Customer Relationship Management

Abstract

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) employs people, technology, tools, processes, and activities to increase customer retention and a firm's profitability. Early CRM use was fraught with problems, as many firms applied CRM inappropriately. However, firms have become selective and prudent with their CRM investments, and many report success with CRM.

Keywords CRM System; Customer Defection; Customer Relationship Management (CRM); Customer Retention; Customer Segmentation; Lifetime Value; Relationship Marketing; Win Back

Management > Customer Relationship Management

Overview

Over the years, management thinking has shifted from a focus on acquiring new customers to an understanding of the importance of retaining customers and the need to build up loyalty among these customers (Fitzgibbon & White, 2005). It has been recognized that a company's relationship with its customers is one of its most important assets, and this is all the more important in a climate of high customer turnover, decreasing brand loyalty, and lower profitability. As a result, many organizations are moving away from product-centric and brand-centric marketing toward a customer-centric approach.

Customers are increasingly viewed in terms of their lifetime value to a firm rather than being measured simply on the value of an individual transaction. Since customers usually engage in many different types of transactions, and since they vary a great deal as to their wants and needs, firms find the management of their relationships with customers very challenging. Customer Relationship Management has emerged as a way of dealing with the challenges thus posed.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) evolved out of the field of relationship marketing, which is based on the premise that lifetime connections with customers are more rewarding and advantageous than a short-term transaction-based relationship. Relationship marketing, which became popular in the 1990s, views the customer as an asset that can be controlled and one that needs an adequate amount of investment, similar to the requirements of tangible assets (Ryals & Payne, 2001). As such, customer retention, therefore, produces a major foundation of relationship marketing.

Also referred to as customer relationship marketing and customer loyalty marketing, CRM employs information technology to enforce and execute relationship marketing approaches. Through CRM, marketing appears to have come full circle in its evolution: from straight sales to mass marketing, to target marketing, to relationship marketing, and to CRM, which is on the way to completely allowing true one-on-one marketing (Landry, Arnold & Arndt, 2005).

“CRM is based on the belief that developing a relationship with customers is the best way to make them loyal, and that loyal customers are more profitable than non-loyal customers” (Dowling, 2002, p. 87). It is also believed that tiny improvements in customer retention rates can yield significant increases in profits. The goal is to bring about increased customer retention. According to Hamid & Akhir (2013), technology-based CRM is often implemented but not integrated into customer experience or exploited to enhance customer loyalty. Where data on customer behavior is not only collected but also used to maintain communication and entice return business in the form of special offers, it can be very effective in capturing customer loyalty.

True CRM is driven by organizational strategy and technology. It is relationship-centered and allows firms to align their business processes with their strategies to build customer loyalty and the firm’s profits. It “requires a holistic approach so that the information that is held about customers across the organization is drawn together in one central source or at least cross-accessed so that it can be compiled and collated” (“CRM demystified,” 2001, p. 4). CRM relies on automated processes and technologies, using information systems, software, Internet algorithms, and call centers.

There is no universally accepted definition of CRM, probably because it is still in the formative stages of development (Tiemo, 2013). It is not surprising, therefore, that there is much variety in the way CRM has been and is being defined. Some see it as a marketing strategy. To them, CRM is seen as the creation of customer strategies and processes supported by technology in order to build customer loyalty (Rigby, Reichheld & Schefter, 2002). Others see CRM as a technology for managing customer information. Stone and Woodcock (2001) have defined CRM as "methodologies, technologies and e-commerce capabilities used to manage customer relationships." Hobby (1999) defines CRM as "a management approach that enables organizations to identify, attract and increase retention of profitable customers by managing relationships with them." Rigby et al. (2002) also define CRM as a mechanism for aligning a firm's business processes with its strategies to build customer loyalty and the firm's profits.

A philosophy or approach encompassing people, technology, tools, processes and activities, CRM appears to be a combination of all the above definitions. In 2023, a commonly agreed-upon definition of CRM included a combination of strategies, practices, and technologies that companies used to analyze, manage, and adapt to customer behavior (Chai, n.d.). Its primary purpose is to help firms understand their customers better, to build relationships with them, and to ensure customer retention and therefore, profitability. CRM's secondary purposes include:

• The identification of a firm's customers
• The creation of customer value
• The management of complex customer relationships
• The adaptation of a firm's customer offerings and communications strategy to different customers
• The cultivation of customer-firm dialogue

A CRM strategy provides an effective way for a firm to advance its revenues by providing the specific services and products that precisely meet the requirements of customers through the design and implementation of programs that effectively allocate the appropriate resources to each customer. A good CRM strategy will also allow a firm to offer superior customer service, cross-sell products more effectively, and allow sales staff to acquire deals at a quicker pace. Current customers will be retained, and future customers will be discovered. Customers will also be segmented based on their needs and their profitability.

Applications

Rigby, Reicheld, and, Schefter (2002) have discovered that by tracking communication between firms and their customers, CRM can help firms in many ways, including:

• Analyzing customer revenue and cost data to identify current and future high-value customers
• Targeting direct marketing efforts
• Capturing relevant product and service behavior data
• Creating new distribution channels
• Developing new pricing models
• Processing transactions faster
• Providing better information to the front line
• Managing logistics and the supply chain more efficiently
• Deploying knowledge management systems
• Tracking customer defection and retention levels
• Tracking customer satisfaction levels
• Tracking customer win-back levels

To successfully achieve the above objectives, CRM implementations require a holistic approach that integrates internal leadership (in particular, strong executive and business-unit leadership), cautious strategic preparation, precise performance measures, organizational culture and arrangement, business procedures, and information technologies, with outside customer touch points (Eichorn, 2004).

In the design of CRM systems, the first variable to consider is knowledge: by collecting and analyzing information, a firm must first discover the wants, needs, and values of its customers. Next, the firm must consider the need for interactivity and personal contact and the way in which the customer wants to be contacted (Ling and Yen, 2001).

By integrating customer management activities across a firm, CRM systems should store detailed information about anticipated and existent customers, in admiration of their buying patterns, shopping behavior, and usage tendencies of the firm’s products and services. The intelligence collected on a CRM database should include:

• Products and services purchased
• Time and date of purchase (frequency of purchase)
• Price paid
• Method of purchase
• Distribution and shipping
• Delivery date
• Requests for service
• Sales calls
• Customer complaints
• All other customer- or company-initiated contact
• Demographic information
• Customer lifestyles and goals
• Detailed information for segmentation and other data evaluation aims
• Response to marketing provocation (that is, whether the customer responds to a direct marketing approach, a sales contact, or any other direct association)
• Website use

The collection and processing of data for CRM purposes can be facilitated by self-service technologies, natural language processing, and speech recognition technologies, with little or no interaction from company staff. Through e-learning technologies, users can quickly learn how to use new systems and enhancements to existing systems.

All the data collected on a CRM system should be represented over time and must be constantly updated, to ensure its accuracy. As information pours in, firms must shift emphasis to the development of analytical tools to help them manage customer information. Further, companies have begun implementing third-party software that can integrate CRM methods to track customer satisfaction and which can also be integrated into multiple CMS systems (DDI Development, 2016).

Issues

After CRM's initial popularity during the 1990s and into 2000, sales of CRM systems fell drastically when early adopters began to see the technology as another overhyped IT investment whose promises would never be fulfilled (Rigby & Ledingham, 2004). However, by 2004, many of the same senior corporate executives who thought that CRM Systems were not producing the desired benefits amid high costs began to indicate satisfaction with their CRM investments, and system sales began to increase. The reason for this change in attitude towards CRM was a change in usage by firms.

Rather than depend on CRM to transform entire businesses, firms began to direct their investments toward resolving particular issues within their customer relationship cycle, which comprises product development, sales, service, retention and win back, targeting, and marketing (Rigby & Ledingham, 2004). A broad range of firms are now effectively taking a sensible, habituated approach to CRM.

Although there is no apparent proof regarding either the characteristics of effective CRM methods or the reasons why CRM might be a potential failure, there appear to be some common mistakes that have been made with CRM. First, in evaluating and designing CRM Systems, some firms put technological capabilities over business needs. For these firms, CRM becomes more about managing databases and integrated software systems than customer relationships.

It is known that when managers allow themselves to be distracted by the many capabilities of CRM software, they are likely to lose sight of what CRM should do, both for their firms and for their customers. Although a large portion of CRM is technology, viewing CRM as a technology-only solution is likely to fail. It is the level of utilization of the information technology, not the mere adoption of the technology, that produces intended outcomes and drives business performance. The data collected from CRM software needs to be applied to the customer base.

As stated above, for CRM to be successful, a firm should understand its customers and what characteristics they place the most value on over the course of a lifetime. The company must then decide what the customers need most and which methods are most effective in providing those necessities. A failure to integrate or align the underlying business processes with information systems causes a gap that leads to inadequate communication and coordination among the different departments, fragmented data systems, and dissimilar process flows (Eichorn, 2004). Without communication between the various parties in the customer connection chain can give way to an unfinished picture of the customer. Inadequate communication can also reveal a situation where technology is put in place without the appropriate support or buy-in from users.

Another common mistake is when CRM efforts within a firm are concentrated within only one functional area of the firm—usually the marketing department or the information technology department. Such an approach causes CRM strategies to be pursued in a vacuum and rarely considers that nearly all business processes utilize more than one certain area within the firm. It has been realized that more integration among all functional areas leads to better treatment and attention given to the customer.

CRM implementations are unlikely to succeed if they are treated and implemented as isolated projects. To enable the firm to have a single view of the customer and track every interaction it has had with the customer, CRM must be integrated throughout the entire business.

It has become easier to install a CRM System as the technology has become increasingly reliable, and implementation methods became modernized. As the CRM failure rate declines, firms “apply CRM with greater precision, targeting critical gaps in their customer relationship cycles where performance suffers. By setting priorities for their information requirements carefully, making sure they are guided by overall customer strategy, firms can embark on CRM efforts that will have a greater impact with lower investment and less risk” (Rigby & Ledingham, 2004, p. 129).

A comprehensive CRM System can theoretically automate each aspect of a firm’s connection with its customers. However, “smart companies are focusing their CRM implementations, carefully choosing which segment of the CRM cycle, and which functions within that segment, are likely to deliver the greatest return on an initial CRM investment. When firms achieve success in this first effort, they often progress to subsequent projects, automating additional functions in the same segment, steadily moving from segment to segment, or even moving to critical business processes beyond CRM” (Rigby & Ledingham, 2004, p. 121).

CRM also fails when corporate executives do not comprehend what they are executing, never mind the cost or time involved. Rigby et al. (2002) have identified four average pitfalls managers encounter when attempting to implement CRM. The first pitfall occurs when CRM is implemented before a customer strategy is created. To begin with, when creating a customer strategy, a firm must work out which customers it wants to network further with and which it does not want to build relationships with, based on customer needs, wants, and current and potential value to the firm.

Customer strategy addresses issues of segmentation and marketing. Customer segmentation enables firms to clarify their responses to the various customer groups. A firm may choose to invest in certain segments to re-enforce or initiate profitable relations, to control costs to make lower-margin segments worthy of the time and effort, or to divest unappealing segments. Care should be taken to distinguish between profitable and loyal customers, as not every loyal customer is profitable, and not every profitable customer is loyal. Some firms expensively chase after originally profitable customers who lack the potential to secure future profits due to their lack of loyalty.

By mistaking CRM technology for a marketing strategy, many executives allow the vendors of CRM software to steer their firm's approach to customer management. Similarly, some executives wrongly adapt their customer strategy to match their new CRM technology.

The second management pitfall—and probably the most dangerous—occurs when CRM technology is installed before the firm is made customer-focused. For a firm to enhance its relationships with its most advantageous customers, it needs to first overhaul the crucial business processes that relate to customers, from customer service all the way to order fulfillment. Merely having a strategy will not suffice—there should be a coordinated program in place to combine administrative and methodical changes with the employment of new technologies.

CRM will succeed only after the firm and its processes—job descriptions, performance measures, compensation systems, training programs, and the like—have been restructured to better meet customers' needs.

The third pitfall occurs when executives assume that the more the CRM technology, the better their relationships with their customers. Many managers take for granted that CRM must be technology intensive, but this is not so. Customer relationships can be controlled in a number of ways, and the aims of CRM can be actualized without the aid of hearty investments in technology by urging employees to pay more attention to the wants of customers. Simply depending on a technology-based answer, or believing that a high-tech resolution is preferable to a low-tech one, is a pricey hazard. There will always be a human element to CRM. Low-tech, mid-tech, and high-tech firms alike are experiencing success with CRM.

The fourth pitfall occurs when a firm stalks its customers instead of wooing them. The nature of any investment to increase customer loyalty, whether it involves creating a loyalty card or providing more cash registers, should always depend on the kind of firm and the sorts of relationships the firm and its customers would desire with each other. Types of connections can differ depending on the industry, firm, and customers. Those managers who often ignore these developments while using CRM experience horrible results. Sometimes, they result in attempting to enhance relationships with the wrong customers or attempting to enhance relationships with the right customers but in the wrong way. A failure to develop strong, lasting relationships with customers who value their goods and services may lead to the misfortune of losing those customers.

According to Rigby et al. (2002), a firm can increase its chances of CRM success when it carries out the following activities:

• Identification of its most valuable customers
• Calculation of the share of the wallet of the most valuable customers for the firm's goods and services
• Study of the products or services its customers need today and will need tomorrow
• Survey of the products or services its competitors offer today and will offer tomorrow
• Identification of the products or services it should be offering
• Research into the best way to deliver its products and services to customers, including the alliances it needs to strike, the technologies it needs to invest in, and the service capabilities it needs to develop or acquire
• Identification of the tools employees need to foster customer relationships
• Identification of the human resource systems which need to be instituted to boost employee loyalty
• Understanding why customers defect and how to win them back
• Analysis of what competitors are doing to win the firm's high-value customers
• Monitoring of customer defection patterns by senior management

In the 2020s, while the basic principles and pitfalls of CRM remained similar, CRM evolved drastically. CRM trends included Open-Source and Cloud-based approaches. Further, social CRM had become the dominant method as companies switched from having transactional relationships with customers to interactive relationships (Agile CRM, n.d.). To conclude, a productive CRM strategy requires a customizable approach for businesses, and as a rule, CRM strategies are anticipated to differ from one company to another (Peppers & Rogers, 1996). A blind imposition of CRM will only reduce a firm’s profitability (Peterson, 1999).

Terms & Concepts

Customer Defection: This is where a customer shifts loyalty from one firm to another.

Customer Lifetime Value: The revenue that a customer is allowed to spend with a firm, directly or by way of referrals and recommendations, from the start of the relationship to the end or throughout a customer’s lifetime.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM): Methodologies, technology, and e-commerce capabilities used to manage a firm's relationships with its customers. CRM is a mechanism for aligning a firm's business processes with its strategies for customer retention and profitability.

Customer Relationship Management Cycle (CRM Cycle): A firm's Customer Relationship Management Cycle comprises product development, sales, service, retention, win back, targeting, marketing.

Customer Retention: The establishment and maintenance of long-lasting relationships between a firm and its customers.

Customer Segmentation: This involves the classification of a firm's customers into various groups according to lifetime value, profitability, and loyalty.

Customer Win Back: The reinitiation and management of relationships with customers who have lapsed or defected from a firm.

Relationship Management: A marketing philosophy based on the premise that lifetime relationships with customers are more advantageous than short-term connections. The customer is viewed as an asset that can be managed and requires investment.

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Suggested Reading

Buttle, F., & Maklan, S. (2015). Customer relationship management: concepts and technologies (3rd ed.). New York City, NY: Taylor & Francis.

Peppers, D., & and Rogers, M., (1999). The one to one manager: Real world lessons in customer relationship management. New York City, NY: Currency Doubleday.

Reinartz, W., & Kumar, V. (2002). The mismanagement of customer loyalty. Harvard Business Review, 80, 86–94. Retrieved March 16, 2007, from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=14365033&site=ehost-live

Rigby, D., & Ledingham, D. (2004). CRM done right. Harvard Business Review, 82, 118–129. Retrieved March 16, 2007, from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=14874833&site=ehost-live

Rigby, D., Reichheld, F., & Schefter, P. (2002). Avoid the four perils of CRM. Harvard Business Review, 80, 101–109. Retrieved March 16, 2007, from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=6026539&site=ehost-live