Michael Pearce - Customer Relationship Management

Customer Relationship Management

Customer Relationship Management

How To Develop and Execute a CRM Strategy

Michael Pearce FIC CMC

Customer Relationship Management: How To Develop and Execute a CRM Strategy

Copyright Business Expert Press, LLC, 2021.

Cover design by Charlene Kronstedt

Interior design by Exeter Premedia Services Private Ltd., Chennai, India

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other except for brief quotations, not to exceed 400 words, without the prior permission of the publisher.

First published in 2021 by

Business Expert Press, LLC

222 East 46th Street, New York, NY 10017

www.businessexpertpress.com

ISBN-13: 978-1-95334-964-4 (paperback)

ISBN-13: 978-1-95334-965-1 (e-book)

Business Expert Press Marketing Collection

Collection ISSN: 2169-3978 (print)

Collection ISSN: 2169-3986 (electronic)

First edition: 2021

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Description

CRM first entered the business vocabulary in the early 90s; initially as a systems driven technical solution. It has since escalated in importance as system providers increased their market penetration of the business market and, in parallel, CRMs strategic importance gained more traction as it was recognised that CRM was, at its heart, a business model in the pursuit of sustainable profit.

This was accentuated by the academic community stepping up their interest in the subject in the early 2000s. Today, it is a universal business topic which has been re-engineered by the online shopping revolution in which the customer is firmly placed at the centre of the business. The current reality, however, is that, for the vast majority of businesses, CRM has not been adopted as a business philosophy and practising business model. It has not been fully understood and therefore fully embraced and properly implemented.

The author addresses this head-on by stripping CRM down into its component parts by delving into and explaining the role and relevance of the C, R, and M in CRM. This is a practical guide but set within a strategic framework. The outage is clear actionable insights and how to convert them into delivery. It is written in an easily digestible, non-jargon style, with case studies to demonstrate how CRM works. This book can be immediately used as the primary practical reference to guide the development and implementation of a CRM strategy.

Keywords

relationship marketing; customer loyalty; targeted marketing; customer centric business model; database management; data mining; brand proposition; brand positioning; customer centric database; cloud based CRM systems; CRM; customer profitability; customer relationship management; customer segmentation; ROI; CRM strategy

Contents

To everyone I have met in my consultancy and business career who have helped shape my thinking on CRM as a business model fit for modern times, in which the customer should be at the center of all companies strategic planning. In particular, my thanks to friends and colleagues in Adactus who created the space and provided support to enable me to write this book.

Like many management innovations, a multitude of spins on the subject often rapidly emerge and can create distortions, myths, and misunderstanding of the true application and worth of the innovation.

CRM is no exception. Firstly, it is neither new nor an innovation. Any marketing orientated company can vouch for that where the customer has always been the center of their universe, and continuously seeking out and meeting customer needs (if not their wants) their mantra.

Secondly, the thrust of the drive to put CRM on the management agenda has largely been through software companies marketing proprietary CRM systems. Certainly these systems have made a real step change in data processing in capturing, storing, marshalling, analyzing, and applying data to enhance decision making. More importantly, they handle big data and supply it in a highly relevant way to all user groups who have customer touch points, to help enrich the customer experience. But, they are not CRM itself. They are one of the tools in the CRM toolbox. For sure they are a really important one and a key component of the CRM strategic operational framework, but CRM systems are processes. They are an integral part of the CRM strategy but not the strategy itself.

So, lets start by stripping down CRM to give an overview and identify and understand its role in a business.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) relates to acquiring, developing, and retaining satisfied loyal customers. To achieve sustainable profitable growth, it is generally desirable for a company to increase the number of profitable customers, to increase the profit from existing customers, and to extend the duration of the customers relationship with the company (or brand).

In todays increasingly competitive business environment, a fundamental change has taken place. The emerging global and electronic economy has turned tradition on its head and, for consumer markets, placed the customer firmly in the driving seat: as a result of which, power has irreversibly shifted from the seller to the customer with customer choice (and competition) one Google search away. Customers are more demanding, more aware of their choices, and more in command than ever before. Add the fact that cost cutting alone will not generate long-term profit growth, it is clear that CRM is an enterprise wide imperative.

However, many companies are not ideally positioned to capitalize on the opportunity for customer-oriented growth. While some companies have made attempts to implement CRM solutions (frequently by installing CRM systems rather than adopting a top-down CRM strategy), they have often not transformed themselves into customer-driven enterprises. The actual results can be more a set of disconnected initiatives that fall short of creating real value.

A holistic approach is required for CRM to allow a company to orchestrate all the activities that bring it into contact with its customers to deliver a consistently differentiatedand personalizedcustomer experience regardless of the interactive channel chosen by the customer, embracing their experience with all touch points with the company. Such an approach can permit companies to knit together marketing, sales, and service functions that would have traditionally been pursued (are pursued) in separate ad hoc ways, and therefore, constitutes a more comprehensive, methodical approach to identifying, attracting, and retaining the most valuable customers.

CRM is therefore best described as a business philosophy; as a modern day approach to manage profitability by placing the customer at the center of the business. By definition, it is a corporate strategic approach and, as such, is driven by the Board of Directors with its impact company wide as to how it organizes itself to fully practice CRM.

About This Book

Welcome to the first edition of CRM: How to Develop and Execute a CRM Strategy. This book explains all the facets of CRM; its definition, its strategic role and application, and the approach to developing a successful CRM strategy through breaking it down into its constituent parts from both conceptual and practical perspectives.