Customer Relationship Management Loyalty Program Assignment

Customer Relationship Management Loyalty Program
CRM (Customer relationship management) program is system that manages a group of
people, technology and processes which pursues to comprehend the customers of a company.
This is an approach that is integrated for the management of relationships through focusing on
retention of the customer and development of a relationship. CRM has advanced from the
developments in information technology as well as changes in organization in the centric
processes of a customer. Companies that implement CRM successfully ought to bear the good
fruits in loyalty of customers and profits in the long run. However, many companies have not
been able to implement CRM effectively mostly since they could not comprehend that the
program of CRM needs company wide, customer focused and cross functional re-engineering
process. Despite the fact that a huge part of the CRM comprises of the technology, regarding the
solution of CRM as technology would mainly lead to failure. Implementation that is successful
in management demands for an approach that is integrated and balanced to technology, process
and people.
Technology and CRM
According to Xu, Yen, Lin & Chou (2012), CRM requires to be viewed beyond being
just a technology whereas the technology being viewed as the strategy of CRM enabler. Various
applications of technology may be recognized which are utilized in the advancement of the
strategy of the CRM. (Xu & Walton, 2015 and Zaayman, 2014). The CRM system comprises of
three major constituents:
Operational CRM which comprises of applications that face customers like the force
automation of sales, automation of enterprise marketing and support and service of customer
(Chen & Popovich, 2013). Call centers for customers are also a part of the operational CRM and
are domineering in the systems of CRM. (Anon, 2010). This enables recording of the customer
interactions which is used by the organizations in tracking the customer.
Analytical CRM that deals with analyzing of data created in the operational CRM for building
the customer picture. This component deals with storing, capturing, extracting, interpreting,
processing and reporting of the data of the customer sored in the warehouses of the data. This
makes it possible for the organization to evaluate the behavioral patterns of the customer in
developing strategies of promotion and marketing. According to a study carried out in UK, 25%

of the surveyed organizations showed that analytical CRM was being utilized. (Xu & Walton,
2015).
Collaborative CRM utilizes technologies of communication that are traditional and new for
enabling customers in interaction with organization. This component enables response of a level
that is better to the needs of the customer through incorporation of all stakeholders of the chain
of supply like the suppliers among others. (Xu & Walton, 2015). Strategies of channel or
functions which offer interaction point between the channel and customer are involved in this
component as well. (Shahnam,2010)
An extra category that came up later is the e-CRM. This component enables organizations to
obtain the maximum contact via all the channels of communication mainly through intranet and
internet. e-CRM comes out as an approach that is web-centric to contacting customers (Xu &
Walton, 2015).
CRM Tools
Facilitation of communication between the customers themselves and the organization is
a major component of any strategy of the CRM regarding all kind of aspects of inclusion of the
design of the product, relationship, channel preferences, service of the customer and making it
possible for the organization to tune its strategy.
From the point of view of Gubser (2011), a number of the technologies that are interactive
which offer customer communications that are interactive and care comprise of:
 Emails that are intelligent: Emails continues to be an essential technique of contact for
the customer for a percentage exceeding 70% of the total number of businesses carried
out online. When the queries of the customers are quickly and effectively responded to
through the intelligent email, the cost and time of the customer are reduced. This results
to an increase in the satisfaction of the customer and in turn increases rates of retention as
well as the loyalty.
 Chat that is collaborative: in the case that customers want to enquire about the
details of shipping or a product, the function of a live chat that is collaborative allows
them to click on an icon of customer service that is live and displays a chat box. This
enables the customer care representative to be able to access the history of the customer
with the organization and in return enables them to interact with a customer in an
effective manner.

 Telephony: the integration of the Computer telephony (CTI) may be applied
since the buttons of call-back can be applied on the pages of the web and once clicked
they bring on a new window whereby the customer can give out their phone numbers that
can be used to reach them in case of any queries. This leads to increase in the possibility
of selling as we as acquiring a new customer.
 Self-help: they comprise of intelligent FAQs as well as the traditional FAQs and
agents that are virtual or bots which can converse with customers through chat, offer
responses as well as even provide suggestions like a person who is live.
 VoIP: this a technology that uses the LAN or WAN of an organization to transfer
voice and data. This allows organizations to communicate with customers directly
through the use of headphones and speakers.
In order to come up with a CRM program that is successfully implemented, the following
strategies should be put into consideration: identification of reasons why one needs the CRM and
expectations by identifying areas that need to be improved and the issues that require attention.
(Noel, N. & Janisson, S., 2015.). After identifying the reasons, one needs to find a suitable
vendor for the CRM by exploring further in order to find correct system of CRM for a business
since there are a lot of options provided as it will affect implementation to a great extent.
(Gustafsson et al, 2015). Then comes the budget development. There is also the need to come up
with a budget that is realistic that can be used for the expenses of the process of implementation.
Then follows the identification of departments and staff to handle the process and training them.
In order to ensure that the best practices are followed during the process of implementation,
selection of two members that are key and making them part of the team of the project should be
considered. Training of the CRM end users and their training materials should be taken care of
seriously through devotion of effort and time. A blueprint of the required progress of CRM
should then be drawn which details how one desires to proceed with the implementation of the
CRM. Finally, one should ensure equal participation from IT and business. (Rigby et al, 2013).
Among the main advantages of the system of CRM is that it makes the process of customer
retention to be smooth and results to increased profitability from customers since the system of
CRM assists in supplementing and complementing the physical relationship of the customer’s
effort by automating the touch points of the customer. The system ensures that there are minimal

mistakes and errors done in the process of managing the relationship of the customer. (Becker et
al, 2014)
They system also automates the upstream and downstream processes of sales and marketing,
enables the business to integrate their administrative tasks and routine related with customer
management, cold calling and pre-sales together with follow up of after sales by making sure that
the software of CRM handles those aspects and also increase value by intelligence of the
business and mining of data of the database of the customer that is also referred to as the data
warehousing. (Brown, S.A. & Coopers, P.W., 2014)
The challenges related with the solution of CRM comprises of the need to invest a good
amount of money in it. Since the solutions of CRM are not cheap, businesses are required to
make the needed investments and get ready to wait and allow the rewards objectify instead of
becoming impatient and requesting for solutions that are instant. The main point is that,
implementations of CRM are gradual which implies that the businesses must be really committed
deeply and meaningfully. Also, there is the issue of lack of coordination between the vendors
and businesses which leads to requirements not being met since the vendors could not properly
understand the requirements and the resulting pressure from the businesses to quickly implement
the CRM and produce results that are quicker. (Uncles et al, 2013)
Another limitation of the CRM is that it may lead to redundancies brought in the process of
customer management due to the duplication of work and effort related with the personnel of
sales and marketing being unable to adapt to the process of automation. Implementation of the
CRM on the other hand may also lead to more complexity that when not properly managed may
result to improper planning and chaos for the activities that are key in the life cycle of marketing
and sales. (Chen, I.J. & Popovich, K., 2013)
Another major challenge of CRM implementation is that it involves participation of
departments members within an entire organization. Programs of the CRM programs are
basically generated and implemented by teams in the cross-organization with representations
from every department that is functional. This excites communication and cooperation although
actualizing is difficult. Confusion experienced in the company results to the lack of success in

the business. This indicates that it is challenging to get on board all the employees and the
departments with CRM which is vital for the success that is long-term. (Zikmund et al, 2013)
It is evident that it is not possible to evade implementation of CRM in businesses as they are
trying to quench their anxiety in outstanding the CRM in the customer categories of satisfaction
of the customers, delight of the customer and “wowing” the customer. The adoption Web 2.0 and
social media into the systems of CRM ought to evolve the process of customer relationship.

References
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