Imagine a situation where you as a customer call up a company for repairing your television set. Which scenario would you prefer – one where the person receiving your call knows your name, can identify your problem and quickly rectify it or a scenario where the person on the other end needs to be repeatedly told who you are, what the problem is, when it was last rectified, etc. Obviously the former. It can be very frustrating as a customer to keep endlessly repeating yourself to a seemingly hard of hearing company or call receiver. Many of us face this in our lives everyday and this sort of “I don’t know you” and “I don’t care attitude” really breaks customer loyalty.
Companies address this fundamental customer issue through a program called customer relationship management. As the name suggests the program is geared towards issues that concern customers whether existing or potential and also after sale issues. Most companies prefer to have an integrated CRM system one that is online will be especially beneficial. It helps to individually check and administer a customer/client’s profile. Also using a web based CRM the company can easily construct and send special messages to the customer. This exercise serves as an extremely effective marketing strategy and also ensures that customer feels very valued. This entire endeavour will prove most effective only if back office/ dealer relations/and other product oriented issues are also sorted out hand in hand. There’s no use if the company call centre executive is promising a return of defective merchandise while the dealer refuses point blank. So the online crm process is a part of a larger process, both need to work in tandem.
Paul Benjamin is a freelance writer on ecommerce. He has written articles and blogs on eCommerce solutions,.CRM applications Inventory management
