The Changing Face of Customer Relationship Management

Intelligent Enterprise Magazine: The Changing Face of Customer Relationship Management

Customer relationship management (CRM) has been a topic of conversation dating back to early discussions about why and how companies should become customer-centric. Preaching that in a highly competitive market “the customer is king,” analysts and consultants called on companies to realign both their organizations and their processes from being internally focused to being focused on the customer. Furthermore, they said, companies should establish better relationships with their customers by building better profiles of them, getting a clearer picture of the business each customer transacts and a better understanding of how customer and company interact. The result would be a more proactive approach and more personal interactions.

While this article probably does not present anything new to the readers of DS, it does provide a nice summary of what CRM is, why it is important, and where is it heading. In my opinon a good CRM strategy is necessary for all organizations. Companies that just concentrate on the initial sale will soon lose out to those that see sale as simply a part of a broader relationship. Numerous studies have shown that it is much more cost effective to maintain relationship as opposed to starting new ones. So in today’s competitive environment where every penny counts, it just makes “cents” to leverage relationships.

14 March, 2006 |

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