In seeking new opportunities such as the Internet, many companies nowadays are trying to compete in the global electronic marketplaces. A business’ greatest asset is the customer, and the most important thing is to keep your existing customers satisfied and make them long-term or lifetime customers. Therefore, one way to communicate with the customers efficiently is through “Electronic Customer Relationship Management” or “E-CRM”.
E-CRM means the activities that identify, attract, and retain the organization’s customers by using electronic ways like the internet, web browsers or others. In addition, it provides the employees with the information they need to know about customer’s needs and wants, therefore provide them with products and services customized to their needs. So, E-CRM manages and increases interactions between the organization and its customers and the most important thing improves their satisfaction. (State of Victoria
There are three different levels of E-CRM:
1. Foundational Services: these contain the minimum most important services. For instance, web site effectiveness and responsiveness, also order satisfaction.
2. Customer-Centered Services: these contain order following, product shape and customization as well as security or trust.
3. Value-Added Services: These are additional services such as online sales and online training and education.
(M.Phil. Scholar, 2009)
Business Benefits of E-CRM:
1. Increase customer loyalty: an effective E-CRM provides all the employees in a company with the same history and information about the customer. And if the company has multiple electronic lines of business that interact with the same customers, by using E-CRM it will be enable to do business with them anytime through any channel and make them feel like they are dealing with a single company that follows them every step. The company then can identify the “Best” profitable customers and focuses its time and resources on them.
2. More effective marketing: with the detailed customer information the company has; it can forecast the kind of products that a customer is likely to buy and the timing of the purchases. So this will help the company to create effective sales or marketing campaigns targeted to attract the profitable customers. In addition, this will help the company to segment the customers with similar needs by grouping them, and this will allow it to market specific products to the targeted groups effectively.
3. Improve customer service and support: this will help reduce or eliminate customer’s frustrating and time-consuming, because E-CRM helps the company to serve customers’ needs quickly and efficiently. Also it enables the company to provide the customers with the services they deserve through any channel, and search for proven solution and best practices.
4. Greater efficiency and cost reduction: data mining that analysis the data to explore the possible relationships between sets of data can reduce costs.
(Shannon Scullin, 2002)
There are three dimensions in E-CRM:
1. Acquisition (increase number of new customers).
2. Expansion (increase profits and earnings by encouraging customers to purchase more products & services).
3. Retention (increase the amount of time customers stay as customers).
(An insight into e-crm, 2009)
E-CRM creates a central repository that stores all kind of customer data allowing all the employees contact to this information any time. The more the data stored, the more services the company can provide to the customer, such as “cookies” that the company uses on it’s website to collect information and to know the behavior of the customer. In addition, the design of the website can influence the level of trust of the customers and their enthusiasm to do a transaction or give personal information. (State of Victoria
To conclude, E-CRM is the solution to manage and strengthens the relations with customers and satisfying them. Also it can be a competitive advantage by serving and satisfying its customers.
References:
- M.Phil. Scholar, E-CRM, 2009, available from:
[18/4/2011]
- Shannon Scullin, Electronic Customer Relationship Management, 2002, available from:
[18/4/2011]
- State of
Victoria
[17/4/2011]
- An Insight Into e-CRM, 2009, available from:
<http://www.slideshare.net/guest87f145/an-insight-into-ecrm>
[18/4/2011]
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