Customer relationship management Customer relationship management (CRM) is definitely an extensively-executed technique for building a companys relationships along

with clients, consumers and purchase leads. It requires making use of modern technology to arrange, speed up, and also connect business enterprise processes principally product sales events, but additionally those for promoting, customer support, along with technical support. The entire objectives are usually to seek out, captivate, and earn new customers, cultivate and maintain those the organization currently has, lure previous customers straight into the fold, and minimize the expenses of marketing along with customer support. Customer relationship management explains a new company wide enterprise techniques which include customer-interface business units along with other sections. Advantages of CRM In any business, it helps the organisation in lots of ways, both in terms of delivery more to the customers and also in terms of gaining more from them. Using CRM, a business can: Provide Better Customer Service CRM systems give businesses many strategic advantages such as the ability to personalize relationships with customers regardless of which employee is service them. Using CRM, a repository can be maintained on customer profiles, thereby treating each client as an individual and not as a group. This way, every employee can be better informed about each customer's specific needs and transaction profile. CRM also helps the organisation to easily adjust the level of service to reflect the customer's importance or status. Better customer service through improved responsiveness and understanding helps in building customer loyalty and decreases customer agitation. It also helps the company in getting continuous feedbacks from the customers on the product they have bought. A good electronic company would always like to follow-up with its customers on the items they have bought, so as to rectify the problem (if any) even before it gets logged as a complaint. Increase Customer Revenues Using CRM data, marketing campaigns can be co-ordinated more effectively by ensuring that promotions do not target customers who have already purchased that particular products. It also ensures higher customer retention by introducing loyalty programs. A business would never like to see a product to a customer who has just bought it recently. Discover New Customers CRM systems help the organisation in identifying potential customers. By keeping a track of the profiles of their existing clientele, the business can easily come up with a strategy to determine the kind of people they should target such that it returns them maximum clientage. For example, if several students in a university sign up for a particular mobile service provider, the business can come up with a strategy to target rest of the community in the university.

"Cross Sell" and "Up Sell" Products More Effectively CRM systems facilitate cross-selling (offering customers complimentary products based on their previous purchases) and up-selling (offering customers premium products in the same category). It helps them to gain a better understanding of customers and anticipate their purchases (e.g. someone who purchases grass seed in the spring will need fertilizer later in the season). Help Sales Staff Close Deals Faster CRM helps the businesses in closing deals faster, through quicker and more efficient responses to customer leads and customer information. The turnaround time has decreased drastically for organisations that have been able to implement CRM systems effectively. Make Call Centers More Efficient With each employee having access to customer details and order histories, targeting clients becomes easier. CRM helps the organisation's workforce in knowing how to deal with each individual customer depending upon the customer's archives available through CRM. The information can be accessed instantly from anywhere within the company. Simplify Marketing And Sales Processes CRM helps in developing better communication channels. Interactive Voice Response System, web sites, etc. have made life easy both for the organisation and also for its sales representatives. It allows the business to give its customers the option of choosing how they want to communication with the business.

Marketing Research Marketing research is a step-wise process which involves several activities such as identifying the problem, gathering relevant data and ultimately, analyzing the gathered data for the sole purpose of decision making by the higher management. Quite often, the terms 'market research' and 'marketing research' are wrongly interpreted and substituted for one another. Market research, in simple words, is nothing but the research that is directed towards a very specific i.e. particular market area, whereas marketing research has a much wider, broader spectrum. Marketing research can be further expanded into two specific domains: consumer-related marketing research and business-to-business marketing (B2B) research. However, the basic steps involved in both of these marketing research process types are generally the same. Basic Steps of Marketing Research Process Problem Identification and Definition This is the introductory phase of the marketing research process. Basically, it involves a clear and precise understanding of the problem at hand. It is crucial that the research team identifies, understands and defines the problem in its entire capacity, as it affects all the subsequent

activities involved in the research process. Research teams make use of customer feedback, internal and external data reports, sales graphs, purchasing patterns, etc. to come up with an accurate problem definition. Designing a Proper Approach The next step is to come up with a near-flawless approach which is aimed at solving the identified problem. During this process, the research team has to analyze and examine a variety of factors such as the company's targets, goals and objectives, financial resources, skill sets, manpower, industry environment, changing business trends, etc. This phase often involves joint discussions between the research team, industry experts and higher management. Developing the Actual Research Design This is the decisive step of the marketing research process. The research design is the very fulcrum of the entire marketing research process. The solidity of the research design alone decides the success or failure of the research program to a large extent. Naturally, this step is the most time-consuming of all the steps and it needs careful thinking and precise execution. Different activities involved in this process include feedback analysis, qualitative and quantitative analysis, preparing questionnaires as well as sampling of data and processes. Data Collection and Survey This process mainly involves a lot of field-related work activities such as outdoor interviews, survey campaigns and feedback sessions which are done by specially assigned data collection agents or field agents. Almost all of those doorbell-ringing pamphlet guys or the irritating telecallers who telephone at the most untimely of hours, are data collection agents who are just doing their duty, as part of their company's marketing research process. Data collection and surveying is also implemented by means of Internet surveys, group discussions, mail surveys, etc. Data Structuring and Analysis Once the data collection and surveying activities have yielded sufficient and relevant data, it is time to systematically organize the data so that it can be interpreted and analyzed by decision makers. This typically involves activities such as data mining, clustering of data, preparing statistical graphs and curves, etc. Report Generation and Presentation All the effort that goes into designing an approach, developing a research design, collecting data and finally analyzing the data, completely goes waste, if the findings and the results are not presented properly. It is imperative that the whole marketing research project be properly documented and accounted for. The entire purpose of the research campaign is to enable the higher management to make informed decisions which will benefit the progress and the sales of the concerned product or service. Hence, it is crucial that the research findings be presented accurately, clearly and relevantly. For this purpose, the use of appropriate statistics, graphs, piecharts, etc. is recommended. Advantages of marketing research 1. Marketing research keeps informing the organisatio about the changes in tastes and preferences of consumers from time to time. This is very helpful for the producers to adjust the production accordingly. 2. Marketing research is helpful in discovering new markets for the products and maintaining the

existing markets. 3. Marketing research provides valuable information to the sales manager whether marketing policies of the organisation are being applied properly or not, on the basis of the research right type of Marketing policies can be initiated. 4. Marketing research is greatly helpful in the improvements of the quality of the products produced as it keeps informing the organisation about likes and dislikes of consumers. If the product is not of desired quality, improvement can be made in its quality on the basis of information revealed by marketing research. 5. Marketing research discloses invaluable information which is not only helpful for marketing or sales department but affects the working of production and purchase department also. 6. Marketing research is greatly beneficial in minimising marketing costs and removal of wastage and inefficiency. 7. Marketing research equips the organisation with the strength to face the cut-throat competition prevalent in the market by informing about the strategies and modus operendi of the competitiors. 8. Marketing research discovers the new lines of production in addition to the existing ones. 9. Marketing research acts as a sales booster as it establishes direct relation with consumers thereby knowing their requirements.