PRINCIPLES OF CRM:

CRM is much desired and enjoyable trip to arrive at a desired destination for the businesses. Though there is no magic formula for effective CRM, but there are certain guiding principles for CRM to function effectively. The following are the principles of CRM.

1. Start with a Strategic Customer Focus:

The Companies identify who they are and what the vision is and try to consider from strategic customer perspective. They try to consider and define the following three distinct criteria:

• If they generate revenue for the organization
• If they make the decision to acquire a particular product/service and
• If they are the “beneficiaries” of that product /service.

The criteria of buying is compared to the micro and macro environments  and evaluated to choose a fine tune  strategy.

2. Match Strategic Customers to Organizational competence:

Sustainable competitive advantage is achieved when organizational competencies are matched to customer profile .The organizations have the choice of three broad strategies:

• Product leadership
• Operational Excellence
• Customer Intimacy

In today’s consumption led economy, customer expertise is one of the best bets for permanent organizational advantage.

3. Adopt a set of CRM Strategy Drivers:

The customer strategic drivers have to be set depending on the business objectives. The following combination of drivers is set.

• Strategic Customer Acquisition(“get”)
• Customer Loyalty development (“keep”)
• Business Extension with existing customers (“Grow”)
• Value creation through customer experience management
• Diversification of new products and services to new customers
• Provision of tailored and customized  or total solutions
• Revenue or Profit, Market share or customer share.
• Mass Marketing, One to One Marketing or Direct Marketing etc
• The direction, focus and positioning of the strategies will affect
• Organizational policies and practices
• Business processes and implementation
• People and performance measurements
• Customer preferences and so on.

4. “Tangibilize” Vision and Strategies:

Vision is a broad statement of purpose and direction. Strategies are made up of specific, short to mid term goals. Very often, vision becomes blurred or distorted as they are passed down because misunderstanding and disagreements can occur regarding goals, roles and procedures. To prevent the vision from being a “NATO” (No Action Talk Only), it must be consciously, explicitly and systematically communicated to key shareholders, business partners, channels, customer and team members laterally and down the line. The organization may make mission in any functional areas (Marketing, Finance, Human Resources, Information Technology) of the management .The vision is translated into actionable tasks, people are able to relate to their roles and responsibilities identify their duties and  contribute for organization’s CRM vision effectively

5. Re-organize Metrics:

The following CRM metrics are set-

• Employee participation in CRM and usage
• Strategic Customer Acquisition
• Customer consolidation, retention and defection rates
• Brand impact
• Customer satisfaction ratings and loyalty ratings
• Customer knowledge
• Customer Entanglement
• Learning Relationships

These metrics are linked to business metrics such as revenue cost efficiency, Cross sell/Up sell rate, Market Share, Mind Share Customer share and profitability. They help to assemble the resources required and prepare an achievable CRM Roadmap.

Thus, the following CRM strategies and solutions have to be borne in mind for overall

• CRM success
• CRM is not software purchase, it is a strategy
• CRM must fit the way you work-Today and Tomorrow                                                               
• Business benefits and return on investment in CRM should be properly defined and measured
• Total cost of Ownership should determine carefully.
• Right Partner should be selected for successful CRM solutions.

GROWTH OF CRM MARKET IN INDIA:

In Peter F Drucker’s words, the purpose of business is to create and keep a customer. Every businessman understands the truth of these words. Today, when businesses are scrambling to get customers, the importance of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) must not be ignored. That’s why analysts, vendors, and solution providers are positive about the growth of CRM in the country.

Analysts have come out with skyrocketing figures about the growth of CRM in India. In Gartner’s view, the Indian CRM market size is about 15 percent of the overall APAC market, second largest in the region, after Australia. Between 2008 and 2013, CRM in India is expected to grow at a CAGR of 12 percent Gartner has significantly revised the growth rate of the Indian CRM market, specifically for the year 2009 in which it is expected to reach $80.3 million.

According to analysts, CRM has gained prominence over ERP. Sushant Dwivedy, Director-Microsoft Business Solutions, says, “Initially, they were packaged together as one solution. However, today, we are seeing a demand for CRM as a separate solution, one which is not dependent on ERP anymore.”

Growth Drivers:

According to Ramaswamy Rajgopal, Senior Vice President, CSC India, most organizations have implemented a customer strategy to have a 360 degree view of the customers across the enterprise and all the products that the enterprise produces. “For example, in the telecom space, the entire service management is automated with CRM. This includes acquisition of customers through call centers, service management, and billing. Similarly as the insurance industry diversifies its portfolio, the CRM application provides an effective way to enable cross-selling as well as provide a single point of customer contact to the enterprise,” he adds. Most packaged applications today offer solutions that address the specific industry needs with robust analytics allowing for end-to-end customer management.

Dwivedy of Microsoft says, “Today, getting new customers is a problem.  Retaining them is even more hard, which is in direct proportion to the growth factor of CRM.” For Team Computers’ Chopra and Religare’s Grewal, one factor driving the  growth of CRM is the need for the companies to optimize marketing spend and deliver offerings in a more defined manner.

“For example, in the auto industry, cross-selling has been happening between sales, financing, and insurance, and, to some extent, after-sales. The advent of vendor/brand agnostic service agencies will mean increased competition and obviously companies having more customer awareness will win,” adds Grewal.

Inspite of the economic slowdown, the CRM (Customer Relationship Management) market in India witnessed a healthy growth. IDC expects the CRM software market to grow at a CAGR (compounded annual growth rate) of 40 per cent to reach Rs 188.4 crore in 2006. The CRM services market is expected to grow even faster at a CAGR of 53 per cent to reach Rs 377 crore by the year 2006.

The CRM market in India is in the initial phase when there would be high demand for consulting services in order to bring a fit between the business and CRM application and also around deployment and implementation of the same. Organisations have started using 'Service Quality' as a key differentiator and are using it as their USP to increase revenues and to gain market share and that's precisely the reason why CRM has been hot in service verticals like financial and telecom services. 

According to Kapil Dev Singh, Country Manager, IDC India," Unlike ERM, which is top-driven and therefore faces a lot of inertia, CRM initiatives in most organisations are driven by the actual users (Customer Support Department, Sales Function, etc.). Further, the implementation cycles for CRM are shorter and automation of CRM related processes have a direct impact on a company's profitability. Therefore more and more Indian enterprises are expected to invest in CRM solutions to provide improved services to the customers and drive CRM market." 

This is supported by the fact that four out of five companies are spending on modular CRM (i.e point solutions). According to IDC's end-user survey conducted among 200 organisations, nearly 81 per cent stated that they are using modular CRM, while 19 per cent stated that they are using complete CRM package. The CRM applications that are primarily used are marketing automation closely followed by customer care and support automation.

According to the survey, the key business drivers for investing in CRM solutions are customer retention & loyalty and improving cost efficiencies. Another important reason that emerged for CRM adoption was to make sales force management more effective. This shows that Indian businesses are beginning to feel the heat from increasing competition and are actively trying to retain their loyal customer base.

BENEFITS OF CRM:

CRM is the process of acquiring, retaining and growing profitable customers. CRM helps business use technology and human resources to gain insight into the behaviour of customers and the value of those customers that create loyalty. CRM has several advantages.

• Provides better customer service
• Increase customer Revenue
• Discover new customers
• Prevents over spending on low value clients or under spending on high value ones
• Cross Sell/ Up sell products more effectively
• Help sales staff to close deal faster
• Make call centre more efficient
• Simplify marketing and sales processes
• Reduce Advertising costs
• Allows organization to compete for customer based service, not prices.

FORCES DRIVING CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT:

 The following are the important  drivers (Psychological aspects)  that appear to have an important bearing on the decision to develop CRM approach:

1. Risk, Salience and Emotion

2. Trust and commitment

3. Perceived need for closeness

4. Customer satisfaction

I. Risk, Salience and Emotion:

Risk, Salience and emotions are psychological aspects involved in some way in every exchange/ purchase. The levels of risk, degree of salience and the emotion generated will affect the choice of product or service and supplier involved, as well as the ‘level’ of relational involvement the customer will seek.

Risk may be defined as “the perceived probability of loss interpreted by the decision maker” and presumes an element of consumer vulnerability in the exchange.

Salience may be regarded as the level of importance or prominence associate with exchange.

Emotion is the complex series of human responses (sometimes negatively described as ‘agitation of the mind’ or cognitive dissonance) generated as a result of the exchange.

Risk, Salience and Emotion are separately definable concepts but are not mutually exclusive. There is a close association between the risk perceived in, the salience associated with and the emotion generated by any given exchange situation. The high risk is often associated with high salience products or service and the high emotional outcome, although they are highly subjective and may differ from individual to individual.

It should be noted that a particular exchange relationship will generate a perception of high level of risk, salience and emotion with one customer yet, the same transaction in repeated will only generate a low level with another.

II. Trust and Commitment:

The requirement for trust and commitment appears to be an important indicator of when relationship management strategies may be potentially vulnerable. Equally the existence of trust and commitment among parties is seen by some central to the success of relationship marketing strategies and the main means by which the affective strength of a buyer-seller relationship can be judged.

Trust:

Trust is seen as an important driver to both relationships and relationship enhancement in that it would appear to reduce risk perception more effectively than anything else.

Trust is an essential ingredient in healthy personality, a foundation for interpersonal relationships a prerequisite for co-operation and a basis for stability in social institutions and markets. Generating co-operative behaviour trust may-

• Reduce harmful conflict
• Decrease transactional costs(e.g. negating the need for constant checks)
• Promote adaptive organization form(e.g. Network relationships)
• Facilitate rapid formation of ad hoc network groups
• Promote effective response to crisis
• Many different words are used to describe trusting situations. They are
• Probity: Probity focuses on honesty and integrity that may mean in business terms as professional understanding and reputation.
• Equity: Factors such as fair-mindedness, benevolence, caring values and sincerity are in evidence here.
• Reliability: Reliability relates to a firm having required expertise to perform its business effectively and reliably.
• Satisfaction: Satisfaction represents overall evaluation, feeling or attitude about other party in a relationship.

Commitment:

Commitment implies that both parties will be loyal, reliable and show stability in the relationship with one another. It is therefore, a desire to maintain a relationship, often indicated by an ongoing investment into activities, which are expected to maintain that relationship.

Whatever the industry, it is important to build trust and commitment if the establishment of a lasting relationship is the goal. There may be number of precursors to trust and commitment, including –

• Relationship termination costs
• Relationship benefits
• Shared values
• Communication and Opportunistic  behaviour

III. Perceived Need for Closeness:

Closeness can be physical, mental or emotional and can strengthen the feeling of security in a relationship. Close relationships are acknowledged to be more solid and likely to be longer lasting which are precisely the characteristics rational marketers are looking for.

Not all the customer want close relationships and some may only be interested in developing them with some parties and not with others. Sometimes, establishing high degree of close customer/employee relationship may also involve high risk and challenge.

IV. Customer Satisfaction:

Oliver defines Customer satisfaction as follows “Satisfaction is the customer fulfilment response. It is a judgment that a product or service feature, or the product or service itself provides a pleasurable level of consumption related fulfilment.”

Satisfaction can be viewed as contentment. Satisfaction may also be associated with some sense of happiness. For those services that really surprise in the positive way, satisfaction may mean delight. And in some situations, where the removal of negative aspect leads to satisfaction, the consumer may associate a sense of relief with satisfaction.

Retention in competitive markets is generally believed to be a product of customer satisfaction. Satisfaction is a psychological process of evaluating perceived performance outcome based on predetermined expectations.

Satisfaction drivers

Cumby and Barnes suggest that driver exist on five levels and ,that these generally involve progressively more personal contact with the service supplier:

• Core product or service
• Support service and systems
• Technical performance
• Elements of customer interaction
• Affective dimension of services

It is quite possible for the supplier to get things right on the first four levels and to dissatisfy the customer because of something that happens on the fifth level. This emphasize the importance of ‘critical episode’ in the exchange process

Key Stages of CRM:

Customer Relationship Management is seen as a means of identifying, establishing, maintaining, enhancing and where necessary terminating relationships.  The definition anticipates that once the company starts thinking about individual customers, it should recognize that different customers are at different stages of relational development. Importantly, it also implies that each customer types should be handled in a different way. This may include different targeted messages and different ‘value options’ from the exchange. The key stages of CRM are explained through the tabular form:

Sl.No	Stage	State	Culture
1.	Satisfaction Based	Reactive	Meet customer needs Responds to Complaints Minimal evaluation of customer service levels.
2.	Performance based	Proactive	Evaluate customer Perception Identify customer retention factors
3.	Commitment based	Very Proactive	Evaluate multiple customer needs Continuous inbound or outbound flow and feedback Continuous improvement

CRM are mainly of two different types. Reactive serviceis where the customer has a problem and contacts the company. Proactive service is where the manager decides not to wait for the customer to contact the firm, but contacts the customer himself in order to establish a dialogue and solve problems.

Dwyer suggests a five-stage model where each phase represents the following:

1. Awareness:Awareness is where one party recognizes that the other party is a ‘feasible exchange partner’.

2.  Exploration: Exploration refers to the ‘research and trial stage’ in the exchange. This stage includes sub phases such as attraction, communication and bargaining, development and exercise of power and expectation development.

3. Expansion:Expansion refers to the period where there is a continual increase in benefits obtained by exchange partners and they become increasingly interdependent.

4. Commitment: Commitment relates to the implicit or explicit pledge of relational continuity between the parties.

5. Dissolution:Dissolution refers to possibility of withdrawal in any relationship

In defining the scope of E-CRM, three different levels can be distinguished:

1. Foundation services: They include the minimum necessary services such as website effectiveness and responsiveness as well as order fulfillment.

2. Customer –centered services: These include order tracking, product configuration and customization as well as security / trust.

3. Value –added services:  These are additional services such as online auctions and online training and education.

Self services are becoming increasingly important in CRM activities. The rise of Internet and e-crm has boosted the options for self service activities. A critical success factor is the integration of such activities into traditional channels. An example was Ford’s plan to sell cars directly to customers via its website,which provoked an outcry among its dealer network.