letting the data
become stagnant. Use the insights you have to build a solid foundation
for your strategy.
3. Set Expectations:
Lack of communication can cause a lot of problems. In order to avoid
confusing or upsetting your customers, you need to clearly lay out the
framework for your relationship.
A service level agreement (SLA) is a way to formalize these “ground
rules” so both you and your customers know what the expectations are.
You’ll avoid a lot of potential issues by communicating this upfront. Plus,
having a written agreement will ease customers’ worries, since they’ll
have an exact idea of what your company will provide and how you’ll
handle given situations.
 To illustrate, if a SaaS provider wanted to instill confidence in their
customers, they would include details such as guaranteed server uptime.
If a system went down, customers wouldn’t have to panic because either
the provider would get the problem fixed in time to uphold their end of
the agreement, or the customers would receive some sort of
compensation.
With SLAs in place, you present a customer-centric appearance that
shows you have customers’ best interests in mind. An SLA will hold you
— and your customers — accountable.
4. Listen to Your Customers:
Listening starts with asking the right questions. Use surveys, polls and
other feedback mechanisms to extract how customers feel about their
relationship with your company.
Back to letting data do your heavy lifting, it’s risky to base anything on
assumptions. Maybe you knew a customer’s pain point when she first
bought your product or service. But that doesn’t mean her current
challenges are the same.
You could wing it, but you’ll likely end up heading the wrong direction
eventually, and that burns through precious time and resources. Your best
bet is to let your customers’ feedback guide you.
But don’t stop there. Once you have that feedback in hand, use it.
Whether that’s updating a help desk process to make the experience
smoother or tweaking the regularity of your loyalty program newsletter, it
will only serve to strengthen the relationship with your customers.
5. Make It Personal:
Too often, it’s easy for a company to treat their customers as no more
than checkmarks on a list or a credit card number. The reality is, though,
that you’re dealing with people. And those people are
demanding exceptional experiences.
By placing an emphasis on personalization, you show customers that you
understand they’re individual people — not a random entry plugged into
the machine of your business. That makes them feel special and cared
about.
However, personalization cuts both ways. As much as you need to
consider the human element of your customer communications,
customers want to know they’re not interacting with an impersonal entity.
Sending targeted offers and personalized messages are two excellent
places to start. We’ll cover the “how to” details in the CRM section.
6. Stay in Touch:
If you want loyal customers, you need to spend time building a
relationship with them. It doesn’t need to be complicated — in fact, you
shouldn’t be so intent on reaching out that you become an annoyance.
However, showing you care about each customer will foster the warm
 sort of relationship that will keep customers around.
7. Catch Customers Before They Say Goodbye:
It doesn’t take much to send customers packing. Any number of things
can cause customer churn, from rude staff to slow responses. In
fact, eight in 10 people will leave if they have a poor customer
experience.
Not to worry; you don’t have to stand by helplessly. The key is to pay
attention to the signals. If you notice a trend such as lower engagement,
which suggests customers might have mentally checked out and are
headed for the door, take action. Send a survey to get a reading on where
they’re at or cue up a short email campaign.
8. Give Customers the White Glove Treatment:
We’ve all been on the receiving end of bad customer service experiences,
so it should come as no surprise that providing top-notch service is one of
the best ways to retain customers. In fact, subpar customer service is
enough to drive seven out of every 10 people away from a company.
Turn the coin over, however, and you’ll find a correlation between great
customer service and happy customers. Nearly 80 percent of Americans
consider friendly service and knowledgeable help among the top factors
of a positive experience, according to a 2018 PwC survey.
Unfortunately, that same survey also revealed that companies have a
difficult time meeting customer expectations. A gap exists between the
satisfaction level and the level of importance people place on customer
service.
What does that mean for your company? Closing that gap should play a
central role in your strategy, and doing so will help you retain more
customers.

Q.3 “Every satisfied customer leads to customer loyalty.” Elaborate with

relevant examples.
Ans. Customer satisfaction leads to customer loyalty, which is pretty much
the Holy Grail for survival in this super-competitive business environment. A
loyal customer is a powerful asset and every brand wants as many of those as
possible. Loyal customers are more likely to generate repeat business. They will
spend more money with your company. And they might even become your
brand’s advocate. So, the more satisfied your customers are, the better the
chances of them becoming loyal to your brand.

The Importance Of Customer Satisfaction & Loyalty

Customer satisfaction is used to measure how likely someone is to do business
with a company again. It is often measured using a simple scale from 1 to 10.
The more satisfied a customer is, the higher the chances they will make another
purchase in the future. And very satisfied customers often become advocates,
promoting your brand to their friends and family. Thanks to social media, their
circle of friends can be huge, which makes the customers invaluable assets.
The consensus is that a customer who gives a rating of 7 or above is satisfied,
while those giving ratings of 9 or 10 are the ones you should be looking at as
your future advocates. Customers who rate you 6 or below are unhappy and you
need to find out why because they are likely to jump ship soon. A study
conducted in 2008 discovered that most customers leave a company in favour of
competition because of overall poor customer service rather than price.
Studies have shown that very satisfied customers contribute 2.6 times as much
sales to a company compared to sort-of-satisfied customers and 17 times more
revenues than an unhappy customer.
Satisfied customers also tend to become loyal customers, which means a higher
lifetime value for those customers. A loyal customer will spend more on one
purchase than a new customer. Furthermore, customer acquisition costs are
approximately 7 times higher than customer retention costs, which further
improves your bottom line.
Another benefit of customer satisfaction is that it reduces negative word of
mouth. Someone who is unhappy is much more likely to vent their frustration to
the world than a satisfied customer is to spread the word of their excellent
experience. Studies have discovered unsatisfied customers are likely to tell up
to 15 people of their poor experience while satisfied customers will relay their
positive experience to maybe or 6 people. And that doesn’t take into account
people going online to complain!

Q.4 Explain the need and importance of E CRM in Manufacturing Industry.

Ans. The manufacturing industry has witnessed a dramatic transformation over
the years. Previously, a manufacturing company responded to whatever a
customer required. It has now evolved and become even more customer-
centric by incorporating different manufacturing software solutions. 
Instead of waiting for the customers to tell them what they need, companies are
now forecasting what will be in demand in the coming months using different
business software solutions. Interestingly enough, many small scale companies
are also leveraging manufacturing software for small businesses such as CRM
software. This will enable them to make use of techniques like lean production
and automation to meet future demand. 
In these dynamic times, the role of Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
has never been more important. Companies are leveraging CRM for
Manufacturing Industry to streamline their business processes and deliver
unparalleled customer service. The Manufacturing CRM system can give you a
360-degree view of your customers, improve sales management and boost team
productivity. 
Importance Of E CRM in the Manufacturing Industry:

1. Accurate Demand Forecasting:

This feature is extremely useful for firms operating in fast-changing
industries such as high-tech, electronics, retail, etc. A Manufacturing
CRM solution can help manufacturers cut the time required to develop a
product from the concept phase to market delivery. Hence, you don’t
need to invest in different manufacturing planning software.

2. Improved Product Quality:

To stay in business, a manufacturing company has to keep producing
high-quality products consistently and efficiently. Substandard or
defective products will not only tarnish the brand image but also result in
unhappy and unsatisfied customers, leading to a reduction in sales and
revenue. 

3. Intelligent Supply Chain:

Failing to simplify and optimize business operations can result in overly
complex processes. Moreover, costly implementations of production
management software can have a detrimental effect on the company’s
desired ROI. 
Deploying CRM in the manufacturing sector can give manufacturers
detailed and useful insights about operations, inventory management,
order processing, warehousing and distribution chains. 
Having an intelligent supply chain can deliver phenomenal results as it
empowers firms to manage production schedules. Moreover, it also lets
you maintain materials supply and move products quickly from the site of
production to the market.

4. Enrichment of Customer Relationships:

Customer relationship management in the manufacturing industry can
prove to be a game-changer. Safe delivery of a product and after-sales
services are as important for a manufacturing company as closing a new
deal. 
A Manufacturing CRM system will help keep track of any warranty,
repair, or service issues and in managing day-to-day questions, inquiries
and service calls. This will result in fewer delays and penalties and more
follow-on sales.

5. More Business Won:

Unlike other manufacturing software solutions, CRM software is a
 valuable marketing tool as well and helps you gain followers and
customers. It enables the Marketing and Sales departments to make
detailed reports, taking into consideration the customers’ behavior. 
Manufacturing CRM systems let the customer support staff help the
customer immediately and also provide valuable insights that help
improve product quality and business processes over time. This
streamlines the operations, lowers costs and increases profits. Moreover,
you can also leverage Blockchain with CRM to streamline financial
transactions, maintain a transparent ledger system and keep track of all
digital payments. 

Q.5 Write a short note on the following:

a) Attitudinal and Behavioural Loyalty
b) Win Back Strategies
c) Data Warehousing and Mining
Ans. a) Attitudinal and Behavioural Loyalty:
Attitudinal loyalty—Customers that are loyal because they love a particular
brand. Richard L Oliver defines attitude-based loyalty as “A deeply held
commitment to repurchase or repatronize a preferred product/service
consistently in the future, thereby causing repetitive same brand-set purchases
despite situational influences and marketing efforts having the potential to cause
switching behavior.” One of the best examples of attitude-based loyalty is the
fan following for European football clubs or cult brands such as Harley
Davidson or Apple.

Fiercely loyal and diligent, attitude-based loyalty is excellent for viral publicity.
More often than not, supporters of football clubs ensure that their support for
the club is something that’s passed down generations. The advent of social
media has now made these customers even more important as they can express
their satisfaction or resentment at a greater scale. They not only add to the brand
image but also associate themselves with all associated products of the brand.

Behavioral loyalty—Customers that are only loyal because they’re trapped.

Behavioral loyalty can be defined as “an ongoing propensity to buy the brand,
usually as one of several”, state Ehrenberg and Scriven. This behavior is vitally
important to business as it shows that people are buying from them on a regular
basis. While it remains an important factor that needs to be studied, behavioral
loyalty by itself cannot be used as a measure of someone’s loyalty to a brand.
Their decision to buy from a source repeatedly could come down to a factor as
simple as laziness or inertia. As such behavioral loyalty is not a reliable
predictor of customer behavior. However, this does not reduce their role as
influencers since they could just as well chase away other potential leads
through negative reviews.
If you only have one grocery store in your town, you’re going to exhibit
behavioral loyalty. You’re a repeat customer because you don’t have any other
choice.
On the flip side, if you drive past three grocery stores just to get to the nearest
Publix, you’re exhibiting attitudinal loyalty. You have many options, but you’re
picking Publix because of what they stand for, how you’re treated, etc.
Companies like Apple have the best of both worlds. As you buy more iDevices
and become more dependent on iCloud, switching to Android becomes harder
(behavioral). At the same time, they have millions of raving fans exhibiting
attitudinal loyalty.
Attitudinal loyalty is built on amazing experiences. It has strong ties into
customer support. Every interaction is a chance to reinforce attitudinal loyalty
by exceeding expectations, removing roadblocks, and delivering delight.

Win Back Strategies:

When your business loses customers, it is critical to find out the reasons for
their defection. Once you know why they left, you can devise strategies to win
them back. Identify the customers you have lost and contact them through
online surveys, evaluation forms or personal telephone calls to find out what the
reasons are for their dissatisfaction. Conduct an analysis using data gleaned
from your research to determine the main issues facing your business. Resolve
any problems the customers experienced with your products or services and
then select a suitable strategy to win them back.

Rebranding: If your analysis produces evidence of a problem with your

product or service, the first requirement is to resolve the problem. If the
resolution includes significant changes to the product, a strategy of partial or
complete rebranding provides the opportunity to revitalize a tired brand or
create an entirely new identity for the firm or product. A partial rebrand works
when the company’s image needs updating and helps retain customer loyalty
without losing the value of the existing brand. Rebranding enables the company
to contact former customers, offer them new and improved products or services
and implement a revised customer retention policy.

Special Discounts: When retail businesses lose customers because of pricing

increases, a win-back strategy using special promotions might work. In this
situation, former customers are familiar with the quality of your product or
service, and price is their main reason for transferring business to your
competitors. Offer popular items for sale at a reduced rate and give established
customers the first chance to benefit from the discount. Introduce loyalty
programs for repeat customers, which take into account former purchases on
record and offer special deals on future purchases.

Deal Incentives: Partner with another company to offer a deal incentive to win
back customers you lost to a competitor. For example, a stationery supply
company in partnership with a local restaurant could offer an incentive of a free
dinner to customers who recently defected. The stationery company benefits by
winning back the former customers and pays the restaurant a reduced rate for
those who take up the incentive. The restaurant benefits from the partnership by
enjoying increased business and has the chance to introduce its menu to a wider
base of patrons who might not try it of their own accord. The cost involved is an
investment in customers for both businesses.

Targeted Services: If your loss of customers is because of a product or service

your offering lacks, your research will identify this. Once you have resolved the
problem, target those customers with your new, improved product. For example,
a survey conducted among customers who buy fresh flowers indicated that 70
percent were willing to pay more for flowers guaranteed to last, particularly for
occasions such as Mother's Day and get well and romantic situations. This
knowledge enables the American floral industry to target customers buying for
those reasons with products that fulfill their requirements and is an effective
win-back strategy for customers who have been dissatisfied in the past with the
longevity of flowers they bought.

Data Warehousing and Mining:

Data warehouse refers to the process of compiling and organizing data into one
common database, whereas data mining refers to the process of extracting
useful data from the databases. The data mining process depends on the data
compiled in the data warehousing phase to recognize meaningful patterns. A
data warehousing is created to support management systems.

A Data Warehouse refers to a place where data can be stored for useful mining.
It is like a quick computer system with exceptionally huge data storage
capacity. Data from the various organization's systems are copied to the
Warehouse, where it can be fetched and conformed to delete errors. Here,
advanced requests can be made against the warehouse storage of data.

Data warehouse combines data from numerous sources which ensure the data
quality, accuracy, and consistency. Data warehouse boosts system execution by
separating analytics processing from transnational databases. Data flows into a
data warehouse from different databases. A data warehouse works by sorting
out data into a pattern that depicts the format and types of data. Query tools
examine the data tables using patterns.
Data warehouses and databases both are relative data systems, but both are
made to serve different purposes. A data warehouse is built to store a huge
amount of historical data and empowers fast requests over all the data, typically
using Online Analytical Processing (OLAP). A database is made to store current
transactions and allow quick access to specific transactions for ongoing business
processes, commonly known as Online Transaction Processing (OLTP).

Data mining refers to the analysis of data. It is the computer-supported process

of analyzing huge sets of data that have either been compiled by computer
systems or have been downloaded into the computer. In the data mining
process, the computer analyzes the data and extract useful information from it.
It looks for hidden patterns within the data set and try to predict future behavior.
Data mining is primarily used to discover and indicate relationships among the
data sets.

Data mining aims to enable business organizations to view business behaviors,

trends relationships that allow the business to make data-driven decisions. It is
also known as knowledge Discover in Database (KDD). Data mining tools
utilize AI, statistics, databases, and machine learning systems to discover the
relationship between the data. Data mining tools can support business-related
questions that traditionally time-consuming to resolve any issue.

Question Paper – Dec 2017

Q.1 What are the various components of CRM cycle? Briefly mention the
factors that affects CRM cycle?
Ans. The main components of CRM are building and managing customer
relationships through marketing, observing relationships as they mature through
distinct phases, managing these relationships at each stage and recognizing that
the distribution of value of a relationship to the firm is not homogeneous. When
building and managing customer relationships through marketing, firms might
benefit from using a variety of tools to help organizational design, incentive
schemes, customer structures, and more to optimize the reach of its marketing
campaigns. Through the acknowledgement of the distinct phases of CRM,
businesses will be able to benefit from seeing the interaction of multiple
relationships as connected transactions. The final factor of CRM highlights the
importance of CRM through accounting for the profitability of customer
relationships. Through studying the particular spending habits of customers, a
firm may be able to dedicate different resources and amounts of attention to
different types of consumers.
Relational Intelligence, or awareness of the variety of relationships a customer
can have with a firm, is an important component to the main phases of CRM.
Companies may be good at capturing demographic data, such as gender, age,
income, and education, and connecting them with purchasing information to
categorize customers into profitability tiers, but this is only a firm's mechanical
view of customer relationships. This therefore is a sign that firms believe that
customers are still resources that can be used for up-sell or cross-
sell opportunities, rather than humans looking for interesting and personalized
interactions.
CRM systems include:
1. Data warehouse technology, used to aggregate transaction information, to
merge the information with CRM products, and to provide key
performance indicators.
2. Opportunity management which helps the company to manage
unpredictable growth and demand, and implement a good forecasting
model to integrate sales history with sales projections.
3. CRM systems that track and measure marketing campaigns over multiple
networks, tracking customer analysis by customer clicks and sales.
4. Some CRM software is available as a software as a service (SaaS),
delivered via the internet and accessed via a web browser instead of being
installed on a local computer. Businesses using the software do not
purchase it, but typically pay a recurring subscription fee to the software
vendor.
5. For small businesses a CRM system may consist of a contact manager
system that integrates emails, documents, jobs, faxes, and scheduling for
individual accounts. CRM systems available for specific markets (legal,
finance) frequently focus on event management and relationship tracking
as opposed to financial return on investment (ROI).
6. CRM systems for eCommerce, focused on marketing automation tasks,
like: cart rescue, re-engage users with email, personalization.
7. Customer-centric relationship management (CCRM) is a nascent sub-
discipline that focuses on customer preferences instead of customer
leverage. CCRM aims to add value by engaging customers in individual,
interactive relationships.
8. Systems for non-profit and membership-based organizations help track
constituents, fundraising, sponsors' demographics, membership levels,
membership directories, volunteering and communication with
individuals.
9. CRM not only indicates to technology and strategy but also indicates to
an integrated approach which includes employees knowledge,
organizational culture to em-brass the CRM philosophy.

Components of Customer Relationship Management:

1. SalesForce Automation: SalesForce Automation is the most essential

 components of customer relationship management. This is one such
component that is undertaken by the maximum business organizations. It
includes forecasting, recording sales processing as well as keeping a track
of the potential interactions. It helps to know the revenue generation
opportunities better and that makes it very significant. The component
also includes analyzing the salesforecasts and the performances by the
workforce. To achieve an overall improvement in the development and
growth of the industry, numerous components work hand in hand to form
salesforce automation as a consequent unit. Some of the major elements
of the same are Lead Management, Account Management, Opportunity
Management, Forecasting, Pipeline Analysis, Contact Management,
Activity Management, Email Management and Reporting. 

2. Human Resource Management: Human Resource Management

involves the effective and correct use of human resource and skills at the
specific moment and situation. This requires to be make sure that the
skills and intellectual levels of the professionals match the tasks
undertaken by them according to their job profiles. It is an essential
component not only for the large scale corporations but the medium
industries as well. It involves adopting an effective people strategy and
studying the skills or the workforce and the growth being generated
thereby designing and implementing the strategies needed accordingly
with the aim of achieving development. 

3. Lead Management: Lead Management as the name suggests, refers to

keeping the track of the sales leads as well as their distribution. The
business that are benefitted by this component of CRM the most are the
sales industries, marketing firms and customer executive centres. It
involves an efficient management of the campaigns, designing
customized forms, finalizing the mailing lists and several other elements.
An extensive study of the purchase patterns of the customers as well as
potential sales leads helps to capture the maximum number of sales leads
to improve the sales. 

4. Customer Service: Customer Relationship Management emphasizes on

collecting customer information and data, their purchase informations and
patterns as well as involves providing the collected information to the
necessary and concerned departments. This makes customer service an
essential component of CRM. Almost all the major departments including
the sales department, marketing team and the management personnel are
required to take steps to develop their awareness and understanding of the
customer needs as well as complaints. This undoubtedly makes the
business or the company to deliver quick and perfect solutions and
 assistance to the customers as well as cater to their needs which increases
the dependability and trust of the customers and people on the
organization. 

5. Marketing: Marketing is one of the most significant component of

Customer Relationship Management and it refers to the promotional
activities that are adopted by a company in order to promote their
products. The marketing could be targeted to a particular group of people
as well as to the general crowd. Marketing involves crafting and
implementing strategies in order to sell the product. Customer
Relationship Management assists in the marketing process by enhancing
and improving the effectiveness of the strategies used for marketing and
promotion. This is done by making an observation and study of the
potential customers. It is a component that brings along various sub-
elements or aspects. Some of the major elements of marketing are List
Management, Campaign Management, Activity Management, Document
Management, Call Management, Mass Emails and Reporting. The use of
the aforesaid elements varies from business to business according to its
nature and requirements as well as the target crowd. 

6. Workflow Automation: A number of processes run simultaneously

when it comes to the management and this requires an efficient cost
cutting as well as the streamlining of all the processes.The phenomenon
of doing so is known as Workflow Automation. It not only reduces the
excess expenditure but also prevents the repetition of a particular task by
different people by reducing the work and work force that is getting
wasted for avoidable jobs. Routing out the paperwork and form filling are
some of the elements of the process and it aims at preventing the loss of
time and excess effort. 

7. Business Reporting: CRM comes with a management of sales, customer

care reports and marketing. The customer care reports assist the
executives of a company to gain an insight into their daily work
management and operations.This enables one to know the the precise
position of the company at any particular instance. CRM provides the
reports on the business and that makes it play a major role here. It is
ensured that the reports are accurate as well as precise. Another
significant feature is the forecasting and the ability to export the business
reports on other systems. In order to make comparisons, one can save
historical data as well. 

8. Analytics: Analytics is the process of studying and representing the data

in order to observe the trends in the market. Creating graphical
 representations of the data in the form of histograms, charts, figures and
diagrams utilizing the current data as well as the one generated in the past
is essential to achieve a detailed understanding and study of the trends.
Analytics is an extremely significant element of Customer Relationship
Management as it allows to make in-depth study of information that is
required to calculate the progress in the business.

Factors affecting CRM:

 Departmentwise capability of the supplier.
 Technological and engineering or re-engineering aspects of products and
services.
 Type and quality of response provided by the supplier.
 Supplier’s capability to commit on deadlines and how efficiently they are
met.
 Customer service provided by the supplier.
 Complaint management.
 Cost, quality, performance and efficiency of the product.
 Supplier’s personal facets like etiquettes and friendliness.
 Supplier’s ability to manage whole customer life cycle.
 Compatible and hassle free functions and operations.

Q.2 What are the applications of CRM and E-CRM in service industry? What
are the challenges to implement E-CRM in a service industry?
Ans. Following are the applications:
1. Scaling with the business efficiently: Sometimes, a business’s adoption
of a CRM comes out of necessity. Rapid growth can make manual CRMs
—sometimes nothing more than spreadsheets or email folders—appear
inadequate. Many of these handcrafted systems offer minimum viability
for five or ten customers but have decreasing efficiency as a business
grows.
A cloud-based CRM supports business growth without requiring
continual reinvestment in software or hardware. It also avoids the
guesswork of exactly what capacity or features a business may need. The
ability to upgrade (or downgrade) as circumstances change lowers the
risk a business faces by adopting a CRM.
Furthermore, a CRM that is in use by hundreds or thousands of
businesses likely has the ready functionality to meet emerging business
demands. Without adoption of a CRM, businesses may continually need
to develop new functionality for an internally managed system as the
company changes.

2. Sharing data in real time with all team members: In customer service,
 data sharing can mean more than just open access to customer
information. In fully integrated systems—such as those that pair a CRM
with computer telephony integration (CTI)—representatives gain instant
access to a full customer record as soon as an interaction begins.
This real-time access can expedite the handling of customer issues and
reduce the total amount of time spent with each customer. For example, a
CRM can show a complete history of customer interactions, which may
include notes from previous calls in which a customer sought a resolution
for an ongoing issue. The representative can quickly address the
outstanding item without requiring the customer to repeat the entire
history. That access can reduce customer frustration and enable
representatives to handle more customers in the same amount of time.
For customer service representatives that also have a role in sales, CRMs
have an even larger role. A comprehensive CRM may include a list of
marketing materials received by a customer, which can provide insight
into consumer interest and existing knowledge. Additionally, a CRM can
improve information transfer between remote sales staff and in-house
customer service representatives.
The seamless data transfer keeps representatives informed while also
improving a prospect’s perception of a company’s overall management.
Both benefits have the potential to increase sales and boost revenue.

3. Automating data entry for consistent, accurate information: The

value of data sharing depends largely on the quality of data obtained. A
complete set of notes from a previous call may not be valuable if the
content is disorganized or key dates are missing. Without automated data
entry, a busy sales representative may neglect to log a critical sales call.
Alternatively, a burdensome requirement for manual data entry may
lower staff morale. It may also waste valuable time that may be better
spent building rapport through face-to-face interactions.
An integrated CRM can automate many aspects of data entry to provide a
clearer, more complete picture of client interactions. The increased clarity
provides representatives with more confidence about the data in front of
them and eases the burden of data maintenance.
The automation of data entry has benefits beyond the immediate
improvements to representative/client interactions. A standardized set of
data points is key for customer service managers to gain actionable
insights from CRM analytics.

4. Using analytics to verify processes and increase accountability: An

automated data entry system for a CRM provides the raw material for
business analytics. For managers working with dozens or even hundreds
 of representatives, the data from a CRM provides critical visibility into
which practices should be standardized.
It can also help boost adoption by offering a data-backed rationale for
behavior changes among staff. A supporting dataset can make managers
more influential with entrenched staff and garner support among new
hires to adopt an internal strategy for client interactions. It may also allow
managers to give team members liberty to test or experiment new
methodologies, with the resultant data able to define success.
Thus, these analytics insights can bolster accountability within a
customer service center and throughout an organization. Just as data can
be used to improve the performance of individual representatives,
managers can also use data to show progress to executives or request
changes to staffing or procedures.
At the very least, the added accountability can help show the value of an
online customer support center. Basic data points like ‘calls handled’ or
‘sales completed’ are clear markers of utility. In an ideal scenario,
analytics data and increased accountability will also reduce costs.

5. Reducing costs to make customer service more efficient: A reduction

in costs is one of the great benefits of a CRM. The improved data
organization and consistency builds efficiency into customer service
interactions, and analytics can verify and further these initial gains.
The reduced costs don’t necessarily mean a smaller or less significant
department, either. A more efficient customer service center may be able
to redistribute resources to improve technology, training, or compensation
—all of which may also increase employee satisfaction and retention.
Of course, reduced costs are only one-half of the equation. A CRM also
has the potential to increase revenue, either through more sales or
enhanced client retention. A high-quality customer service experience—
assisted by a CRM—can help deliver more consistent, informed
messaging to potential clients.

Challenges to implement E-CRM:

With E-CRM customers drive the interaction deciding on the type and
duration of contact permissible. The ability to create intimacy with the
customers is limited and building trust can be difficult. When managing
an online channel companies are faced with the fact that greater choice
creates fickleness among customers and with the competition only one
click away there are no second chances to recover mistakes in these
remote channels. Data integration and IT architecture challenges also
exist for organisations adopting E-CRM technologies.

 Customer Interactions and Relationships: The use of an E-CRM

 system enables traditional physical customer proximity to be
substitute by digital proximity. The need for customer reassurance
in the purchase decision can be exacerbated by new e-channels and
needs to be addressed by the creation of, for example, online
communities, online shop assistants, customer testimonials and
general reassurance about buying strategies and purchase choices
for customers. The ability to create intimacy with the customer
does not exist online and due to the remoteness of these channels
building trust is more difficult, with the relationship elements of E-
CRM harder to get build beyond a purely transactional one. In the
absence of such trust it is harder to get customers to share the data
which is essential to creating effective CRM strategies. Privacy
policies and guarantees become an essential element in building
trust and consequently effective E-CRM initiatives for companies.
 Managing an Online Channel: E-CRM as merely part of the bigger
picture of enterprise-wide CRM, as CRM enabled by the use of
new electronic and interactive media. The online channel is
described as merely one piece of the CRM puzzle but one which
will become increasingly important for companies who must not
learn to manage relationships with e-customer base proliferates. E-
CRM is now a priority for the majority of companies as the impact
of electronic initiatives on sales and service requirements continues
in tandem with the increased level of investments in Internet-
related delivery made by companies. E-CRM can then be seen to
provide a structure for the possible strategic evolution of a
technology-mediated relationship marketing business framework.
 Challenges of Data Integration and IT Architecture: From the
technology perspective an E-CRM system represents a mass of
seams that need to be tightly stitched together, in essence a mass of
integration. No single software application is able to fill the gap,
nor it is likely to be filled internally. To implement E-CRM
companies will need a wide variety of hardware/software
applications and tools. This suggests significant resources and cost
implications; which companies must incorporate into their overall
strategic planning.
 Marketing and IT Alignment: The IT function is an enabler of
business development within an organisation. However,
mismatched perceptions and expectations between the Marketing
and IT functions can often impact and delay E-CRM strategies.
Marketing users often focus on the front end of applications and
assess the functionality of the E-CRM system with limited
understanding of data and Web Integration issues, while the IT
functions tends to assess its technical quality.
Q.3 What are the importance of referrals in CRM? How one can build better
referral network for effective implementation of CRM?
Ans. Every business has two networks that can be sources of referrals: a
customer network, and a network of strategic partners. Your customers will be
motivated to refer others to you when you wow them with your service. Be
remarkable, and they will remark to others about you.
For businesses who also engage your target audience, the motivation comes
when your partnership with them adds “value to the relationships they already
have with their customer.” Figure out a way to do that, and you’ve created a
situation where both businesses and the customer all win.
Be sure to tailor referral opportunities to suit the motivations of each customer
or partner business. The more you’ve developed relationships with them, paid
attention, and recorded what you’ve learned in your CRM system, the better
picture you’ll have of those motivations.
If you want referrals from customers, you really need to actually ask for them.
The best time to do that is when they have just realized what a great experience
it’s been to deal with you.
To win the battle for public opinion as a lead generator, companies often have
go the extra mile. It simply is not enough to create good experiences and hope
that word of mouth follows after them. Companies today have to make sure that
the programs they create lead to satisfying results for everyone involved, and
have to make it as easy as possible for customers to drum up new business. The
smart use of technological tools can support these endeavors as well. Referrals
aren’t just important–they’re one of the strongest tactics for generating
customers, too. Referrals have two benefits: stable, lengthy relationships, and an
immediate burst of enthusiasm and profitability. The latter can generate more
referrals and become the lifeblood of a business.

To build better referral network for effective implementation of CRM:

 Mutual Benefit:
The key to a solid referral program is mutual benefit. Both the referred
customer and the referring customer need to get something out of it.
Consider Uber: each time a customer successfully drives new business
through a referral, both the current customer and the new one get $20 off
of a ride. Both parties receive the immediate benefit. The new customer
gets a positive start with the company, while the existing is rewarded for
new business.
These programs are more costly than programs with asymmetric rewards,
but they also generate more business. In a case where only the new
customer is rewarded, the existing customer has no reason (other than
satisfaction) to make a referral. In a case where only the existing
customer is rewarded, that customer has a reason to feel like a kind of
 predator, leading friends into a business relationship not because of a
belief in the company or product, but for personal gain.

 Ease of Use:
The other major component of a good referral program is accessibility.
How much effort does the new customer have to put out to get the
benefits involved in a referral? How much work does the existing
customer have to put in to start drumming up new business? If the answer
to either is significant, the referral program could probably use a little
work.
The key is to throw up as few barriers as possible. In the case of Uber’s
successful program, customers were allowed to change the referral codes
they were given into something memorable and personal, provided it
wasn’t already in use. A customer who can tell her friends to simply put
down her name, or a simple code like her first name and her pet’s name,
is more likely to see success in getting her friends to try a new product.
As with any lead generation method, the pipeline needs to be short and
direct. The fewer extra steps involved, the better–if a customer has to go
to a separate page entirely from the standard registration to put in referral
info, it’s probably too complicated.

 Technological Tools:
Once you have the basics of the referral program sketched out, the focus
should shift to optimizing your technology to make it sing. As with many
business tasks, tools like CRM software can both help you see how much
your referral program is doing for you and improve its results.

 Tracking Referrals:
Your referral program should absolutely integrate with your CRM
system. This data can serve as a sort of social network map of the
individuals or businesses you sell to, highlighting which accounts have
come with well-connected stakeholders who know how to get their
friends and colleagues excited about a product. As you disburse rewards
from referrals, make note of it in your CRM program.
Once you figure out which customers are the most valuable when it
comes to generating new business, you can look for ways in which to
strengthen those relationships. These customers have demonstrated a
value to your business beyond their own personal purchases.
This information can also give you greater insight into the truth of some
survey metrics. Many businesses ask their customers how likely they are
to recommend others try out a service, building what some call a Net
Promoter Score. With CRM referral tracking, you can put real numbers
 across from self-reported ideas. Are those who say they would
recommend you to others actually promoting the business, or just making
nice? This data can help you stay on top of who lives up to the self-
reported hype.

 Easy Workflows:
While this goes without saying for some companies, not all have take this
vital step in modernizing referral pipelines. Depending on the business,
the particulars of this aspect can vary. Maybe it’s a web platform for
sending referrals to friends. It could be a mobile app component that lets
the customer send a message to a friend. Either way, simple technological
pipelines keep the focus on the customers and ensure that they can make
a valuable referral as easily as possible.

 Keeping Referrers in the Loop:

By tracking who referrals are coming from, you can also provide a sense
of the new customer’s narrative for the referrer. By keeping the referrer
involved in the sales process, you can leverage the strength of the
relationship between the referrer and the new lead toward converting the
lead. The existing customer will find the referral more satisfying if they
know it turned into a sale, and you can’t depend on the two of them to
communicate with each other on that front. Customers want to know that
their referral efforts aren’t just disappearing into the aether.
This aspect is particularly important for referral programs that can
generate referrals “passively,” such as through referral links. Letting
customers know that someone has followed their link or used their
referral code can remind them of the product itself if it’s not something
they use every day. This can even drive new business.

 The Relationship Matters:

Referrals provide a way to turn the quality relationships a CRM system
helps to cultivate into leads, and turn those leads into new business. By
providing those existing customers with a straightforward way to help
you generate new business, you can stretch the value of each existing
contact even further. As always, the sales team has to remain focused in
its pursuit of new business–even a strong recommendation as part of a
referral won’t close a sale immediately.

Q. 4 What are the applications of E-CRM in service industry?

Ans. Refer Q.2

Q.5 Write short notes on:

 a) Factors affecting customer loyalty
b) CRM and customer touch points
c) Analytical vs operational CRM
Ans. a) Factors That Affect Customer Loyalty:
1. Convenience: When buying consumer products, many loyal customers
stray simply because the store where they regularly buy your product ran
out or doesn’t carry it anymore. They may still prefer your product, but
after all, there are other brands in stock and they don’t have time to chase
your product down.
2. Expectations: Your product must continue to live up to their
expectations in every way. It not only has to continue to deliver on its
brand promise and remain relevant, but its price, value, and availability
must continue to be dependable.
3. Customer Service: The way your company stands behind its products
can be as valuable as the product itself. A good warranty and swift
resolution of issues keep customers, who may have had a disappointing
experience, buying your product.
4. Personal Relationships: The way customers are treated by third parties,
such as salespersons, store clerks, or your own representatives can make
or break customer loyalty. Many don’t buy your product so much as they
“buy” the person who sold it to them.
5. Rewards: Customers want some consideration for continuing to do
business with you, especially when they have other options. Offering
savings, bonuses, and other forms of special attention to your loyal
customers can not only keep them from going elsewhere but may be the
reason they recommend you to their friends.
6. Reputation: How your product plays in the media, both commercial and
social, can influence long-term relationships. Your companies financial,
labor, and sourcing practices are now subject to the scrutiny of an
increasingly transparent world where consumers realize that they vote
with their purchases.  
7. Community Outreach: When you stand for something beyond your
product, when you support the causes important to your customers, and
when you participate in their community, you build a bond of loyalty that
is hard to break. This gives them a social reason to become and remain
loyal.

CRM and Customer Touch Points: Refer Question Paper – Dec 2018, Q.1

Analytical vs operational CRM:

Operational customer relationship management and analytical customer
relationship management are closely related concepts, but they define different
aspects of a CRM program. Operational CRM relates to the operational factors
of implementing a CRM system while analytical CRM refers to customer data
analysis to determine behavioral responses.
 Operational CRM:
Operational CRM is, in simplest terms, the business operations connected
to building and managing CRM in a company. It includes operation of
such functions as sales force automation and call centers.
 Analytical CRM:
Analytical CRM describes the component of CRM that relates to data
mining and interpretation of data collected about customers. Companies
that use CRM are usually trying to garner as much customer data and
transaction history as possible to make effective business and customer-
centered marketing decisions.

Key Features Of Analytical CRM:

1. Developing Strategies: One of the biggest reasons to invest in analytical

CRM is because it can help you create an organization-wide strategy.
Being able to look at the data and optimize relationships with customers
by analyzing and resolving any issues that come up is a great way to
maximize business organization-wide. Because you are going to have
access to all of the data that does not directly deal with customers, you
will be able to come up with the best ways to develop strategies that can
be implemented in your business and it’s overall plan.
2. Improve Relationships: Another way that analytical CRM can be
utilized is to improve relationships with your customers, clients, and
prospects. Because you will be able to look at the overall system that is in
place and see how everything is meshing together, it will allow you to
identify the inefficiencies and the problems associated with your strategy.
By being able to identify these problems and concerns, you should be
able to much more effectively address them and fix them which can help
you improve relationships at the end of the day.
3. Combined and Integrate Everything: Another good thing about the
implementation of analytical CRM is the ability to combine and integrate
everything so that the strategic business management is in complete
alignment with the values of the customers and the value of the
stakeholders of the business. You will be able to ensure that everything is
aligned properly so that you implement the right strategies that align with
the objectives of everyone involved.

Key Features Of Operational CRM:

1. Better Ability To Care For Your Customers: In total, operational

 CRM is something that can help you better care for your customers.
Because it provides essential support for a variety of business processes,
you will be able to maximize your ability to sell, market, and retain
customers in your business. This will allow you to properly organize
everything so that you have much more data to base each decision off of
which can help you target care for your customers more appropriately.
2. Better Sales Force Automation: Another feature that operational CRM
is going to be able to provide your business is the ability to
better automate the entire sales process. Because you will be able to
incorporate various things in your efforts such as lead management,
contact management, account management, performance management
and more, you will be able to automate the entire sales process for your
entire sales organization.
3. Marketing Automation: Another good thing about operational CRM
and how it can help your business is by effectively automating the
marketing process involved in your business. Because you will be able to
effectively streamline the marketing efforts in your business, it can help
you increase your revenue without requiring more workforce or output.
You will have various things available to each sales member including
campaign management, communication management, and more.
Therefore, your salespeople will have a much better able to capitalize on
your marketing efforts which can increase the sales you end up making
from each and every marketing campaign.
4. Service Automation: Another significant feature of operational CRM is
its ability to help you automate customer service. Because this type of
automation allows you to provide better overall customer service, it is
going to increase customer retention and increase the ability to lose a
prospect. These things can include various features such as call
management, case management, service level management, and more.
Having all of this data and information readily available to your entire
customer service employees will allow them to better serve your
customers, identify the most valuable customers and more.

Question Paper – Dec 2016

Q.1 What are the “Seven Building Blocks” of “CRM”?

Ans. There are eight building blocks of CRM. These are:
1. Vision - creating a picture of what the customer-centric enterprise will
look like, in order to build a competitive market position based on value
propositions that are defined, communicated and personified by the
enterprise brand.
2. Strategy - developing a strategy to turn the customer base into an asset by
delivering customer value propositions. This includes setting objectives
 and determining how resources will be used to interact with customers.
3. Valued Customer Experience - ensuring that the enterprise's offerings and
interactions deliver ongoing value to customers, are delivered
consistently and achieve the desired market position.
4. Organizational Collaboration - changing cultures, organizational
structures and behaviors to ensure that employees, partners and suppliers
work together to deliver customer value.
5. Processes - effectively managing not only customer life cycle processes
(for example, welcoming new customers, handling inquiries and
complaints, and winning back lost customers), but also analytical and
planning processes that build knowledge of the customer.
6. Information - collecting the right data and routing it to the right place.
7. Technology - managing data and information, customer-facing
applications, IT infrastructure and architecture.
8. Metrics - measuring internal and external indications of CRM success
and failure.

Q.2 Discuss in detail “CRM Strategies” with examples.

Ans. A customer relationship management (CRM) strategy is a company’s plan
to use CRM software to help grow sales and improve customer service. It
incorporates an overall business strategy with input from sales, marketing, and
customer service, identifying all potential touch points that occur during the
customer journey.
Here are the seven steps for creating a CRM strategy.
1. Create an Overall Business Strategy:
Creating an effective CRM strategy starts with understanding your
company’s overall strategy. The strategy you choose attempts to answer
key questions like where, what, who and how you will operate in your
market. The answers will help form the backbone of your sales strategy.
The following are some of the elements of a business strategy you’ll need
to know before creating a sales strategy.
 Understand Business Goals:
Setting the right business goals will inform how you approach the other
elements of your customer relationship and account
management strategy. 
The following are high-level examples of business goals:
o Improve the efficiency of my customer service team
o Increase the margins on all new business by 5%
o Implement a volunteer program for my employees
o Boost yearly revenue by another 25%

 Develop a Unique Selling Proposition:

A unique selling proposition (USP) defines the factors that make your
 product or service different from and better than your competition.
Knowing your USP gives you one high-level tool when asked: “how are
you different from the other company?” The USP also becomes the
marketing trunk from which you hang the marketing limbs.
 Define Your Value Proposition:
A value proposition is a statement of the specific results a customer will
get, and the value they will receive if they use your product or service.
Being able to articulate this to a prospect will get the sales conversation
started (and keep it from ending too soon) and differentiate you from your
competition.
 Know Your Customers With Buyer Personas:
A key foundational element for any business is understanding its
potential buyers. This helps determine who and how you will be
marketing, selling, and servicing them. It also helps you better position
your business with the needs and goals of these buyers in mind. These
fictional customer representations are called buyer personas. Personas
typically address the following areas: Demographics, which include age,
location, gender, marital status, education, job title, and income; and
psychographics, which include goals, challenges, interests, values, and
personality.
 Interview Your Employees:
Employees, particularly those that interact with clients, possess a wealth
of information. For example, a customer service representative talks to
clients every day. They hear the challenges, goals, and even how they
prefer to do their shopping.
 Interview Current & Past Clients:
The best way to learn about your ideal clients is to interview actual
clients, current and past. Think about your best client, the one that
represents the type you would like more of. Tell them you are trying to
learn more about how to grow your business and would like to ask them
some questions. These interviews are invaluable because you often hear
things you didn’t want to hear but glad you did.
 Conduct Surveys:
Surveys are a great way to get answers about your potential buyers
particularly if you have a lot of customers and prospects. A survey can
streamline the process of gathering the data yet provide a clear picture of
who your buyers are and what’s important to them.
 Understand the Competitive Landscape:
If you don’t know who your competitors are and how your company fits
into the space, you’ll be at a costly disadvantage. Knowing the
competitive landscape allows you to spot industry trends, understand how
your competitors are marketing and selling, and ultimately know how and
if your company will keep its differentiators to maintain its competitive
 advantage.
2. Map the Customer Journey:
The customer journey map is a roadmap showing how a customer or
prospect interacts with your company with all of the experiences they
have along the way. This encompasses your operations, marketing, sales,
service, and support — any aspect of your business — and any way that
these teams may “touch” a prospect or customer.
Some example touchpoints include the following:
o Your website
o Social media mentions
o Yelp reviews
o Email marketing
o Paid ads
o Chatbots
Ultimately, these people have goals, and you’re trying to help them
achieve those goals whether it’s educating a prospect on how your
software differs from your competitors or showing a customer how to use
a particular feature of the software. 
 Identify Current Challenges:
With the stages of your journey map outlined, review each stage to
determine what issues and challenges you have for each one. For
example, if your conversion rate after a software trial is low, determine
why it’s low. Once a prospect signs up, are they using the trial? Do you
provide enough information to get them started? Do you provide them
with a company point of contact to answer questions? Do you have an
online support community?
 Create a Content Plan:
Each touchpoint in the customer journey will require content to support
different stages. The types of content for prospects will differ from but
also cross over to those of customers. For example, content for a prospect
may include an asset like an educational e-book showing how a particular
pain point can be resolved using a certain type of tactic.
On the customer side, content can be assets like guides on how to use a
product, instructional webinars, and paid ads for new or complementary
products. These examples can also be used on the prospect side.
3. Establish Sales Channels & Sales Process:
The channels you sell your products and solutions will likely already
have been decided unless you are just starting out. For example, if you
own a residential roofing company, you are selling directly to the
consumer. But if you’re a business-to-business (B2B) software start-up,
you have a number of possible sales channels to consider. What you sell
and to who will determine what your sales process looks like, and how
 that integrates with your CRM strategy.
 Sell Direct to Customers:
As the name implies, you’re selling directly to a consumer or another
business if you’re a B2B company. As in the roofing and software
examples, you may offer a service that will be marketed and sold without
involving any other selling layers. You have the most control over this
process. However, for a company that needs to scale quickly, as in the
software example, it can also be the slowest.
 Sell Using a Distributor or Reseller:
When you sell your products through a distributor or reseller, you are
giving up both the one-on-one interaction with the customer and control
of the sales process. You are also leaving the entire experience from
branding to quality control to this “middleman.” Your profit margins will
also be thinner.
Here are some of the benefits of using a distributor or reseller:
o Instant access to established businesses and their clients, allowing for
faster and larger rates of growth
o Access to the sales experience of a reseller used to selling similar
products
o Lower potential barriers to entry
o A competitive advantage over those not using these channels
 Define the Sales Process:
Creating a sales process is a sometimes overlooked part of a CRM
strategy. However, it’s crucial, especially if you plan on growing your
sales team and business. The more complex your sales and the longer
your sales cycle, the more detailed your process should be. Start by
identifying the pipeline stages. These are the steps in your sales process
needed to move someone from a prospect to a customer. They will be
tracked in your CRM.
The stages in the process are sequential actions such as prospecting,
initial contact, demo, proposal review, won, and lost.
4. Understand Organizational Dynamics:
Whether implementing a CRM for the first time or switching to another
platform, you’ll need to know who will have access to the CRM and
understand how the change may affect your team. Include relevant
employees in all stages of your customer relationship management
strategy from goal setting to technology considerations to selecting the
CRM software. 
 Evaluate Cultural Readiness:
If your team is not already using a CRM, it’s a good idea to take the pulse
of everyone who will be using it. Identify who these users are and let
them know you’re going to be implementing a CRM. What’s your team’s
CRM experience? Which platforms have they used? What did they like or
 dislike about those platforms or CRMs in general? How did it help them
perform their jobs better?
 Identify CRM Roles:
Not everyone in an organization will need to have access to the CRM.
Determine who needs access and what levels of access each team
member will have. You also may want to name a CRM admin, which is
the person that understands both the technology of the platform and all
the business processes. For small businesses, this could be an office
manager, IT person, or even the business owner.
 Align Sales, Marketing & Service:
The departments that use a CRM the most are typically sales, marketing,
and service. Bring these teams together to understand better how each one
will use the tool and what existing tools, if any, each department is
already using. For example, a marketing manager is using Mailchimp to
send weekly promotional emails and keeps 20 GB of marketing collateral
in Dropbox, which is not accessible by anyone else.
Knowing these details will help when it comes time to identify CRM
requirements. If you continue to use Mailchimp, you want a CRM that
integrates with it.
5. Define Team Goals:
To evaluate the performance of your team, set goals for each group —
such as sales — that will be using the CRM. These goals should tie in
with your overall business objectives. Knowing these goals will not only
set employee expectations, but they will also inform the requirements
needed for the CRM.
For example, a software company’s goal may be to close 80% of the
demos it provides; however, it’s only closing 60%. The company
determines that part of this gap results from inadequate post-demo follow
up. Thus they will want a CRM that can send automated follow up emails
for better engagement post demo. The effectiveness of these emails can
then be tracked with a CRM that has this capability.
 Set SMART Goals to Track Performance Effectively
As you define your goals, make sure each one is SMART, which stands
for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound.
 Specific: Sell $150,000 in new business in the Northwest region this
quarter.
 Measurable: Tracking and measuring progress towards goals was one of
the reasons CRMs were created. Whether you’re managing yourself or a
sales rep., you need to know at any time how an individual or region is
performing. The CRM should track progress towards the sales goal
showing sales achieved to quota at any point during the quarter.
 Attainable: Is $150,000 based on a whim or is it backed up by past
performance or another objective indicator? Either way, it has to be
 believed to be attainable by the person setting the goal and the one tasked
with achieving it or else it will never happen.
 Relevant: Does the goal align with other sales goals in relation to the
overall growth goals of the company? If not, it needs to be adjusted or
rethought.
 Time-bound: The goal needs to have time parameters in place that puts
the goal into perspective. If you have a quarter to close $150,000, you
won’t expect to close all of that business in the first week. The target date
instead allows you to work backward from that date to determine
everything you’ll need to do to achieve it such as setting five meetings a
week to close one deal a week.
 Establish Key Performance Indicators:
Key performance indicators (KPIs) are simply metrics used to measure
the performance of a person, team, and organization as they relate to their
goals. The KPIs selected should tie directly to your company’s overall
goals and strategy.
At the top level of a company, KPIs are typically broad like increasing
revenue by 25% each month. At the mid-level, a sales team might have a
departmental goal of increasing product demos by 20%. KPIs at this level
help both goal achievement and building team cohesion. For an
individual salesperson, it could be more specific to the success of that
person as it relates to their specific targets.
For example, a salesperson with a $150,000 quarterly sales quota will
need to set up 30 meetings each month to close on average five
customers. In this case, the 30 monthly meetings are a KPI because it ties
back to their quarterly sales quota. These metrics can be tracked and
measured with a CRM easily.
6. Define the CRM Components:
This is the more granular stage of the CRM strategy where you define the
who, what, and how. It includes defining contacts, creating pipelines and
deal stages, identifying requirements and selecting any additional
software necessary for a successful sales team. These actions don’t have
to be created in the CRM initially, though it may help to visualize
everything. If you haven’t selected a platform yet, create these steps in
writing until you do.
 Define Contacts, Leads, Prospects & Opportunities:
A lead may be someone who downloaded an ebook from your site. A
prospect is someone who has the types of challenges that your company
solves, which you may know because you met them at a tradeshow. An
opportunity can be someone who has a challenge you can solve and is
considering your company to help them solve it.
The best CRM software let you customize how you categorize a contact
with the use of properties. In other words, you can identify them as a
 lead, prospect, opportunity or whatever label you want to use.
 Create Pipelines & Deal Stages:
Within each pipeline, list all of the steps necessary to take a contact from
lead to customer. These are things like first contact, discovery call, demo,
proposal review, and so on. If you’ve created a sales process, these
should be easy to plug in.
 Identify the Software Requirements:
Identify the requirements you’ll need for the CRM by meeting with the
sales, marketing, and service teams. What software are these teams using
currently? Do they need to integrate with the CRM? Are they looking for
new capabilities? For example, sales might need Gmail integration
capability, as they would like the ability to send simple, automated emails
to follow up with demo customers.
7. Selecting the Right CRM Software:
There are dozens of CRM platforms each with their strengths and
weaknesses with varying costs.
Understand the capabilities you need by discussing with your sales,
marketing, and service teams.

Q.3 Write short note on the following:

a) Collaborative CRM Tools
b) Factors affecting Customer Loyalty
Ans. a) Collaborative CRM is a digital tool focused on improved customer
experience. It delivers this by giving your whole team better information.
Collaborative CRM deals with synchronization and integration of customer
interaction and channels of communications like phone, email, fax, web etc.
with the intent of referencing the customers a consistent and systematic
way. The idea is not only enhancing the interactions but also to increase and
improve customer retention and liberty. Tracking and sharing customer data lets
everyone be on the same page. It’s very useful for keeping a seamless multi-
channel customer experience humming along while you run your day-to-day
operations. 
Collaborative CRM entangles various departments of organization like sales,
marketing, finance and service and shares the customer information among
them to highlight better understanding of customers.
Collaborative CRM can be broadly identified by two aspects:
1. Interaction Management- This management process deals with
designing the communication or interaction channel process within an
organization which is specific to customer interaction and finally
enhancing the extent of communication between both the parties. The
communication channel depends on the customers’ preference on how
they require the interaction to be dealt with. Some customers prefer to be
contacted via phone and email because of more comfort ability or non
 availability of manual interaction due to no time or unavailability of
resources. Some of them prefer to have live online meeting or web
meeting to reduce the travel time and lack of time or may be they prefer
more clarified real time environment by sitting at desk and transact. Some
of the customers insist for agent conducted services which is often face-
to-face interaction as they believe that this way is more efficient and
conclusive. Depending on these channels of interaction it is very
important for organization to fulfill these needs of customers and gather
information from them and implementing it into the CRM before
interacting to enhance the interaction power.
2. Channel Management- After analyzing and implementing the
interaction medium it’s important to enhance the power of channels
through which the customers are interacted. By using latest technological
aspects for improving channel interaction could help to contact customers
in an efficient way and gather information from them to help organization
to understand the customers. Hence it is important for an organization to
clearly arrange the channel responsibilities and duties.
 
Benefits of collaborative CRM
 Improves customer services & customer interactions:
Some customers prefer contact via email, others like social media, over-
the-phone, or face-to-face. It can be hard to keep track of who likes what.
One of the major advantages of collaborative CRM is that you can reach
out through the correct, most effective communication platform
automatically. 
 Customer data available across teams for multi-channel interactions:
Your customers interact with you in a multitude of ways, over multiple
channels. With collaborative CRM you can combine data from all your
communication channels, and connect your call center activities with
your other operations, delivering interactions that transcend any single
department or team function.
 Helps retain existing clients:
Collaborative CRM helps you form a comprehensive profile of a
customer and their preferences for best practice. You’ll be able to reach
out to them over the channel they prefer, armed with up-to-date
information—a sure-fire way to drive customer retention and decrease
churn.
 Makes your team work better:
Having customer interaction information in one place makes your
organization smarter. Team members will be able to access individual
case files in real-time.  The need for face-to-face meetings is reduced, and
mistakes and redundancies are stamped out, so service costs fall too. 
Ans b) Factors affecting Customer Loyalty: Refer Question Paper – Dec 2017,
Q.5 a)

Q.4 Explain the various stages of “CRM Cycle.”

Ans. The CRM cycle basically consists of four stages – Marketing, Sales,
Product, and Support.

 Marketing Stage – In this stage of CRM cycle, the basic focus is

to identify customers by running various marketing campaigns (such as
emails, blogs, advertisements, and more), create the database for Account
(pertaining to Organization) and Contacts (pertaining to individuals), and
finally generate leads by analyzing the gathered customer data.

 Sales Stage – In the Sales stage, basic focus remains on leads. They are
the individuals who have expressed some kind of interest in your product
offering. ‘Leads’ are further categorized into Open, Contacted, Qualified
and Un-qualified. Krawler CRM offers a functionality to convert ‘leads’
into ‘opportunity’ for carrying out further sales activities.

 Product Stage – In this stage of CRM cycle, the basic focus is

on delivery of product. Krawler CRM offers Product Management
functionality that captures details about the product price, vendor, and
description, among others.

 Support Stage – During Support Stage, the primary focus remains

on resolving customer issues and providing customer support. In CRM
terminology, this function is known as Case Management.

Q.5 Discuss the various tools of “E-CRM.” How “E-CRM” differs from CRM?
Ans. The eCRM or electronic customer relationship management coined by
Oscar Gomes encompasses all standard CRM functions with the use of the net
environment i.e., intranet, extranet and internet. Electronic CRM concerns all
forms of managing relationships with customers through the use of information
technology (IT).
eCRM processes include data collection, data aggregation, and customer
interaction. Compared to traditional CRM, the integrated information for eCRM
intraorganizational collaboration can be more efficient to communicate with
customers
As the Internet is becoming more and more important in business life, many
companies consider it as an opportunity to reduce customer-service costs,
tighten customer relationships and most important, further personalize
marketing messages and enable mass customization. ECRM is being adopted by
companies because it increases customer loyalty and customer retention by
improving customer satisfaction, one of the objectives of eCRM. E-loyalty
results in long-term profits for online retailers because they incur less costs of
recruiting new customers, plus they have an increase in customer
retention. Together with the creation of sales force automation (SFA), where
electronic methods were used to gather data and analyze customer information,
the trend of the upcoming Internet can be seen as the foundation of what we
know as eCRM today.
As we implement eCRM process, there are three steps life cycle:
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 firm's specific needs to fulfill
their customers.
3. Customer interaction: According to customer's need, company provide
the proper feedback to them.
eCRM can be defined as activities to manage customer relationships by using
the Internet, web browsers or other electronic touch points. The challenge
hereby is to offer communication and information on the right topic, in the right
amount, and at the right time that fits the customer's specific needs.
CRM Tools:
1. Salesforce:
Pros:
 Cloud-based, allowing employees to access the CRM from anywhere in
the world.
 Easy to use – user-friendly navigation bar separates tabs for simple
navigation.
 Customizable dashboard.
Cons:
 Pricing can be too expensive for small and medium sized enterprises
(SMEs).
 
2. ZOHO:
Pros:
 Easily integrates into existing apps, such as MailChimp, Google
Apps, Microsoft Outlook.
 Mobile app updates you in real-time no matter where you are.
 Competitive pricing, especially for the number of features available.
Cons:
 Enterprise Edition maxes out at 1,000 emails per day - although you can
 upgrade to 2,250 emails per day, this comes with extra charges.
 The app sometimes experiences bugs, though regular updates provide
fixes.
 
3. ACT:
Pros:
 User friendly, easy to navigate software with plenty of customizability.
 Less costly than competitors with tons of add-ons available.
 Integrates with your existing email and social media platforms.
Cons:
 Although less costly, the program is not as robust as competitors.
 
4. Microsoft Dynamics:
Pros:
 Familiarity – the interface is clean and organized, and embodies the feel
of other Microsoft software.
 It’s compatible with other Microsoft products, so it can easily sync with
your other Microsoft Office products.
Cons:  
 Dynamics is quite sophisticated – most SMEs likely do not have their
pricing tables already set up, which is a requirement for running
Dynamics.
 Cloud was an add-on - it feels more like an afterthought than a core,
integrated component of the software.
 
5. Hubspot:
Pros:
 The price is right (free!).
 Customizability – Hubspot allows you to customize everything according
to your needs.
 Integrates seamlessly with the marketing and sales side of the platform.  
Cons:
 Lightweight – if you’re already making the most of a more robust system,
it doesn’t make sense to make the switch to Hubspot.
 
6. SAP:
Pros:
 Rich service functionality - offers integrated billing, work order
management, warranty and claims, etc.
 Easy to integrate with third party applications.
Cons:
 May be too complex for SMEs.
  Not fully Cloud-enabled.
 
7. Maximizer:
Pros:
 Includes both cloud and on-premise functionality.
 Customizable contact screen facilitates targeted communication with
clients.
 No hidden costs or unexpected ‘add-on’ expenses.  
Cons:
 Lacks employee and inventory management offered by some competitors.
 
8. Infusionsoft:
Pros:
 Quality support and training – even beyond the initial training,
Infusionsoft provides plenty of resources and supports for you.
 All-in-one platform – Infusionsoft is a one-stop-shop that covers all of
your CRM, marketing automation, and eCommerce needs.
 Interface – their customizable interface is one of the best on the market.
Cons:
 Can be difficult to navigate, though the support and training program can
help you overcome the learning curve.
 Start-up fee of $1,999 may be a deterrent for some SMEs.
 
9. Oracle:
Pros:
 Variety of affordable pricing options to fit your needs.
 Brand recognition – Oracle has been a leader in CRM for over 14 years
with over 420,000 active customers. This means you’ll be provided the
world-class support and security Oracle offers.
 Provides lots of different features to manage all aspects of your customer
relationship.
Cons:
 Platform is supported by limited devices (works only with Open API,
iPad, and iPhone).
 Social media features fall behind other cloud-based CRM software.
 
10.Sage:
Pros:
 Affordable pricing and easy to adopt.
 Supports multi-server implementation, meaning that it will scale with you
as your business grows.
 Simple, easily customizable interface – Sage CRM is intuitive and easy to
 use.
Cons:
 Limited features available, meaning it is best suited to SMEs rather than
large businesses.
 Sage is not a well-established brand yet, especially in North America,
meaning it may continue to lag behind some of its larger competitors.

Difference between E-CRM and CRM:

e-CRM derive from CRM techniques which leveraged call centre and direct
marketing technology to market mass produced goods and services to small
market sub-segment. e-CRM is essentially the adaptation of CRM in e-
commerce environment and helps build and sustain customer relationship using
the net. It is a net based business strategy that requires development of a set of
integrated software application to deal with all aspects of customer interaction
like sales, marketing field support and customer service. e-CRM exercise would
mailing focus upon acquiring new customer enhancing profitability of existing
customer segment high value customer and maximise life true value of
profitable customer.
CRM is a business strategy for acquiring and maintaining the right customer
over the long term within this frame work a number of channels exist for
interacting with customer one of these channel is electronic and has been
labeled e-commerce or e-business. This electronic channel does not replace the
sales force, call centre or ever the fax. It is simply another extension.
e-CRM systems are able to capture data is one place and integrate it seamlessly
throughout various departments and processes. Ideally e-CRM allows an
organisation to tailor its products and services to each customer satisfaction.
CRM may be used to create a personalised one to one experience that will give
the individual customer a sense of being cared for thus opening up new
marketing opportunity based on the performance and history of the customer.
Criterian CRM E-CRM
System interface Work with back end Design for front end
application through application which in
ERP system turn interface with back
end application through
ERP system data ware
house and data mart.
Customer contact Customer contact In addition to telephone
initiated through contact also initiated to
traditional means of internet e-mail wireless
retail store telephone mobile & PDA
and fax. technologies.
System overhead (client Web enabled No such requirements
computers) applications required a the browser is the
Pc client to download customer portal to E-
various application. CRM.
customisation & personalised view for Highly individualized
personalization of difference audience are dynamic & personalised
information not possible. Individual view based on
customisation required purchases & preferences
programmed of are possible. Each
changes. audience individually
customizes the views.
System focus System is designed System is designed
around products and job around customer needs.
function.
System modification and Implementation is Reduced time and cost.
maintenance longer and management System implementation
is costly because the & expansion can be
system is situated at managed in one location
various locations and on on one server.
several servers.