CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT

Customer relationship management (CRM) is developing into a major element of corporate strategy for many organizations. CRM, also known by other terms such as relationship marketing and customer management, is concerned with creation, development and enhancement of individualized customer relationships with carefully targeted customers and customer groups resulting in maximizing their customer life time value Industry leaders are now addressing how to transform their approach to customer management. A new form of cross-functional marketing, i.e. CRM is replacing narrow functionally based traditional marketing. The traditional approach marketing has been continuously questioned in recent years. This approach emphasized on the management of the key marketing mix elements such as product, price, promotion, and place within the functional context of the marketing department. The new CRM approach, while recognizing these key elements still need to be addressed, reflect the need to create an integrated cross functional which focus on marketing one which emphasizes keeping as well as winning customers. Thus the focus is shifting from customer acquisition to customer retention and ensuring the appropriate amount of time, money and managerial resources are directed towards these tasks. The adoption of CRM is being filled by a recognition that long-term relationship with customers is one of the most important assets of the organization and that information enabled systems must be developed that will give them customer ownership. Successful ownership will create competitive advantage, which result in improved customer retention and profitability for the company. CRM an overview Businesses today are continually looking for ways to achieve a competitive advantage. Margins are shrinking, competition is increasing and industries are consolidating. While customer expectation intensify for quality, service and delivery, businesses are reducing staff and the same time searching for ways to arm employees with information to make better decisions and innovate. Customer is the most important asset in businesses. Consequently, applying some management resources to improve the customers experience and maximize the profit, potential of that asset is important. The concept of CRM as a strategy reflects the business process and technology that can be combined to optimize revenue, profitability and customer royalty. The CRM market is evolving rapidly and is one of the fastest growing market segments in application software .CRM has captured the mind share of senior executives across a variety of industries. With a rapid growth of E-customer applications and the increasing need to sell to and support customers through Internet, CRM solutions must provide a focal point for all the customers- facing activities across the channels.

What is Customer Relationship Management?

It is a comprehensive approach that provides seamless coordination between sales, customer service, marketing and field support and other customer touching functions. CRM integrates people, process and

technology to maximize relationship with all customers including ecustomers,distribution channels and suppliers. It is customer focused business strategy designed to optimize revenue,profitability and customer royalty. By implementing a CRM strategy, an organization can improve the business processes and technology solutions around selling and marketing and servicing functions across all customer touch (for example: web, e-mail, phone, fax, in- person). A primary objective of CRM is to provide the entire organization with a complete, 360 degree view of the customer, no matter where the information resides or where the customer touch point occurred. Today, many businesses manage different customer relationships with multiple information systems, which weaken customer service and ultimate reduce total sales potential. To realize the benefits of CRM, it is important to have an integrated solution across all customers information systems, tying together the front and front offices for a complete view of the customers in order to serve them better Why is it necessary? Many companies are turning to customer relationship management systems to better understand customer wants and needs. CRM applications often used in combination with data warehousing ecommerce application and call-center, which allows companies to assess information about customers buying history, preferences, complaints and other data so they can better anticipate what customer will want. The goal is to instill greater customer loyalty. Other benefits include: The ability to provide faster response to customer inquiries. Increase efficiency through automation. Having a deeper knowledge of customers. Getting more marketing of cross selling opportunities. Identifying the most profitable customers. Receiving the customer feedback that leads to new and improved product and services. Doing One to One marketing. WHY NOW? What makes CRM appropriate for todays environment? While there are many number of environmental factors and business advancement that impact and enable the real importance for CRM in todays environment is competitive and differentiation. CRM promises to be competitive and differentiation in todays environment. Organization today is finding it difficult to compete on the basis of product. Technology advancement has enabled the near immediate replication of product features and functions. It is just a matter of weeks between a product launch and saturation of the market. Just think about it, are there many products out there that are truly unique? Price, which has traditionally been another basis of competitive differentiation, is no longer a means for many to compete. Complex channel networks have caused parity pricing.

Promotion strategies have similarly lessened as a means of differentiation. Clubs abound, special offer are the norm, and sales are continual. Place of distribution has likewise become less influential in the success or failure of a business. The Internet has created an avenue for even the smallest business to compete. While all these factors are still important, none of them can alone support the success of most business. CRM the ability to provide a more meaningful sales and service experience promises to be means of differentiating, of providing customers with a reason to frequent your business rather than that of your competitors. Ownership of customer relationship provides exponentially greater rewards than differences in product, price, promotion or place of distribution could ever offer. All of these factors can even be mitigated if you can serve as the one stop provider that can identify. Quantify, and service customers need. Implementing CRM If CRM involves optimizing product, price, place of distribution, promotion, sales and service, why are so many companies struggling? Hasnt anyone really mastered the art and science of CRM, and if not, why is it so difficult? CRM is difficult because it is an enterprise-wide initiative. CRM is not a technology initiative. Many have confused CRM as a technology initiative, and assigned the CRM implementation project to their I.S or I.T group. CRM conferences often equates to technology exhibits and demonstration. Technology is needed in order to implement CRM, particularly the customization part but technology is not the driver of CRM, or the solution to successful CRM implementation CRM is not exclusively a sales initiative. Similar to marketing, CRM is often lodged within the sales department. The sales force, after all, is extremely close to their customers, understanding their needs and wants, and trying to fulfill them. Sales, however, is just one functional area that can benefit from CRM, and that is necessary for effective CRM. CRM is not exclusively a marketing initiative. Many organizations have merely equated CRM with customer-focused marketing, or datadriven/ database marketing. CRM requires marketing expertise. But CRM is not strictly a marketing initiative. CRM is not exclusively a service initiative. As with sales and marketing, customer service is one functional aspect of successful CRM implementation. But customer service is not the sole driver of the process. CRM involves marketing, sales, service and technology, as well as the other inner workings of an organization. Thus it is properly described as an enterprise-wide initiative. It involves all the areas of the organization and all the functions of the organization and it requires all areas of the organization to be working together in harmony. CRM requires all areas of the organization to not only exist in harmony, but to be working toward the common goal of stronger relationships.

IMPORTANCE OF CRM Value of CRM to business

A CRM strategy is designed to increase revenue and profitability by attracting new customers, growing customer business, increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty, enabling more efficient business processes and utilizing lower cost technologies. The primary goal of CRM is higher revenue, not cutting costs. A CRM solution improves sales and marketing efforts and enables organizations to provide superior service to customers. New customers are gained, and existing customers are retained and buy more in greater quantity. And customers benefits are receiving superior customer service and getting the products and services they want, when they want them. An enterprise that does not have CRM strategy or use CRM applications is at a competitive disadvantage. Before engaging on a mission to implement a CRM strategy, it is critical to determine what the specific objectives are and how to measure the return on investment. There are sobering statistics that over one-half of CRM implementations fail, primarily due to lack of consensus on agreed upon and more importantly, measurable goals. While objectives can address specific points of poor performance-for examples low sales performance or customer satisfaction scores-it is important that they also address supporting the entire customer life cycle. CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT IN BANKING Banks Become Customer-Centric The post-liberalized banking sector in India has been witnessing spectacular changes. The major reasons for the recent radical changes in banking industrys portfolio are competition, consolidation, information technology and the need to be customer-centric. Banks could improve the profitability by adopting strategies like market segmentation, innovation, price bundling and relationship. Technology has a major role to play in retail banking, but its role is complementary to customer service initiatives. Due to increased financial market products like commercial paper and variety of financial instruments, big corporate clientele of several commercial banks have shifted their loyalty, and have been raising resources from the market directly and commercial banks have become more retail customer-centric by offering wide range of services. Banks have identified new customer segments like students, workingwomen, and high rich net worthy individuals. CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP PROFITABILITY Regulated era has given assured profits to banks, but in the post deregulation period as margins are falling down substantially, banks are concentrating on customer relationships. Banking services can be divided into three categories: core services, facilitating services and supporting services. Core service is the reason for being in the market. Facilitating services are needed so that the core service can be used, and supporting services exactly discriminates the service package from the services of competitors. Customer relationship is the base on which the structure of retail banking will evolve. The cost to develop customer relationship is always higher than the revenue, But when the relationship grows new demands will appear and then the incremental revenue would be higher than incremental costs. The cost associated with building up of the relationship is huge. They are advertising costs, price incentives, set up costs for accounts and service costs etc.

Customer service delivery is vital for the success of banking operations. This is not possible only through technology. Process consistency within and across service channels is paramount. Banks are increasingly making investment in a single type of process, rather investing in asset of processes that depends on human resource policies.