CUSTOMER

RELATIONSHIP
MANAGEMENT
-Prof. Bhavana
Bagherwal
CRM
Customer relationship management (CRM) is the combination of
practices, strategies and technologies that companies use
to manage and analyze customer interactions and data throughout
the customer lifecycle, with the goal of improving
customer service relationships and assisting in customer retention
and driving sales. 
CRM or Customer Relationship Management is a strategy for managing
an organization's relationships and interactions with customers
and potential customers. A CRM system helps companies stay
connected to customers, streamline processes, and improve profitability.
Manufacturing CRM helps manufacturing businesses automate
different sales processes, such as lead management, task management
and sales reporting.
Characteristics of a Sound CRM Strategy

Alignment with organizational goal: A CRM strategy should be a

Customer oriented : A CRM strategy should focus on the requirements

Top Management Support : A CRM strategy should be formulated with

Expected products to be offered to the customers currently and in

Market size of the product

Requirements of customers

Ways to deliver quality service to customers

USP
 MANAGING CUSTOMER
SERVICE/ SALES PROFILE
The power of Customer Relations Management (CRM) lies in its
ability to help create, maintain, and expand customer
relationships.
Managers and executives are excited and ready to begin delving into the
process of creating their own CRM strategy, whether at the organization
level or as it applies to their specific areas or department. Before doing
that, it is important to take a more in-depth look at who the current
customers are and what their relationships with the relevant executive
and manager look like. The Customer Service/Sales Profile, will help
these mangers and executives do three things.
First, it will show what kind of customer relationships they are
trying to create. Is your success based in initial, standalone
transactions? Or does the nature of your service or product put
customers in partnership with you over longer periods of time? How
important is it for you to have satisfied customers acting as word-of-
mouth advocates for you in the marketplace?
Second, the Customer Service/Sales Profile will help identify
strengths in current CRM practices. Even in cases where there is no
formal CRM strategy, if you are still in business, you must be doing
something right, maybe several or many things. Knowing what right
practices have evolved naturally will help create the greatest possible
improvement with least amount of expense.
Third, because this process creates a visual image of customer
relationships, you will find it helpful in communicating to others
throughout the organization. Knowing your current profile and the
desired profile will naturally help you focus your energy and attention.
We use the phrase Service/Sales to remind us of three important
facts:
1) Sales do not equal relationships. 
2) Service extends beyond the buyer.
3) Service and sales are on the same team.
MANAGE YOUR
CUSTOMER
SERVICE/SALES PROFILE 
1. Reduce response times
2. Have all information at your fingertips
3. Prioritize customer requests
4. Make sure the request ends up in the right hands
5. Help your customers help themselves
CHOOSING CRM
STRATEGY
Set a destination: setting of objectives
Prioritize your Customers: It is common for businesses to want
to treat all of their customers equally. The problem is that the
business world is not a democracy, for a company to be successful,
it must be willing to prioritize customers based upon how profitable
(or how likely to become profitable) they are. For
example, returning customers are often much more valuable,
spending on average nearly double what new customers spend.
Your organization may have its own definition of what makes a
customer valuable, so it is up to you to identify the traits that you
most look for in a buyer, so that can segment your accounts to
increase metric-effectiveness.
Communicate with your employees: Your CRM may be designed to
handle large amounts of data, and to facilitate communication between
various groups, but it is your staff that will determine whether or not your
goals are met. Involve your employee in every step of the strategic
process. This will help them not only internalize the objectives, but will
also give them personal ownership over the direction that the company
takes. Invested employees will be better able to integrate new policies
and technologies in a way that will benefit everyone involved.
Stagger your changes: If some aspect of your business isn’t working
the way it should, you might feel pressured to implement new policies
and technologies as quickly as possible in an effort to minimize any
damage. The problem with this mentality is that too many changes all at
once can have a negative impact on your employee’s productivity. Keep
your workforce in mind, and whenever possible, introduce your new CRM
policies gradually.
Start tracking your customers before first contact: The CRM
framework makes it possible for businesses to capture data at every
stage of the customer journey. Despite this, many businesses fail to put
their CRM to work until after the first few steps have been made. Instead,
prepare for initial contact with your lead by using your CRM to catalogue
what kind of information your prospective customer shares across social
media channels. This will give you an edge in understanding what your
customer wants, how they expect you to deliver on those wants, and
what they are likely to want in the future.
Sync everything to your CRM: Many CRMs have their own built-in
programs that mimic the functionality of other, often-used applications.
When this is the case, then it is a simple matter for your system to sync
together, so that any notes or appointments made throughout the system
are automatically tracked through the rest of the CRM. However, for times
when outside applications are necessary, be sure sync your CRM with
whatever other programs are being utilized. The best CRMs will do this
automatically, importing client-related appointments from your calendar,
updating cancellations and other changes, and sending reminders when
appropriate. Syncing everything together will help guarantee that you’re
utilizing your CRM to its full ability.
Evaluate and improve: Every business has its own unique challenges, and
no CRM strategy — no matter how in-depth — will be able to accurately
account for every possible contingency. Accept this fact, and be willing to
reevaluate your approach should it become apparent that something isn’t
working as well as it could be. Remember: Knowing what is ineffective can
often be nearly as valuable as knowing what is effective, so be grateful for
every chance you have to identify weaknesses in your system.
With an effective CRM strategy, you get:
 Better efficiency in marketing
 Effective communication with customers
 Data-driven decision making
 Profitable sales cycle
 Improved accuracy in forecasting
 Increased customer loyalty
On the other hand, the risks involved in the absence of an efficient
CRM strategy are:
 Inability to access or improve customer satisfaction
 Missed opportunities to sell, upsell, or cross-sell to existing customers.
 Inability to attract and retain new customers
 Losing a competitive edge to businesses having a robust CRM strategy
TOOLS FOR CAPTURING
CUSTOMER INFORMATION
1. Key Factors That Set Your Customers Apart:
Everyone has different customer types. Not all customers are created
equal. Identify what key factors set one apart from another and segment
your users from one another. It could be geography, it could be
specific products they buy or it could be a demographic detail.
Once you understand that, you are better able to target messaging,
develop product and drive value for both the customer and your business.
2. Customers’ Real-Time Behaviour:
To understand your customers better, you have to get greater
insight into how they actually behave. Surveys are fine and
generalizations drawn from basic demography are still important,
but businesses today need to gather as much data as possible on the way
that customers are behaving in real time.
How long are they staying on your site? What links are they
clicking? What triggers them to share your content on social
media? What are they uploading or downloading and at what
times? The businesses that are ahead today are the ones who can
harvest, blend and analyze real-time customer data to identify patterns
and predict customer needs before they’re even aware of them
themselves.
3. Customer Service Records:
When people call to return products, get more information and
the like, it is the perfect opportunity to ask them a few questions
about what they like/dislike, how they found you and how they
are using their product or service. Have a list of questions on hand
for your customer service representatives and make them use it
4. Referral Source:
Many times on a sales call you are busy tracking all the information
about the client that is relevant to them closing a sale, but you forget to
track the referral source of the lead. Without the referral source, it’s
hard to understand how you can better reach your customers
because you don’t have clear data about where your existing
customers are coming from.
5. Personal Tastes and Preferences:
Specialize in collecting data about consumers’ tastes and preferences,
We use this consumer intelligence to create content that resonates
with our users. In particular, you can use aggregated statistics about
your customers to provide information that’s more engaging than any
other content types.
We love to keep our members as part of the conversation on Instagram,
for example, by using the information they provide in real time to spark
conversations around the newest trends.
6. Website Activity: Although it may seem obvious, many companies
do not keep a close eye on the activity that their customers have on their
website, especially if this activity doesn’t directly lead to conversion. The
activities and click-throughs that happen outside of a purchase or a
conversion are also incredibly important.
Which pages do customers seem to go to and from? Are they pleased
with the pages that each of your links leads to, or do they revert away
from them? Paying close attention to these details will allow you to
understand and reach your customers better, while also making their
online experience more enjoyable.
7. Social Media: Statistics show that millennials are on social
media on average 5.4 hours a day. That’s one-fifth of each day.
Clearly the best place to reach consumers is where they spend their
time. However, the challenge is that social insights are often fractured,
confusing and incomplete. In order to hone (Refine) user data in social,
subscribe to a tool or platform that aggregates user data across all
streams.
8. Comprehensive Contact Information:
An accurate and informative contact list is one of the most powerful
marketing tools. Once you’ve closed a deal, you need to keep the
lines of communication open with each client. Relationship
marketing and CRM is important to keeping business, and you
want to be able to reach the right customer with the right
message through the right channel. This means that every piece of
customer data is important to build a rich customer profile.
9. Demographic Information:
If you don’t collect demographic and interests for your customer
database, you should start right now. This allows you to provide
highly targeted marketing efforts to your customers for things
that are relevant and they are interested in. If you do not have this
information, send them a survey that they can fill out. The more
segmented your customers are, the better you can sell them.
 MANAGING
RELATIONSHIPS
THROUGH CONFLICTS
1. Talk before you are angry and agree a strategy
Managing conflict requires a commitment from both of you. Talk beforehand
about how you would like to manage disagreements, and also agree that you
will help each other to do that. You may find it helpful to talk about how you
behave when you are angry, and support each other to manage that. For
example, if one of you becomes angry very quickly, it may be helpful for the
other to propose waiting until later to talk.
2. Walk away when you are angry
Get into a habit of not discussing issues when you are angry. Say something
like: “I can’t talk now, I’m just too angry. Please let’s talk about this later when
I’ve calmed down.” Then walk away, and go off somewhere to calm down.
3. Don’t try to discuss difficult things when you are tired and/or
hungry: We are all more likely to be difficult when we are tired or hungry. It is
human nature. Avoid having difficult conversations at difficult times. Instead,
find a time when you are both relaxed and comfortable, and the conversations
are less likely to escalate into an argument. Some people prefer to go out for a
walk, and others find time at home is better: try things out and see what works
best for you.
4. Always be prepared to apologise:
You may feel that you were in the right. You may even have been in the right.
Being prepared to apologise for the way that your partner feels, however, will
go a long way towards ensuring that they feel they have been heard, and that
you understand their concerns. This is especially true if, despite your best
intentions, you ended up shouting at each other.

Apologising doesn’t mean you have to accept that you were wrong, It
means saying that you are sorry that there was a disagreement, and you are
sorry that your partner is upset, and that you are committed to finding a way
forward that works for you both.
5. Listen and discuss: Be prepared to listen to your partner. Don’t just
repeatedly explain your own point of view or you will end up fighting
again. Building a compromise or a collaborative solution requires real
understanding of what is important to them, and why, and a discussion
that shares viewpoints and opinions constructively.
CASE STUDY
SESSION 1
Mahindra Parikh, Senior Manager-Commercial, India Textiles Ltd., felt doubtful on
bringing down the delivery time from 60 days to 45 days, demanded by some
international buyers of garments. The company's manufacturing unit at Bangalore
produced garments like shirts, trousers for domestic as well as international
customers, including Walmart, J.C. Penny, and Gap. The production process included
various operations like dyeing of yarn, weaving, and processing.
The production was organized on three shift basis. The company had outsourced
some of the operations like processing because it did not have facility to do the
processing, although it had adequate space.
Mahindra asked the market research manager to get the information about the
competitor’s delivery time for the garments. The market research manager informed
him that only four out of about 100 garment (or apparel) manufacturing units were in
a position to fulfill the important purchasing objectives of 45 days delivery time and
consistent product quality.
Mahindra applied a lot of pressure on the existing processing firms to bring down the
delivery time.
However, he did not receive any positive commitments from them. Mahindra felt that
it was very important to satisfy the delivery and quality objectives of the garment
buying firms, in order to achieve the company's sales and profitability goals.
Questions:
1.If you were Mahindra Parikh, what would you do?
2.‘The company had outsourced some of the operations like
processing because it did not have facility to do the
processing, although it had adequate space’. Do you agree
with this decision? Justify