Customer Relationship Management

The old saying, “it’s not personal, it’s business” comes to mind when thinking about how to effectively run your business in this, and any, economy. What we should be thinking, and how we should be approaching our customers is, “it’s personal, it’s business”. People want to feel that extra touch of personalized service, and indeed, expect to be “wooed” in order to remain a customer. Regular customers want to be remembered when they walk into your store, they want to feel they belong. Consequently, calling them by name and making them feel welcome will set their shopping experience apart from all other stores they frequent.

This elicits a positive response from customers making it easier for them to accept not “always being right.” Always check references when hiring new employees. .Benefits An employee’s attitude toward his position directly relates to the value he places upon your customers and the way he responds to their needs. Trying to avoid paying bene... ... middle of paper ... ...recipients of this honor. .Technology’s Victims Another Customer Lost Credit: Business woman expresses her anger while on her cell phone. image by Andy Dean from Fotolia.com As companies grow, they lose the personal touch, allowing automation to replace people with “menus”.

Customers can walk in to a store and buy a reliable product and a competitive price and feel comfortable with their purchase. Businesses put out these products and base their companies off them and with huge amounts of customers that is very important. Without the marketing mix stores would not organized, businesses would not be what they are today and people would not be able to make the purchases they

Marketing MA Management and International Business Introduction CRM is a term for methodologists, technologies and e-commerce capabilities -used by companies to manage customer relationships. (Foss, 2001:1) It is also called customer management, customer care and sometimes customer centricity or customer-centric management. (Brown, 2000:1) All the names and definitions of CRM have customer, as its core-it is the management of customer relationships, which attempts to revolutionize marketing and reshape entire business models. To survive and grow the business must make a profit. To make a profit it has to find people who are willing to pay more for its products/services than they cost.

But the convenience stores should be careful while increasing their inventory because it may result in investing in products that have little or no sales. Such products do nothing but wasting stores money because of no return. When a customer walks in the store with a smile, it's store clerks or managers responsibility to make him/her leave with a smile.

Marketing This function of the business is responsible for identifying the needs of customers and fulfilling the customer desires profitably. In other businesses sales and marketing may be combined into one department but

The purpose of a salesperson is to create potential customers and keep current customers meaning it’s not only about making sales. Potential customers are a part of an aspect of customer strategy which is the definition of prospecting. Manning & Ahearne (2012) authors stated a prospect or a potential customer is one that meet the expectations by the company or you. The prospect base is the goal of companies to reach their current and potential customers (Manning & Ahearne, 2012). Also forming a prospect base uses the CRM software to track customers of their movement in the sales process.

According to Ndubisi and Chan (2005), relationship marketing provides an organisation with the opportunity to think beforehand in order to get access to the right information about their customers, meet the customers’ needs effectively, efficiently and gain competitive advantage. As a result globalisation, Geddie et al. (2005) viewed relationship marketing through the prism of technology because businesses have the opportunity to store vital information about their customers’ shopping habits in their databases thereby, using the data to their advantage in rendering a better customer service and establishing a long-term sustainable relationship with their customers and this might result in increased customer satisfaction and loyalty. Peppers et al. (1999) referred to relationship marketing as ‘one-to-one marketing’ and suggested that businesses must be dynamic and fast in their approach and response to individual customers’ needs that are ever-changing and unpredictable.

CRM refers to management of all interactions with customers in which the enterprise indulges. Its main focus is on managing and optimizing entire customer lifecycle. The customer lifecycle revolves around marketing, sales and customer service. According to Jill Dyche (2002), CRM promises to help companies get to know their customers well enough to understand which ones to keep and which ones they should be willing to lose and why -and how not to overspend in the meantime. CRM also means automating many of the business processes and accompanying analysis and saving precious time in the bargain.

If a poor customer service is provided it is likely that the customer will take their business elsewhere, this could be due to poor staff, or just general lack consideration for the customers needs. This important aspect of customer relations is so vital to the successfulness of a business that most customer service departments within a business produces questionnaires, deal with customer enquiries and complaints a forward these to the departments which they apply to so that customer service in future their will be greatly improved thus improving relations with customers and improving sales. All customer service departments aim to improve customer relations by: * Providing relevant information for that matter * Giving general advice * Providing credit facilities for customers * Delivering goods, makin... ... middle of paper ... ...olleagues and to the society, communities and natural environment in which we operate. (Taken from the Cadbury Schweppes website, www.cadburyschweppes.com) Also they encourage customers to help with the running of the company by asking them to contribute to anything, which they may feel is not to a standard, which they like. They do this by offering an address on the back of all their products, on the back of one of their products, a marble bar, it says: "At Cadburys we are proud of the quality of our products and we want you to enjoy them.