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E-commerce: All about Customer Relationship Management

© Nazan Fathy

Customer relationship management (CRM) is all about understanding the customer's needs and leveraging this knowledge to increase sales and improve service. CRM blurs the boundaries between sales and service, and unify a company's activities around the customer. The overarching goal is to increase customer share and customer retention through customer satisfaction.

The strategic importance of managing customer relations is not new by any stretch of the imagination. What is new, is the customer centricity focus that CRM brings to a company. This new focus is the direct result of the electronic world. The World Wide Web is the perfect place to get to know and cultivate the client on a one-to-one basis. It offers an unparalleled opportunity to personalize services, provide multiple choice for customer support, track customer satisfaction and deliver loyalty programs.

The implementation of CRM goes beyond automating functions. It entails a fundamental change in the culture and operations of an organization. It also means addressing the infrastructure requirements for its implementation on the web.

A successful CRM implementation strategy needs to consider the following:

Knowledge Management: At the heart of a CRM implementation is the acquisition of information about a customer, its analysis, sharing and tracking. Also integral to the use of knowledge for competitive advantage is for employees to know what actions to take as a result of this knowledge.

Database Consolidation: This involves the consolidation of customer information in a single database and the re-engineering of business processes around the customer. The goal is to have all interactions with a customer recorded in one place to drive production, marketing, sales and customer support activities.

Integration of Channels and Systems: The epitome of online service is to respond to customers in a consistent and high-quality manner through their channel of choice, whether that is the e-mail, the phone or online chat. This in turn dictates the seamless integration of all communication channels with the customer database. It also dictates the integration of CRM with other parts of a company's business systems and applications.

Technology and Infrastructure: Sophisticated tools exist to automate and streamline online customer service. The self-help model typically achieved using a combination of tools (e.g. knowledge bases with an intuitive search capability, agent technology or automated email) can be complemented with real-time interactions provided by live chats and IP telephony. While the tools are available, the crux of the matter is to ensure the ability of the organization and the scalability of the technology infrastructure to cope with increased volumes.

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