Wednesday, 7 November 2012

The Future of Customer Relationship Management


The Future of Customer Relationship Management
By: Tyler Meinzinger

What is CRM?

According to http://canadabusiness.ca/eng/page/2650, customer relationship management is a strategy for understanding your customers and their needs in order to optimize your interactions with them. This philosophy leverages technology to create stronger relationships with former, current and prospective customers while maximizing your marketing and customer service capabilities.

CRM will allow you to effectively manage your customer relationships in a manner than is both strategic, and organized. This means developing and understanding your companies methods, operating internally, and using software to properly interact with your customers. Thus, leading to better relationships with your customers, resulting in a more profitable business.

With a CRM system, you can keep track of all the data you collect from your customers. Data such as contacts/accounts, purchases, preferences, communications, etc. Once you have this data in your system, you can then use it for purposes such as identifying your best customers, analyzing the data for marketing campaign purposes, creating and implementing personalized ways of communicating with your customers.

With all of this being said, it leads me to what the future of customer relationship management may hold. As you already know, social media networks are very popular today, and they are increasing drastically. Many businesses have evolved and started to utilize these sites for their CRM efforts. As you can see in the chart below, CRM has changed, and is continuously changing. Social media networks are a big reason for these changes. SCRM is much more effective than traditional CRM for many reasons. To name a few, the customer sets the hours rather than the business hours of 9-5. Transactions can happen due to interaction through social media. Assigned departments in a traditional CRM plan, now involves everyone with SCRM.


After researching the future of CRM, I found a page on Dell's website stating why they engage in social media CRM. http://content.dell.com/us/en/corp/about-dell-social-media. As we learned in class, Dell uses social media networking to listen to customer opinions and insights, and improve their products to meet customer needs and wants more effectively.
As you can see after clicking the link, Dell believes that their customers have the best ideas and insights. Through social media, they engage in 25,000 conversations about Dell every day! Dell believes that social media is more than a tool, it's an extension of their brand. 

22 comments:

  1. Wonderful sharing. Customer relationship management do matter a lot as first of all, it's so hard to locate and build relationship with consumer so we shouldn't let them go easily, and secondly, maintaing process would also help raise brand awareness and reputation and it is almost the best advertising form.

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  2. Great blog Mr. Meinzinger, the information I have received in class, along with your blog about CRM; it really is the future. Technology has come so far in the last decade and it will only increase. This makes CRM an easy and effective way for companies to conduct awareness.

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  4. Well written and properly conveyed Tyler. As CRM tools have developed, nowadays companies are able to convert the data capture into useful information that could increase the customer satisfaction.
    SCRM makes it easier and more efficient for companies to capture information about their customers; and thus be able to understand their customer's specific tastes and preferences, e.g.: Through social media companies will be able to capture their customer’s demographics, capture their conversations and interact or communicate much better with their them, customers would also give their feedback about the company’s product or service.
    But, I also believe that later in the future, SCRM may decline, as customers may thick that companies are invading their privacy when using social media to know more about their customers.

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    1. I think that is a valid point. There is a chance that consumers could feel that their privacy is being invaded. However, it could go the other way too. People might become used to SCRM and will accept it. It will depend on how companies use the method. After all Facebook even though many people include way too much personal information on social media sites, they are still public.

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  5. Good post. It is very important for companies to understand their customer and improve their relationships with customers. CRM give companies chance to optimize their services and looking for customers need.

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  6. Thanks Tyler
    CRM technology is one of the most important selling points, it provides 360 degrees view to the customers it help to integrate deeply with customers and organize departments on the same time. Thus services will be consist and accurate.
    By classifying the data under categories and updating those categories regularly will assure and help the organization to take the right decision and provide the right service to the right customer in the right time.

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  7. I like the idea of CRM but i also have to agree with Fatme in the long run it will start to decline in the future because of the invasion of information and privacy.

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  8. Customer relationship management is not only pure business but also ideate strong personal bonding within people. Development of this type of bonding drives the business to new levels of success. I think CMR is important for every business to create and maintain. Overall excellent post!

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  9. Well done Ty!
    I agree with what you have said here, CRM is very important for businesses going into the future. Keeping track of important stats and being able to use them effectively will make or break companies in the future. This data that is collected can really benefit a company about consumers buying behavior.

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  10. Referring back to the part where you wrote about how CRM helps you keep track of data collected from customers. I used a client book when I worked at the Bay to ensure we always knew what their last purchase order was and some of their preferences and personality when speaking with them. This would help us recall them when making phone calls about new cosmetics and the Gift with purchases. I am not sure if this would qualify as part of CRM, but it sounds like it would be part of database marketing which is part of CRM.

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  11. CRM is definitely the future. Through the information on CRM through your post and our classes at Mohawk I believe that CRM is very important to any business and is very vital to any organization.

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  12. Fantastic post Tyler, CRM is very important for every business because if they dont have customer relationship management, a company would not be able to understand the customers and their needs . Through CRM, it becomes easy for the company to know where the company and the product stands in the market, and they can improve or add a lot through CRM in their products and services following their customers opinions and ideas.

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  13. Great post! Relationships with customers are the most important thing to focus on!

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  14. Developing a long term relationship with the customer is an integral part of any business. I can see both sides of the coin though. Even though it allows a more personalized experience with the customer, it is just that: personalized. Some consumers would prefer that companies not have access to this information just in general. I could also see there being new laws and privacy issues as CRM expands with the integration of social media.

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  15. Social media is an excellent way for businesses to build a relationship with their customers as long as it is used properly. It is an inexpensive way to study the behaviours and personalities of a target market.

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  16. going off what Kaila said, social media like twitter and facebook is a great way to keep customers updated with what the business is up too. For our brand evaluation, i'liked' moosehead on facebook and now i see posts from Moosehead almost every day.. very effective

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  17. good post tyler,i like this blog it tells us relationship of CRM with social media and future of customer relation management.Good Job.

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  18. I think the future of CRM as you pointed out is extremely insightful. The link you posted to indicate that it is turning into SCRM is really poignent and true. It also gave a great overview of what it could and likely will become. And it still reinforces the importance of the customer relationship.

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  19. Customer relationship management is a broad approach. I think, CRM is one of most important business strategy. the goal CRM is to understand, maintaining and manage the needs of companies's current and potential customers.

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  20. It's amazing. In today's business world, timely and relevant communication is the key to success. As the use of the advantages of mobile technology, company need to find the new ways to support customers. When developing marketing strategies that take advantages of CRM technologies

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  21. I have a mission that I’m just now working on, and I have been at the look out for such information free online ñustomer relationship management software

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