Customer Relationship Management: Leveraging technology or exploiting customers
“CRM isn’t rocket science but it can make you a competitive superstar”[1]
The above quote rightly defines Customer Relationship Management (CRM), probably one of the most revolutionary notion that has influenced marketing and customer relations. It is a tool through which organizations can gauge customer requirements and ultimately use them to lead to an increase in profitability. CRM is as effective and as close as it can get to understand the consumer so that the marketers can prioritize their marketing activities, based on their preferences and behaviours. Building the customer relationship is imperative as customer loyalty and retention adds on to the customer lifetime value, needed for prolonged profitability in any business domain. This can be done by engaging customers through different mediums.
Smartphones are the closest means to get to the customer in these modern times. A customer checks his phone every 15 minutes or so, almost 47 times in a day regardless of a notification [3]. The mobile phone user penetration worldwide has increased by ten percentage points in just five years. In 2019, it is expected to touch the mark of 67% of the population worldwide [4]. According to the digital future in focus report by ComScore, covering nine global markets, the amount of time spent by a mobile user is twice of that is spent by a desktop user. With over 51% of the global web traffic originating from mobile devices, the number surges higher when other digital media platforms are accounted; companies have an excellent opportunity to leverage this technology for marketing. With such adoption of the smartphone by consumers, the importance of internet and mobile for Customers Relationship Management cannot be understated.
However, this comes with its own challenges. For instance, the conversion rate on smartphones has still not improved much over the past few years despite the advancement. Companies must realize mobile phones are used more for browsing products while desktops and laptops are used for transactions. By shifting the focus to the betterment of security, ease of navigation and being able to browse multiple pages at the same time companies can leave behind these potential road blockers. As more than 80% of the time spent by consumers is on apps [5], special emphasis should be given to these.
CRM can also be leveraged using the power of social media and instant messaging applications, which is known as social CRM. It has been found that the open rate of an SMS is 98%, and about 90% of the people who see it, are bound to open it within three seconds.[6] This rate is much higher than any of the other marketing channels be it emails or others. Thus, a change in SMS messages is required so that it attracts the customers to research more about the product on the very same device on which they received the notifications. Especially the small and medium-sized businesses can advance using ‘social CRM’ and leverage can be created that would benefit both the buyer and the sellers.[7] This tool should go hand in hand with the conventional sales practices, which requires the human touch, to maximise its impact. This collaboration is required since there is no substitute for the confidence and faith reposed by human presence, especially for products and services requiring a certain degree of recommendation.
One peculiar thing about any new technology is that it never ceases to affect how business is done. With some revolutionary technologies now around us, the change being done to marketing and what customers derive out of it was bound to happen. Web analytics, big data, internet of things and cloud computing are some of the areas that have garnered interest with the growing mobile marketing. The newest way to target a specific section of customers is to know their location so that they can be targeted to serve to their geographic needs. Browsers offer cookies that save the data one has gone through. Using these cookie files, personalised advertisements are showcased to customers. [8]However, care must be taken that narrowing of customer mindset is avoided due to this.
Turning to use of new age voice technologies to handle CRM, the example of Amazon’s Alexa seems to be apt.[9] With the integration of solutions with it, entire customer data can be accessed at the command of a voice. Via web-based tools like a website, the CRM data resides on a cloud and is accessed from there. Often, cloud CRM provides the system administrator with mobile apps to make it easier to use the data on smartphones and tablets. [10] This indirectly helps in improving customer satisfaction due to minimal turn-around time in resolving customer complaints. In addition, it serves the purpose of storing large amount of data in a single source thereby saving costs that were present in traditional data storage systems.
Worldwide CRM software totalled $26.3B in 2015, which saw an increase of 12.3% from $23.4B in 2014.[11] Saas or cloud-based CRM deployments revenue grew 27% year-over-year, more than double CRM market growth in 2015.[12] Thus, we see how these advancements have changed the scenario of CRM.
Nevertheless, through these technological tools, users are often flooded with many choices leaving them somewhat confused than better off. Moreover, more often than not, it is the quality of the content and not the quantity that will leave create the right kind of relationship with the customer. Hence, the proverbial devil is, as they say, always in the details. One of the hottest topics in the parlance of business that CRM is, it still is not short of its share of dangers. For starters, there is a fine line between Customer ‘Relationship’ Management and plain old Customer Management. In addition, not every customer wants, and more importantly, likes to be managed. In an internet poll by Pew, 54% of 2,117 US resident respondents said they believed tracking consumers’ behaviour online is an invasion into their privacy (Sandberg, 2002). And it is the manifestation of these concerns of being monitored and surveilled continuously that countries as lethargic as India when it comes to coming up with up to date laws has paid heed to Justice B.N. Srikrishna Committee’s findings, with a comprehensive data protection law on the lines of EU’s much talked about Data Protection Act expected to be passed soon. Critics might call this fear paranoiac, unfounded and baseless, but there is no denying that we take a pause and give a thought to where we are headed, lest it be too late and no coming back.
Compiled by :-
Vasu Gupta
Varun Jain
Shruthi Khurana
Shashikala Nath
Abhinav Singh
Ayaz Ahmad
Animesh Kumar
References
[2]Kulpa, J. (2017, October 24). Why Is Customer Relationship Management So Important? Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2017/10/24/why-is-customer-relationship-management-so-important/#507dac347dac
[3] Solis, B. (2018, May 16). Smartphones Are Reshaping Customer Journeys; Marketing Must Now Align With CX To Improve Experiences. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/briansolis/2018/05/16/smartphones-are-reshaping-customer-journeys-marketing-must-now-align-with-cx-to-improve-experiences/#47f3d83c4b30
[4] Janowitz, A., Biagi, L., & Ito, U. (n.d.). • Statista - The Statistics Portal for Market Data, Market Research and Market Studies. Retrieved from https://www.statista.com/
[5] Mobile marketing statistics 2018. (2018, July 11). Retrieved from https://www.smartinsights.com/mobile-marketing/mobile-marketing-analytics/mobile-marketing-statistics/
[6]Meyer, E. F. (2017, September 20). Five Reasons Mobile Marketing Is Becoming Even More Important. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2017/05/31/five-reasons-mobile-marketing-is-becoming-even-more-important/#8adad19abb48
[7] Desk, C. (n.d.). How SMBs Can Leverage Social CRM. Retrieved from https://it.toolbox.com/blogs/johndoe/how-smbs-can-leverage-social-crm-042914
[8] Mobile Marketing for Customer Relationship Management. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.business2community.com/marketing/mobile-marketing-customer-relationship-management-01249535
[9] Kelly, W. (n.d.). How Will Amazon Alexa Change CRM? Retrieved from https://it.toolbox.com/blogs/johndoe/how-will-amazon-alexa-change-crm-113017
[10] Beal, V. (n.d.). Cloud CRM - Customer Relationship Management cloud. Retrieved from https://www.webopedia.com/TERM/C/crm_cloud.html
[11] Columbus, L. (2016, May 29). 2015 Gartner CRM Market Share Analysis Shows Salesforce In The Lead, Growing Faster Than Market. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2016/05/28/2015-gartner-crm-market-share-analysis-shows-salesforce-in-the-lead-growing-faster-than-market/#4fd370d41051
[12] Gartner Says CRM Will Be at the Heart of Digital Initiatives for Years to Come. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2665215
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