CUSTOMER FOCUS & RELATIONSIP MANAGEMENT

CUSTOMER
A customer is an individual who buy the product of any manufacturing organization. He is the most important person in the business. without the buyer the whole manufacturing process become meaningless. Hence every organization should focus on: 1. Attracting more customers. 2. Making them happy. 3. Retaining them. All the three factors are very important. Even if one is neglected, The organization stand to loose heavily. It is said that in an organization quality begins and ends with customers. Customers are said to be the king in any business transaction. He need to be treated with dignity. Satisfying or delighting them is hard task, When there are many types of customer in market. However though it may be quality warrants customer focus.

TYPES OF CUSTOMER
Loyal Customers: They represent no more than 20
percent of our customer base, but make up more than 50 percent of our sales. Completely satisfied customers. Discount Customers: They shop our stores frequently, but make their decisions based on the size of our markdowns and discount. Merely satisfied customers and also show defection ready to switch. Impulse Customers: They do not have buying a particular item at the top of their To Do list, but come into the store on a whim. They will purchase what seems good at the time. Need-Based Customers: They have a specific intention to buy a particular type of item. If they are taken care they can become loyal customer. Wandering Customers: They have no specific need or desire in mind when they come into the store. Rather, they want a sense of experience and/or community.

Customer Focus Definition Essence of CF Concepts Needs Conclusion

Relationship Management Definition Benefits Type/Variance CRM Flow Phases of CRM Strategy of CRM Conclusion

Customer focus

Definition:
General Management -firm's attention to what customers want or need . An organizational orientation toward satisfying the needs of potential and actual consumer. Customer focus is considered to be one of the keys to business success. Achieving customer focus involves ensuring that the whole organization, and not just frontline service staff, puts its customers first. All activities, from the planning of a new product to its production, marketing, and after-sales care, should be built around the customer. Every department and every employee should share the same customer-focused vision. This can be aided by practicing good customer relationship management and maintaining a customer relations program.

Essence of Customer focus

Concepts
In the literature searches, the following words and concepts are used when talking about customers focus: public suppliers clients partnership stakeholders and stockholders employees and management customer focus external and Internal customer

Needs of Customer Focus

Identify customers needs- Knowing what your customer expects and wants from your organization. Developing the right products and services- Once you have discovered the customers needs it is important to develop the product to match customers expectations. Measuring customers satisfaction, this requires constant and ongoing improvements, due to changes in customers demands.

Conclusion of CF
Once the customer needs and wants are satisfied, the customer will then feel like a valued customer. This will create customer loyalty and cause the customer to frequent your business regularly, increasing profits for the company. If the experience was a bad one, the customer will take their business elsewhere. With increased competition in business today, it is important to keep a strong customer base in order for the company to grow its profits. Word of mouth is a powerful way to communicate to other potential customers.

RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT

Definition
Customer relationship management (CRM) is the development and maintenance of mutually beneficial long-term relationships with strategically significant customers. Customer relationship management is a broadly recognized, widely implemented strategy for managing and nurturing a companys interactions with customers, clients and sales prospects.

Benefits of CRM
These tools have been shown to help companies attain these objectives: Streamlined sales and marketing processes Higher sales productivity Added cross-selling and up-selling Improved service, loyalty, and retention Increased call center efficiency Higher close rates Better profiling and targeting Reduced expenses Increased market share Higher overall profitability Marginal costing

Types/Variations
Sales forced automatic Marketing Customer service and support Analytics Integrated/Collaborative Small business Social media Non-profit and membershipbased

CRM Flow Diagram

Phases of CRM
The three phases in which CRM can help to support the relationship between a business and its customers are, to: Acquire: a CRM can help a business in acquiring new customers through excellent contact management, direct marketing, selling and fulfillment. Enhance: a web-enabled CRM combined with customer service tools offers customers excellent service from a team of trained and skilled sales and service specialists, which offers customers the convenience of one-stop shopping. Retain: CRM software and databases enable a business to identify and reward its loyal customers and further develop its targeted marketing and relationship marketing initiatives.

Functions of CRM
Direct functions are the basic requirement of the companies that are necessary for the survival in the competitive market. Profit Volume Safeguard Indirect functions- are actions necessary to convince the customer to participate in various marketing activities. Innovations Market Scout Access

Strategy Of CRM
Processes: Though these systems have many technological components, business processes lie at its core. It can be seen as a more client-centric way of doing business, enabled by technology that consolidates and intelligently distributes pertinent information about clients, sales, marketing effectiveness, responsiveness, and market trends. Therefore, before choosing a technology platform, a company needs to analyze its business workflows and processes; People: For an initiative to be effective, an organization must convince its staff that change is good and that the new technology and workflows will benefit employees as well as clients. Senior executives need to be strong and visible advocates who can clearly state and support the case for change. Collaboration, teamwork, and two-way communication should be encouraged across hierarchical boundaries, especially with respect to process improvement. Technology: In evaluating technology, key factors include alignment with the companys business process strategy and goals; the ability to deliver the right data to the right employees; and sufficient ease of use that users wont balk. Platform selection is best undertaken by a carefully chosen group of executives who understand the business processes to be automated as well as the various software issues. Depending upon the size of the company and the breadth of data, choosing an application can take anywhere from a few weeks to a year or more

Conclusion
Thus CRM Involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize business processesprincipally sales activities, but also those for marketing, customer service, and technical support. The overall goals are to find, attract, and win new clients, nurture and retain those the company already has, entice former clients back into the fold, and reduce the costs of marketing and client service. Customer relationship management denotes a company-wide business strategy embracing all client-facing departments and even beyond. When an implementation is effective, people, processes, and technology work in synergy to increase profitability, and reduce operational costs.

There is only one Boss. The Consumer! He can Fire everybody in the company, From the Chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.
Sam Walton

The greatest assert of a company is their customer treat each customer as if they are the last.
Know your customerto capture & retain them So, consumer segmentation is must! But, each customer is equally profitable. If, We dont take of our customers someone else will!

Conclusion of customer focus and CRM

If the company is serious about growing their business they need to focus at their customers.

An organizations success depends on How many customers it has, how much they buy, and how often they buy.

.Only customers judge the quality; all other judgments are essentially irrelevant

EXAMPLE-

IBM Travel and Transportation Customer Focused Airline: A Vision for Airline CRM The airline industry has reached a crossroad. While on one hand fuel and labour costs continue to be key issues, the phenomenal growth in passenger traffic has created new opportunities for growth. In this highly competitive industry, while operational efficiency helps reduce costs, customer satisfaction is the key to market leadership and sustained profitability in the long term. Airlines have realized the importance of having happy customers and are therefore focusing on customer relationship management (CRM) as a tool for managing customer relationships. Unfortunately, in many cases, they have failed to recognize CRM as a holistic strategy, instead viewing it as synonymous with their frequent flyer programs. In order to manage the customer more effectively across all lines of service, airlines must change their approach to CRM in a number of ways: Customer segmentation Airlines need to recognize that mileage-based segmentation is inadequate, whereas value-based and needs-based approaches can help guide investment decisions and drive greater insight into the needs of high-value customers. CRM initiative development In order to differentiate themselves from the competition, airlines must abandon a fast follower approach to CRM initiative development, in favor of investing in initiatives with a high return, which respond to the needs and desires of their own customers. Organizational design and management Airlines need to instill a service mentality in their employees, empowering them with a complete view of the customer and clearly articulating the employees role in the CRM strategy.

Case Study:
A Leading Scandinavian Airline Challenges:
The airline was confronted with intense global competition and a lower marketing budge and needed to drive a higher ROI, effectively optimize marketing campaigns, and increase response rates. Solution: Delivered a customer dynamic marketing model to plan the marketing activity. The approaches: a) Include the Customer Equity and Lifetime Value Management (CELM) algorithm and application. b) Enhance the existing customer segmentation scheme. c) Analyze the historical portfolio of various types of marketing actions d) Create a prototype for marketing action planes e) Allow budget allocation to maximize the customer value/risk ratio Benefits: a ) Reduced marketing costs by 20% while improving overall response rate by 10% b) Improved customer satisfaction rate by 10% c) Achieved average of 80% accuracy rate for predicting future customer value over variable horizons