CRM

Hemanth Kumar

Meaning of Customer Relationship Management (CRM):

CRM

is a comprehensive strategy & process of acquiring & retaining customers to create superior value for the company as well as the customers. It consists of the processes a company uses to track and organize its contacts with its current and prospective customers.

Meaning of Customer Relationship Management (CRM):

To

support these processes, various CRM Software like SAP, ORACLE Sales force.com etc. are used. These software record and store information about customers, various customer interactions, their problems etc which can be accessed by employees in different departments of the company. These information are used by the organization to make future plans that can satisfy the customer on a better way and retaining them for a

Goal of CRM:
The

goal of CRM is to provide improved services to the customers, and to use customer contact information for targeted marketing.

VARIOUS ASPECTS OF CRM

CRM

includes many aspects which relate directly to one another: Front office operations Direct interaction with customers, e.g. face to face meetings, phone calls, e-mail, online services etc. Back office operations Operations that ultimately affect the activities of the front office (e.g., billing, maintenance, planning, marketing, advertising,

CRM POLICY OF RELIANCE MART

CRM policy of reliance mart can be divided into four major parts, namely; 1) Customer loyalty 2) Customer retention 3) Customer communication 4) Customer gratification

There exists a blanket customer relationship programme called the reliance one membership programme for the purpose of maintaining customer loyalty. The membership programme is a very simple one where a willing customer is required to fill a form giving personal information and he gets a temporary card which will be made permanent after six months. On each purchase of Rs. 100 the customer gets one redeemable point on the production of card at billing counter. The collected points can be redeemed in form of discounts on future purchases on demand of the customer.

CRM POLICY OF RELIANCE MART

The

customers also get the opportunity of availing four different kinds of insurance on the payment of a nominal fee. For example a customer can get an accidental death insurance offers six lakhs on the payment of Rs. 400 only. Other forms of insurances are disability, hospitalization and home insurances. The members of reliance one get the opportunity of taking part and winning prizes by the way of lucky draws on regular intervals.

Customer retention policy Reliance mart - implementation

Generally each state is regarded as a zone and the offers and discounts in a zone are not available in other zones. Such policy helps reliance retail to understand and capture the local markets better. The products which show improvement due to offers and discounts on them are repeated with these offers again so as to retain the sales of the customers who bought it the last time. Also such the days best offers are constantly announced in the store making the regular customers aware about them. Maintaining a good store ambiance is also a part of customer retention policy of reliance retail. Clean and hygienic environment with properly and well spaced products along with a uniform color theme attracts the existing customers to the store again and again. A fast billing system and good and easy grievance handling system which can be accessed thru customer service desk and company website, ensures that customers

Customer communication Reliance mart

Communication

to existing customers takes the form of sms and e-mails, generally sent to reliance one members Another source of customer database is the information collected during the organizing of special events in the stores. Customers participating in such events provide their contact information which are also used in form of database for communication purposes. Thank you and festive cards on special occasions are an innovative way of communicating with the customers. Trained salespersons make customer gratification very easy.

Customer communication Reliance mart A simple thank you with a smile

goes a long way for the store to keep the customers happy. The special events organized by the stores across India are also a way to gratify the customers by allowing them to play and win prizes. Gift vouchers and discount coupons are an attraction for the customers and give them the feel that the store cares about them and their money.

Limitation CRM implementation

The implementation of the policies brings out certain limitations in them. Few major ones are as follows The personal contact numbers of reliance one members are open to tele marketing calls from various marketers as they leak out of the reliance retails database, causing unnecessary harassment to customers. The customer communication policy is less followed in small towns and cities and is more concentrated

Limitation CRM implementation

There

is a common crm policy for both reliance fresh and mart. This should not be the case as both the stores offer different kinds of merchandize and generally attract different kinds of customers. Reliance retail generally delays the processing of permanent membership cards to those customers. Unmanned billing counters create long queues at the open counters. This creates impatiens in the customers as they expect faster billing at the stores and do not want to stand with too much of goods held in their hands while billing

CRM @ BIG BAZAAR

Database is formed through the issue of future card and card is of three types silver card, gold card and sakthi card. Sakthi card is issued to ladies and this card provides free sugar(1 kg) per month. Customer profitability analysis (CPA) is done on the basis of transactions made through the future cards. Platinum customers (most profitable). Gold customers (profitable). Iron customers (low profitability but desirable). Lead customers (unprofitable and undesirable). Differentiate customers in terms of: (1) their needs and (2) their value to company. Interact with individual customers to improve the knowledge about individual needs and to build stronger relationships.

There are four type of analysis done for analysis of CRM

Periodic

Surveys: Its done on quarterly, its an overall survey done by the future group authorities and CRM is a part of it. Customer Loss Rate : Mystery Shoppers: They pose as normal customers perform specific tasks such as purchasing a product, asking questions, registering complaints or behaving in a certain way and then provide detailed reports or feedback about their experiences. Monitor Competitive Performance

Steps Involved in customer Satisfaction through Service: Seeing problems from the customers

perspective Managing customers' "moments of truth Communicating effectively through better listening Analyzing how customer perceptions are formed Managing anger and other service behaviors Dealing with long-term consequences of service breakdown Negotiating solutions

CUSTOMER COMMUNICATION: Big bazaar

Future group maintains its records of customers by observing their purchasing habits & categories them into various groups like high revenue, moderate revenue & low revenue customers. They communicate to the customers through various medium like SMS,E-mail, Mobile vans, Print media etc.This is the way to built a strong presence in the existing customers & prospective customers. Presently they are using oracle software to maintain database. Recently they have tied up with California based firm GREENPLUM to provide new software for data warehousing. The company boasts strong share of its profits from top line customers who provide them around 70% of their revenues in total. The company can said to be going on the famous management principle i.e. 80/20 PRINCIPLE which says that 20 percent of variables cause 80% effect. In big bazaar it can be related to the fact that 20% of its top line customers

CUSTOMER GRATIFICATION

It is an important element of a sales process. Every company should survey their customers in order to find out the satisfaction level among the consumers. Big bazaar also conducts periodic surveys in order to ascertain the satisfaction level in their consumers. Various activities are done in order to enhance the shopping experience among buyers & various offers, discount coupons; exchange offers are initiated by the firm in order to develop a good satisfaction level in their existing customers. Special coupons are given to customers who can be redeemed by the costumers in their future purchases from the store.

CONCLUSION

Transformation by integrating customer facing front-end with back-end systems and partners and suppliers. This will effectively help in generating better filtered data source from feedbacks received. Also the feedbacks will be dealt with in a much more careful and professional way. Growth of CRM facilitated by growth of IT. In this age of Information Technology an effective IT planning on the CRM can help the organization earn a lot of repute. New database solutions. This will help to filter and clean the raw data received from feedbacks more efficiently. Mutual benefit through CRM. The stores and their customers can mutually benefit through the application of CRM.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Many CRM project "failures" are also related to data quality and availability. Data cleaning is a major issue. If a company's CRM strategy is to track life-cycle revenues, costs, margins, and interactions between individual customers, this must be reflected in all business processes. Data must be extracted from multiple sources (e.g., departmental/divisional databases such as sales, manufacturing, supply chain, logistics, finance, service etc.), which requires an integrated, comprehensive system in place with well-defined structures and high data quality. Data from other systems can be transferred to CRM systems using appropriate interfaces. Because of the company-wide size and scope of many CRM implementations, significant pre-planning is essential for smooth roll-out. This pre-planning involves a technical evaluation of the data available and the technology employed in existing systems. This evaluation is critical to determine the level of effort needed to integrate this data. Equally critical is the human aspect of the implementation. A successful implementation requires an understanding of the expectations and needs of the stakeholders involved. An executive sponsor should also be obtained to provide high-level management representation of the CRM project. An effective tool for identifying technical and human factors