Crm

Essay:

CRM

To manage the relationship with the customer a business needs to collect the right information about its customers and organise that information for proper analysis and action. Businesses need to keep data up-to-date, make it accessible to employees, and provide the essential knowledge for employees to convert that data into products that reflect customers' needs.

Customer relationship management (CRM) helps businesses to gain an insight into the behaviour of their customers and modify their business operations to ensure that customers are served in the best possible way. In essence, CRM helps a business to recognise the value of its customers and to make it possible to improve customer relations. The better a business understands its customers, the more responsive it can be to their needs.

Benefiting from CRM is not just a question of buying the right software but businesses must also adapt themselves to the needs of their customers.

In the commercial world the importance of keeping existing customers satisfied and expanding business is paramount.

The importance of customer satisfaction should not be underestimated. Happy customers buy more than unhappy ones, and they do so for a much longer period of time.

They help companies win new customers, instead of sending them to competitors as unhappy customers do. They’re also easier to work with when problems arise; unlike chronically unhappy customers, whom will usually cost money and cause grieve if a business makes even the slightest mistake.

The more opportunities that a customer has to conduct business with a company the better, and one way of achieving this is by opening up channels such as direct sales, online sales, franchises, use of agents, etc. However, the more channels a business have, the greater the need to manage its interaction with its customer base.

It is important to understand that CRM can do more than just improve sales. It can enhance marketing efficiency by enriching the data used to design and execute campaigns; it can reduce operational costs by eliminating redundant and/or wasteful tasks; CRM, if properly executed, can also lead to significant improvements in customer satisfaction.

Often though, the biggest problem with a complex CRM is that the complexity of the whole system results in the customer being treated more like a number than ever, which is exactly what CRM should not be.

CRM can be achieved by:

Finding out about your customers' purchasing habits, opinions and preferences

Profiling individuals and groups to market more effectively and increase sales

Changing the way you operate to improve customer service and marketing

There are 3 main types of CRM:

Operational (provides automated support so each interaction with a customer is added to customer’s history, and staff can retrieve information on customer from the database as possible).

Analytical (analyses data in an attempt to identify means to enhance a company’s relationship with its clients).

Collaborative (deals with all necessary communication and collaboration between vendors and customers).

CRM solutions fall into the following four broad categories.

Outsourced solutions

Application service providers can provide web-based CRM solutions for a business. This approach is ideal if a business needs to implement a solution quickly and perhaps the company does not have the in-house skills necessary to tackle the job from scratch. It is also a good solution for businesses already geared towards online e-commerce.

Off-the-shelf solutions

Several software companies offer CRM applications that integrate with existing packages. Cut-down versions of such software may be suitable for smaller businesses. This approach is generally the cheapest option as the investment is usually in standard software components. The downside is that the software may not always do precisely what a business wants and or it may have to trade off functionality for convenience and price. The key to success is to be flexible without compromising too much.

Bespoke software

This is basically the ultimate in tailored CRM solutions; consultants and software engineers will customise or create a CRM system and integrate it with a business’ existing software. However, this can be expensive and time consuming. Usually if a business chooses this option, they’ll make sure they carefully specify exactly what they want. This will usually be the most expensive option and costs will vary depending on how complex the whole operation is.

Managed solutions

A halfway house between bespoke and outsourced solutions, this involves renting a customised suite of CRM applications as a bespoke package. This can be cost effective but it may mean that a business will have to compromise in terms of functionality.

The importance of CRM applications in the car rental industry.

The introduction of CRM in the car rental industry has made possible for companies around the world to switch their focus from mainly profit orientated strategies to more tailor-made and responsive service based on individual customer satisfaction. CRM has helped them better understand what their customers really want and through the use of feedbacks and customer interaction, has helped them realise how to adapt or modify their products and services in order to fulfil real needs.

In the car rental industry it is interesting to see how different companies have nowadays formed some sort of homogenous product offering.

Although every company tries to differentiate the level of attention to details offered to their customers it is nowadays very easy to realise that within this industry there is a real struggle for new ideas on ways to keep customers satisfied, or at least there is a struggle to keep ideas original and unique to a firm without incurring the risk that someone else will copy that idea.

In the car rental industry (as in any