Articles

Customer Relationship Management

Improving the efficiency and effectiveness of our clients' marketing, sales and customer service is a Medinetic priority. Our business consultants work within client organizations, across all functional divisions, to boost customer loyalty, satisfaction and profitability.

Customer relationship management (CRM) is a broad term that covers concepts used by companies to manage their relationships with customers, including the capture, storage and analysis of customer information.

There are three aspects of CRM, which can each be implemented in isolation from each other:-

Operational CRM provides support to "front office" business processes, including sales, marketing and service. Each interaction with a customer is generally added to a customer's contact history, and staff can retrieve information on customers from the database as necessary.

One of the main benefits of this contact history is that customers can interact with different people or different contact “channels” in a company over time without having to repeat the history of their interaction each time.

Consequently, many call centers use some kind of CRM software to support their call centre agents.

Collaborative CRM covers the direct interaction with customers. This can include a variety of channels, such as internet, email, automated phone (Automated Voice Response AVR). It can generally be equated with “self service”.

The objectives of Collaborative CRM can be broad, including cost reduction and service improvements.

Analytical CRM analyses customer data for a variety of purposes including design and execution of targeted marketing campaigns to optimize marketing effectiveness

design and execution of specific customer campaigns, including customer acquisition, cross-selling, up-selling, retention analysis of customer behavior to aid product and service decision making (eg pricing, new product development, etc) management decisions, e.g. financial forecasting and customer profitability analysis risk assessment and fraud detection, in particular for credit card transactions

We represent several commercial CRM software packages, which vary in their approach to CRM. However, CRM is not just a technology, but rather a holistic approach to an organization’s philosophy in dealing with its customers. This includes policies and processes, front-of-house customer service, employee training, marketing, systems and information management. Hence, it is important that any CRM implementation considers not only technology, but furthermore the broader organizational requirements. The objectives of a CRM strategy must consider a company’s specific situation and it’s customer’s needs and expectations.

At Medianetic we are able to help customers develop the holistic approach in dealing with its customer relationship management requirements and challenges.