Gronross.C stated that modern marketers are reliving the ancient mantras to achieve the success in the corporate world and amalgamating them with the existing marketing practices. Long term survival and competitive advantage can only be achieved by establishing an emotional attachment with the customers. A shift is taking place from marketing to unidentified masses of customers to developing and managing relationships with more or less well known or at least some identified customers.

 

1.1 客戶關系管理—Customer Relationship Management

 

According to Krill.J (2010), earlier business was quite easy as it was a simple trade without any specific process. Due to the innovation in technologies and emerging of new strategies in the market, customer relationship management (CRM) turned out to be a piece of cake for all the suppliers and customers due to its advantages. CRM is a beliefs and process for managing relationships with customers that surpasses the entire organisation. It is based on three straightforward and powerful principles:

 

 

Protecting the customer base

 

Developing the customer base

 

Increasing the asset value of the customer base

 

As reported by John.E (2008), customer relation management is a business tool which helps business organisations to manage their customers by introducing the procedures and practices for successful relations. It develops the strategies which spotlights endless relation with customers. The best CRM strategy attain customer, satisfy their needs, retain the good customers, add values in their product and services and find which customer is best worth and provide top level of services.

 

 

As believed by Lane. A (2009), the stronger a business has its relation with its customer, the more successful it is likely to be. It is not an application programme which helps to connect with the customers but it is the strategy which is use to learn about the customer behaviour and attitude about the product and service. Hence, CRM is not only a business philosophy but at the same time it is a more effective technical solution to relate and maintain successful relation with the customer.

 

As said by Hill. G (2009), no matter what may be the types of business organisation, their profitability and existence depends largely on its customers. Therefore, it is exceptionally important to maintain and retain good relationship with them. A good CRM programme also suggests and identifies the customer with high priority and lower priority. In short, it means that it is a complete mixture of information technology, business strategy and process which is used to find the customer needs help to sustain good relationship with the customers.

 

In accordance with Lambert.T (2008), Customer relationship management is not only computer program but it arises from the involvement between the customer and organisation. During this process the values are exchanged from customer to organisation and organisation to customers. This relation highly depends on the environment where this exchange of values happened. It is highly essential for the successful organisations to recruit and retain the staff that can understand the customer and have ability to retain them.

 

In the opinion of Wilmer.A (2009), whenever we think about the business growth and expansion, the customer satisfaction always comes first. It helps in creating a strong goodwill for the business among the potential customer and become the reason for increasing sales. It also increases the customer loyalty, profit and guarantee for the survival of the business in the long term.

 

As for Baran.G (2008), CRM includes the business procedures that an organisation execute to identify, select, acquire, develop and retain and to better serve the customers. This process includes a company’s engagement with its customers and forecast over the life span of its relationship with them.

 

It is assumed by Kotler & Keller (2006) that CRM is stated to be the progression of controlling information on each individual customers and thus maximising the customer loyalty. A customer touch point is a chance for the customers to come across the brand, products and services, from actual experience to personal observation.

 

Choudhary.A (2011) related that CRM is a way of using technologies to serve the customer. It is a broadly executed strategy for managing a company’s relation with its customers, clients and sales prospects. Therefore it uses technology to better organised, computerised and synchronised the business processes. The overall objectives of CRM are to attract and retain new clients. A company will store important data about their customers and use it for other purposes which will help the company to forecast on its future plans.

 

1.2 客戶關系管理的集成成分—What are integrated in CRM

 

CRM provides managerial information about their customers and in return this helps them to make successful relation with their customers.

 

A successful CRM is also supportive for an organisation so as to establish individual relation with the customer. The basic aim behind this fact is to increase the customer satisfaction at individual level and maximises the profit.

 

CRM helps the organisation to identify their potential customer. On the basis of this, management runs an effective marketing campaign with the clear goal to satisfy the customer needs.

 

It assists the organisation to improve their web based sales, telesales, account management, sales management by getting information through different sales team and other frontline personals. It also helps to streamline existing processes.

 

1.3 客戶關系管理的特征— Features of Customer Relationship Management

 

Meredith.E (2011) assured that organisation uses CRM strategy in order to manage and control their customers and retailers in a professional manner to achieve excellence in business. CRM has the following features:

 

1.3.1客戶需求— Customer Needs

 

Customer needs are an ever-evolving process. It can be very tricky to know exactly what those expectations might be from the customers. The best way is to take the question directly to the customer base through a variety of customer service research techniques. This will help to serve the customer effectively and maintain a long relationship with them.

 

1.3.2客戶反應— Customer Responses

 

Customer response is the feedback by the organisation towards the question and activities of the customer. Therefore it is important to deal with these queries before small misunderstanding lead to different perceptions.

 

1.3.3 客戶滿意度—Customer Satisfaction

 

Customer satisfaction is the measure of how the needs and responses are collaborated and delivered to exceed the customer expectation. Hence, the more is customer satisfaction; more is the business and the connection with customer.

 

1.3.4 客戶忠誠度—Customer Loyalty

 

Every businessman wants to create and retain loyal customer who are connected with the business. Customer loyalty is the measure of success of the business in retailing a long relationship with the customers. Customer loyalty tends the customer to freely choose a particular product against another concerning his needs.

 

1.3.5 客戶保留—Customer Retention

 

Customer Retention is the activity which a selling organisation undertakes in order to reduce customer defections. Successful customer retention starts with the first contact an organisation has with a customer and continues throughout the entire lifetime of a relationship.

 

1.3.6 客戶抱怨—Customer Complaints

 

When the customer pays for a product or service, it is believed that the product will work correctly or that the service received is as guarantee. In an ideal word, the customer will be satisfied, and there will be no complaints. However, if there is a problem and the customer complains about it, then the company should quickly answer to the complaint and solve the customer's problem. This is usually done by the customer service activity.

 

1.3.7 客戶服務— Customer Service

 

Customer Service is the process of delivering information and services regarding to all the products and brands. Customer satisfaction depends on quality of service provided to him by the supplier. The organisation does not have to elaborate and clarify the details of the services provided to the customer but also to stand with the conditions as well. If the quality and trend of service go beyond customer’s expectation, the organisation is supposed to have a good business with customers.

 

1.4 客戶關系管理的類型— Types of Customer Relationship Management

 

1.4.1 業務客戶關系管理—Operational Customer Relationship Management

 

Jezorski.G (2007) claimed that the main focus of this type of CRM is marketing campaign. It helps the frontline people who directly interact with the customers. Operational performance is used in the call centres to help customer services and marketing teams. All the information received from the customer is stored as history information and can be used as reference in future correspondence.

 

On the word of Murphy.B (2007), the operational customer relation mainly focuses on the daily tasks. It also improves the efficiency of these tasks and streamlines them. In this system, any interaction with the customer is recorded in the software and can be easily retrieves later. Such information can be effortlessly accessed by any department or any distant office when needed.

 

1.4.2 分析客戶關系管理—Analytical Customer Relationship Management

 

Pakhare.J (2007) declared that analytical customer relationship management is based on the data gathered from the customers and help in making strategic decisions about telesales, cross sales, switch selling, pricing and marketing. The management uses this data for prediction of profitability and optimisation of marketing effectiveness.

 

Murphy.B (2007) argues that the analytical customer relationship is a useful tool to collect the data about the customer behaviour which can be further used to make business decision which link business strategy oriented towards the customers. It enhances the customer services quality and develops the organisation broad practices which make more loyal and devoted customers.

 

1.4.3 合作型客戶業務管理—Collaborative Customer Relationship Management
 

As per Jezorski.G (2007), the customer data coming through the interaction of different departments within company is called collaborative customer relationship management. It is mostly a cost effective method of customer relationship as customers submit their feedback independently without putting any cost on the company.

 

As maintained by Wise.M, (2008) collaborative CRM provide the effective support to the customer complaints, questions and issues. It also provides the customer suggestion to improve the business.

 

1.4.4型客戶關系管理— 區域 Geographic Customer Relationship Management

 

Wise.M (2008) defined geographic customer relationship management as the collection of the customer data on the basis of different geographic regions. The basic philosophy of this type of customer relationship is that the customer needs and wants are vary according to the geographic region they belong to.#p#分頁標題#e#

 

1.5 產品和服務的購買者的類型—Types of buyers of products and services

 

1.5.1忠誠的客戶— Loyal Customers

 

As mentioned by Jay.C (2004), a customer is said to be loyal customer when he buys more, buys longer and tells other people to buy organisation’s products and services. It is an ultimate award for the organisation for the best interaction with the customers. Through the customer loyalty, the organisation can get more competitive advantages by repeating customer and through the best marketing by the loyal customer i.e. words-of-mouth. Furthermore to sell the products and services, loyal customer does not need any marketing and promotion campaign.

 

It is believed by Bressington.B (2008); the success of any business directly depends upon the loyalty of the customer. If one wants to run his business for a long period of time, he must create loyal customer. Though creating loyal customer is hard but necessary. Many of the organisations have setup customer loyalty awards system through which they tribute their customer for staving and trusting them. It is very important to remember to make customer happy, because happy customer makes loyal customer.

 

1.5.2 投機取巧的客戶—Opportunistic Customers

 

Jay.C (2004) argued that opportunistic customers take advantage of the situation or circumstances. Such customer always see the best available opportunity, whenever it rise they just go for it. These customers always switch their buying loyalty from one organisation to other depending on their interest.

 

1.5.3 最好協商的客戶— Best Deal Customers

 

As per IC (2007), no matter what the product is, these customer look for best deal. It is not necessary for such customer to know how the seller of the product or service is. Some of the customer are very smart and always hunt the deal. The internet makes it easy for the customer to find best deals. The websites are designed to compare the best seller for a particular products or services. There are different shopping network providing the facility to compare the prices as well. Many of the banks started to provide their customers with the gold account through which customer get the discount from shopping network.

 

1.5.4 靈活性買家—Creative Buyers

 

As said by Morton.M (2009), creative buyers identify their needs and wants. They are very prices conscious about their selection. It is very hard to satisfy them as they have their own way to be happy with the products or services.

 

1.5.5 廣告買家—Advertising Buyers

 

As stated by Long.A (2007), such buyers are impressed by the advertising. The human mind reacts to the advertising message differently. The impact of advertising depends on the type of person who is listening or reading it. A well designed advertising has explicit affect on its readers or viewers.

 

1.6 客戶關系管理的潛在利益—Potential benefits of customer relationship management

 

1.6.1 客戶忠誠度和客戶的保留—Customer Loyalty and retention

 

Farquhar.J (2004) claimed that the basic principle of any business is to deliver good products or services. In the age of information technology many of the customers really give quota to get friendly treatment when they order or buy something. If they are treated fairly, then in the future they will be back and recommend same service to other people. A good CRM system can really help the organisations to retain their customers. It is the most important job to find most suitable program for specific company

 

It is believed by Patrick.N (2009), improvements in customer retention will lead to increase the revenue growth. Customer retention is a critical factor in determining a company’s long-term financial performance. The value of existing retained customer are much more than attracting new customer. Loyalty programme can be started with the e-mail message which is quickly and affordably. The automatic reply system will send message on time and in return will increase the sales and profit.

 

1.6.2 客戶導向型—Customer Orientation

 

According to Greenberg.R (2008), customer orientation is one of the basic concepts of customer relation management. The customer oriented companies come straight to the situation where customer wants are changing. They adjust themselves with the customer to be competitive. Through this concept the companies focuses all their thought and sources on the customer’s wishes and problems.

 

Raab.G (2008) declared that the satisfied customers are less sensitive to the prices of the goods and services and they buy the organisational product without affected by the competitor offer or discount. The loyal customers simplify their buying decision and buy the product as a habit.

 

1.6.3 增加銷售量—Increase the Sales

 

Halper.M (2008) mentioned that if any organisation wants to increase its sales find out new sales opportunities or improve the overall sales effectiveness. All the companies have some customer relation management to relate with the customers. This can be varying from a paper pad to very complicated software. Hence, the aim is to relate with the customer and convince and also motivate them to buy the organisation’s good or services.

 

According to, Parmarthi.M (2009) CRM program provides tools and resources which improve and enhance all the aspect of the sales cycle and pick up the sales team performance. It enables organisations to forecast sales more effectively, automate sales process and short sales process.

 

Desforges.S (2009) pointed out that all the companies have maintained some data about their customers. The smaller business use Microsoft Outlook for their daily communication, task arrangement and calendaring purposes, whereas bigger companies uses special and sophisticated software to perform their customer relation tasks. All the customer data helps the sales representatives to understand their customer needs and to communicate with them in the form of broad group or individually.

 

1.6.4 業務戰略的制定和明確重點—Business Strategy Formulation and Clear Focus

 

In the opinion of Wilmer.A (2009) the customer relationship management greatly depend on the size of the organisation and circumstances in which organisation is working. With the help of a well effective customer relation management, the organisation can get a valuable strategic insight like identify the customers, improving the relation with the customers, retain customer more effectively and identify the organisation most valuable customers.

 

The satisfied customer becomes the basic reason of success of an organisation. However it is not an easy task to convince the customer. A proper and well planed strategy is important to capture satisfied customer. To plan and formulate the customer strategy, the management need customer experience data which comes through CRM system.

 

As reported by Vellmure.B (2009), it is very important for management to add new value to satisfy the customer while keeping the customer organisational interest in mind. The CRM data help management to critically analyse the financial goals, the risk involve in taking initiative and identify who and how one will measure and evaluate the results obtained.

 

1.6.5有積極作用— Enable Pro-Active Action

 

It is assumed by Wingard.N (2007) that Customer relationship management is the procedures by which organisations come to know about their customer wants. By following the procedures of CRM, organisations track the complaints and act on these complaints immediately before situation get worse.

 

He also viewed that CRM is not a static process; it changes with the customer demands. It enables organisations to act in time and respond quickly before their loyal customer change their loyalty. Mostly, customer service relation information is in the form of statistical data. Nowadays companies are greatly depending on the CRM software to manipulate and extract the information.

 

1.6.6 收入提高的好處—Revenue Enhancement Benefits

 

According to Gronroos.C (1994), the CRM strategies continuously measures, monitor and keep tracking of all the interaction with the customers and then calculate the output of marketing, services and sales activities. In fact in the presence of an effective CRM system, organisation keeps record about the profits getting for each customer and allocates the resources to satisfy the customers according to their loyalty level. The profitability information passes through the distribution channel. Through this information, the organisation reaches to the right customer at the right time with the right goods and services and ultimately increases the sales and increase the overall profit.

 

1.6.7 優越的市場情報—Superior Market Intelligence

 

As for Lane. A (2009), the CRM data is updated regularly in real time. This data provide sales, marketing and the customer service team well organised data which they can use in their operational decision making. Such information enables the organisation not only to know the broader trends in the customer but also information about an individual decision making process. The CRM database provides reasonably good answer of question like why one company can win or lose the deal.

 

1.6.8 預測方案和財政管理的該進—Improved Forecasting and Financial Management

 

In agreement with, Pakhare. J (2007) CRM present more accurate picture of sale, inventory and good control on financial issues which ultimately improve the customer satisfaction. With the help of CRM system the company is in the better position to forecast about the accounts, sales, inventory, product mix and many more. The organisation can do the marginal analysis to take control over the problems like material inventory level, maintaining warehouses space and minimise overstocking. This results into the right product at right amount and time.

 

1.7 與客戶溝通的方式和途徑—Ways and Means to Communicate with Customers

 

1.1.7 電子郵件—E-mails

 

Halper.M (2008) says that there is no doubt that e-mail is the cheapest way to communicate with customers. There is no need for costly telephone calls, sophisticated telephone devices and number of land line numbers. Many of the companies are working globally and due to language differences it is hard for customer to understand direct message instantly. With the e-mail they can take time to interpret and understand the message. Furthermore companies do not need to have 24/7 customer service people.

 

With the help of e-mail, customer can get free help at any time. The customers who have problem do not need to solve that dilemma immediately. At the same time the number of telephone call and live chat will reduce extensively. The message or instruction can be conveyed or explained to the customer clearly. The e-mail messages have ability to be recorded which will increase the ability to review the conversation. It is not important for e-mail message to be responded straight-away, which reduce the pressure on organisations to keep huge staff on direct line telephones.

 

1.7.2 手機—Phone Calls

 

Rickey.A (2008) claimed that customer services are the biggest task for the organisations in today’s competitive business environment. Telephone customer service is very important for the companies to connect with the customer in timely fashion. Despite the fact that businesses have to concentrate on its core operations but at the same time, company need to have non-core operation like telephone service in place to maintain business.

 

The author also stated that many of the companies are taking customer services as a core part of their business operations and provide their customer very timely and sophisticated customer service. This involve huge amount of money and set up. To solve this problem businesses have remote customer service centres and messages are conveyed for these call centres to the company.

 

Furthermore he describes that many of the companies are taking the help of answering machines for professional telephone services. This reduces the cost of having an additional staff. It is also a source of revenue generation. It is extremely desirable for the management to put this important segment of business in safe hand for the sake of running business smoothly.

 

John.E (2008) related that the customers feel more confident when they receive help on phone immediately. The customer services personal have all the information about the product or service. Any questions asked can be answered immediately. It is good in case when the customers are not very good with computer technology. The direct and polite customer service calms down the angry customer.

 

1.7.3 自動回復—Marketing with Auto responders

 

Barksdale.P (2007) instructed that auto responders can be used to send any news letter to customers. There are number of free and paid services that are specialised in sending such newsletters. The paid version of auto responder is more chances for customer consideration before going to junk folder and deleted without reading. The news letter going through auto responder can be scheduled to be sent at predetermine intervals. The newsletter information can be broadcast for sales, shipment and special events.

 

According to Presume.L (2009), auto responder is the service which sends ongoing mail for a company. The specialised companies keep the database of customer and send the sequence of automated massages at the agreed time intervals.

 

As argued by Hopkins.C (2007), an auto responder serves in two ways. Firstly, it place simple automated from which captures the customer’s details. When customer fills his/her information then it becomes the part of company’s distribution list. The distribution list then starts sending messages automatically. The second main function of auto responder is that it allows businesses to set up series of unlimited messages. This small piece of software enables a business power to send message simultaneously to all the people in distribution at once.

 

1.7.4 客戶關系文章—Customer Relation with Articles

 

In accordance with, Barksdale.P (2007) articles can be great source of customer inspiration. Articles are written by the experts and therefore public have more trust on their ideas about the product or service. Customers search about the view of experts, about the product or service through search engines. These search engines provides the customer a variety of articles which links customers with an organisation. Mostly articles are not just good words about the service but also critical analysis about the service. Customers compare the good and bad side of product and make their mind about buying the service. Any good or bad comment about the service is justified through logic, which help the customer to understand the issue easily. In this way the targeted customers are attracted.

 

1.7.5 附贈禮盒服務— Wrapping it up

 

As pointed by Stringer (2008), the wrap ups are excellent way to Market Company’s product and services. It is best way to establish relation with the customer regardless of the nature and size of business. The company should select the wrap up gift according to the profile of customers. It is valuable to search about the customer profile before taking decision about the gift. These gifts can be distributed through seminar, exhibitions and trade shows. There is great chance to attract lot of customer.