Using gratitude as a key factor in customer relationship management

Since it is estimated to be 5 times more expensive to get a new customer than to retain an existing one, given that most countries are just about emerging from a turbulent economic climate; customer relationship management has never been more important. Customer Relationship Management is a term for the methodologies, technologies and e-commerce capabilities used by firms to manage customer relationships. You can get software packages that aid the interaction between the customer and the company. These enable the company to coordinate all of the communication efforts to ensure a unified message and image is presented to the customer. By treating the customer with gratitude and respect as part of this, your organisation can ensure they are delighted to hear from you, and deal with you. Since customers are now using multiple channels more frequently, they may buy a product from a salesperson and another from a website. This means that you need to offer as many channels as possible for the customer to use, and ensure that whatever way they contact the company the information about them is up to date. Thereby ensuring that whoever deals with the client can view the same information. By keeping correct up to date records about customers can enable your company to shape appropriate marketing offers to them and nurture them in a way that ensures an on going relationship. Simple gratitude can be a way of aiding this, even more so when the way the company shows gratitude is shortly after a recent transaction or inquiry. A good example of this is the gratitude offerings Tesco gives its clubcard users. The data Tesco collates on their purchases enables the company to send them money off vouchers for products the company knows they buy. There are some factors that lead to the success of a CRM strategy; and these are: 1. Ensuring the organisation is customer focused, and the CRM system is organised around customers 2. Taking a single view of customers across all departments, designing an integrated system for customer facing staff 3. Having the ability to manage cultural changes that come out of development of the C.R.M. system 4. Involving everyone in the C.R.M. design process 5. Designing a flexible system that can change to meet future requirements. 6. In large organisations having a board-level champion of the C.R.M. project to ensure commitment to it from all departments. 7. Enabling quick-wins to provide positive feedback on the implementation of the project. 8. Piloting the new system before full launch. All these factors need gratitude between the parties involved to ensure you get the best results.