Relationship Marketing through the CRM Service module
CRM — concept, process, system/tool
Constant market changes that are greatly stimulated by the constant development of the Internet and technologies, make changes in business strategies that companies adopt and apply. Managing Customer Relationships is one of the strategies that are being applied to maximize the loyalty of existing customers through their satisfaction need. For this purpose, through sophisticated technological solutions, all data about customers is integrated into one place and based on these data, companies are doing the analysis with the aim of better satisfying consumer needs.
Here we come to the concept of CRM — Customer Relationship Management that is multi-faceted because it represents the business concept in the context of marketing relationship and business philosophy but equally represents the process as well as the tool as a technological solution.
Technological advances in the area of information and communication technology enabled the emergence of CRM in theoretical and its implementation sense.
Manual data management was possible in the past when the amount of products and the size of the market was limited, but nowadays without the use of modern bases data and their based software solutions, implementation of CRM as the concept is impossible.
The CRM system, besides covering the entire sales process, reveals its greatest power in the area of contact between supply and the individual customer. CRM implies not only the presence in the area of sales activities — its importance is present in pre-sales and post-sales activities. All these activities are displayed through CRM modules, so the standard modules of each CRM system include sales, marketing, and service.
In this article, I will touch on the service module and its general meaning and contribution within the business philosophy of relationship marketing.
Relationship Marketing
Traditional marketing puts the emphasis on creating as many earnings per each transaction, while relationship marketing is based on the twofold role of trust and commitment of the buyers and sellers of products.
Such a relationship through Customer Relationship Management concept is part of a new approach to managing consumer relations. This approach is a combination of technology, people, information resources, and processes.
In today’s online environment the ability to target consumers has resulted in a personalized approach to them, forming a consumer database, monitoring their activity, or in other words providing a 360' customer viewpoint. Through the example of some complex B2C oriented e-commerce, I would specifically point out the Service module/ Customer Service / Customer Support that is actually, in my opinion, the largest data generator that gives us the overall context and exactly that 360 ‘customer viewpoint.
So besides marketing and sales modules and their activities, shout out to the Service module. :)
Service/Customer Support
Customer Support is a set of activities that are being undertaken to: assist the user when using a website, providing information about assortment, buying and ordering assistance, approving orders, complaint handling, eventual cash refunds… Each of these activities leaves behind information about our customers or potential customers.
Often, these data come from different channels/ sources, they can be:
- customers orders received through a separate ordering system, specifically, some kind of Content Management System that is integrated with a website and through which Customer Service approve orders
- unavoidable emails that arrive at the info@ and support@ addresses
- the information that is received through phone/call center
- queries from chat pop-up window on our website
- queries from website’s contact form
- newsletter subscriptions
All these examples of data come from real buyers / potential buyers that the company is extremely concerned about, so it is important to properly implement all of these sources within the CRM system to aggregate all data in one place, identify them, connect, segment, and collaborate more easily with other modules (extremely important), manage relations and nurture relationships with customers and prospective buyers.
Through a Service module in such an environment, a clearly visible and tangible moment of marketing relationship strategy is focus on customer retention, continuous contact with them, focus on adding value for them, strong focus on additional services, high awareness of significant post-sale behavior, quality and long-term orientation.
