Thesis Statements on Customer Relationship Marketing

 

Customer Relationship Marketing

            Customer Relationship Marketing is defined by Stone et al (2000) as the use of a wide range of marketing, sales, communication, service and customer care approaches to:

• Identify the company’s named individual customers


• Create a relationship between the company and its customers that stretches over many transactions


• Manage that relationship to the benefit of the customers and the company

            Bose (2002) defines customer relationship marketing as involving the integration of technology and business processes in satisfying the needs of the customers. According to Swift (2001), CRM can be defined as an enterprise approach to understanding and influencing customer behavior through meaningful communications in order to improve customer acquisition, customer development and customer loyalty. He added that CRM must be integrated into everything a company does and must involve the entire company. 

            Primarily the aim of CRM is to build loyal customer relationships, where the organization can anticipate the needs of the customers, use information to personalize relationships, and encourage the customers to further their business relationship with the organization by earning their confidence and trust. CRM emphasizes three essential ingredients of customer relationships.

1. Customer Acquisition – identifying the profitable customers and creating strategies to attract them.

2. Customer Development – delivery of customer needs, wants and requirements when, how and where they want them to optimize profits and revenue.

3. Customer Retention – building and sustaining customer loyalty.

Customer Acquisition

1. Effective Customer Classification – the management and staff analyze the customers (backgrounds, stay history, needs, wants etc.) through the company’s data mining tool and then group them into segments. Through segmentation, the company manages its customers as individuals or small groups and become more knowledgeable in analyzing customer data.

2. Services Segmentation – the company integrates services segmentation in its strategy. Through services segmentation, the company management and staff ranks its customers (according to guests classification) and then render services that are designed for particular segments.

Customer Development

1. Data Capture/Data Warehousing o data warehousing or data mining is being used by the company in collecting information about the customers. The data are gathered through customer-service provider interaction in every part or department of the company. Some of the factors the data that can be collected are customer behavior, customer value (profitability and potential, and customer portfolio.

2. Knowledge Management –the company manages customer knowledge. Customer knowledge management enables the management and staff to capture the customer’s previous and current status, the methods of transaction that they prefer, their future needs and future requirements.

Customer Retention/Loyalty

1. One-to-One Marketing –the company gathers high volume of data about the individual and try to adapt its product and service offerings as closely as possible to the individual customer’s needs. Marketing decisions must be based on the knowledge of the customers’ behavior and attitude.

2. Loyalty Program –the uses a loyalty program to gather information about the customer’s needs, demands, behavior and requirements. It is also an opportunity to stay in touch with the customer in a regular basis. It can also be an opportunity to customize the services that are rendered to the guests. 

 

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