CRM Industry Management
According to Automobile industry view, CRM consists of:
Helping an enterprise to enable its marketing departments to identify and target their best customers, manage marketing campaigns and generate quality leads for the sales team.
Assisting the organization to improve sales, account, and sales management by optimizing information shared by multiple employees, and streamlining existing processes (for example, taking orders using mobile devices and internet)
Allowing the formation of individualized relationships with customers, with the aim of improving customer satisfaction and maximizing profits; identifying the most profitable customers and providing them the highest level of service.
Providing employees with the information and processes necessary to know their customers understand and identify customer needs and effectively build relationships between the company, its customer base, and distribution partners.
Many organizations turn to CRM software to help them manage their customer relationships. CRM technology is offered on-premise, on-demand or through Software as a Service (SaaS) CRM, depending on the vendor. Recently, mobile CRM and the open source CRM software model have also become more popular.
Eric Williams (2008) defines CRM as an information industry term for methodologies, software, and usually Internet capabilities that help an enterprise manage customer relationships in an organized way. For example, an enterprise might build a database about its customers that described relationships in sufficient detail so that management, salespeople, people providing service, and perhaps the customer directly could access information, match customer needs with product plans and offerings, remind customers of service requirements, know what other products a customer had purchased, and so forth.
As is mentioned by Evan Hirsh, Steve Hedlund, Mark Schweizer (2003), Consumers are not only elegantly simple in their view of automotive brands, they are acutely rational as well. In addition to their own firsthand experience, they consult a number of sources, from the anecdotal evidence of friends and family, to independent reviews by magazines, industry groups, and government agencies, to the manufacturers' marketing communications, including brochures, measured media, and owner events. Every car manufacturer need to be aware of the customers wants and perceptions in order to better serve their needs and hence improve their market rating and business value amongst their competitors. CRM as another valuable in the hands of the auto manufacturers enables them to integrate processes, people, operations and marketing capabilities to maximize retention, acquisition and productivity. Knowing your customer is just not enough to do business, but to study them constantly and understand their perceptions of the service you offer is more becoming increasingly valuable than ever before. Businesses that understand this and operate in accordance with these basic rules of consumers requirements are there to stay. Different cultures and economic market needs determine the business capabilities and those who stay ahead with their game plan by utilizing the CRM and hence evaluate the consumer perceptions are the ones who can survive such economic downfalls similar to the Great Depression of the 70's and continue to be successful. Implementing CRM Gray & Brun (2001, 56) CRM requires an integration of a firm's resources ;people, operations and marketing capabilities to deliver added value to the customers.CRM should provide businesses and organization with a single view of their customers and across irrespective of the interactive channel or medium through which the customer accesses the service or product. For example, a business (Car Sales) customer's profile and personal references should be accessible to the business irrespective of the channel i.e. whether the customer books online, calls in or walks into any location should not make a difference to the service provided based on the personal profile of the business client. It is enabled through: In formation Processes Technology Applications A firm that wants to implement CRM must align its business processes cross-functionally in the best possible way to allow increased customer focus with an aim to deliver added value to the customer. BENEFITS OF CRM Wood (2005, 25) A properly implemented CRM system can bring significant benefits to organizations. Customer Relationship Management system can bring. Shared or distributed data Cost reduction Better Customer Service Increased Customer Satisfaction Better Customer Retention . Customer loyalty All business needs to build customer loyalty, but small organizations- and especially those looking to establish themselves - need to pay particularly close attention to providing excellent customer service More repeat business More new business Success Stories Flynn, M., Belzowski, B.M., Haas, S. 2002. E-CRM and the Automotive Industry: Focusing on Customers mention that Most studies of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) methodologies and technologies in the auto industry have explored the benefits of these new technologies for automobile manufacturers, dealers, and suppliers. According to K. R. Sreenivasan, head, CRM and dealer management system, Maruti Udyog, (2005) "Within the first year of implementing the Siebel's solutions, we have seen improvements in customer satisfaction, revenue and operating cost reductions through productivity improvements, and these benefits are expected to increase further over time. This is helping us become truly customer-centric, since we can draw upon real-time, centralized customer and vehicle data and respond better to our customer and dealer needs." Adding more information to K.R. Sreenivasan, is John Gray, general manager, Automotive, Siebel Systems "By enabling Maruti Udyog to manage, synchronies, and coordinate interactions with its dealers and customers, Siebel Automotive provides the company with an ideal platform for getting closer to its customers while strengthening its position as a world-class automotive brand," adds. FUTURE Winter (2001,16) With the increased penetration of CRM philosophies in organizations and the concomitant rise in spending on people and products to implement them, it is clear we will see improvements in how companies work to establish long-term relationships with their customers. Companies are developing an improved focus on CRM is through the establishment or consideration of splitting the marketing manager job into two parts: one for acquisition and one for retention. The kinds of skills that are needed for the two tasks are quite different. People skilled in acquisition have experience in the usual tactical aspects of marketing such as advertising and sales. However, the skills for retention can be quite different, as the job requires a better understanding of the underpinnings of satisfaction and loyalty for the particular product category. In addition, time being a critically scarce resource makes it difficult to an excellent job on both acquisition and retention. As with any decision with substantial resource implications, a cost-benefit analysis of CRM investments must be performed. This is evidence that there are perhaps few companies that cannot benefit from the CRM structure. We provide a professional essay writing service that thousands of our customers use as an effective way of improving their grades, improving their research and saving them lots of time.
as companies realize that customer relationships are happening on many levels (not just through customer service or a web presence), they start to understand the need for sharing all available data throughout the organization. A CRM system is an enabler for making informed decisions and follow-up, on all the different levels.
a strong point in Customer Relationship Management is that it is making the customer a partner in your business, not just a subject. As customers are doing their own order entry, and are empowered to find the info they need to come to a buy decision, less order entry and customer support staff is needed.
all data concerning interactions with customers is centralized. The customer service department can greatly benefit from this, because they have all the information they need at their fingertips. No need to guess, no need to ask the customer for the n-th time. And through the use of push-technology, customer service reps can lead the customer towards the information they need. And, most of the time, the customer can do this on their own, as the CRM system (remember, the 3 P's) is more and more able to anticipate the need of the customer. The customer experience is greatly enhanced.
the customer feels that he is more "part of the team" instead of just a subject for sales and marketing (the proverbial number), customer service is better, his needs are anticipated. There is no doubt that customer satisfaction will go up. If the products sold exceed the customer's expectation, of course, no CRM system can help you with shoddy products. In my opinion, the term satisfaction is a contaminated. Many companies think that if customers are satisfied that this is a good predictor for repeat business. However, this is not the case. Only delighted customers have a great level of loyalty.
If a CRM system can help to enchant customers, this will increase customer loyalty, and they will keep coming back to buy again and again, hence customer retention.
the repeat business is coming from the delighted customers, who are turned from doubting clients into loyal advocates.
if you are delivering the ultimate customer experience, this will seed the word-of-mouth buzz, which will spawn more new business.
