Consumer and customer

Customer relationship marketing (CRM) is a business process in which client

relationships, customer loyalty and brand value are built through marketing
strategies and activities. CRM allows businesses to develop long-term relationships
with established and new customers while helping streamline corporate
performance. CRM incorporates commercial and client-specific strategies via
employee training, marketing planning, relationship building and advertising.

Customer relationship management (CRM) refers to a strategy widely used by

companies and organizations (including related integrated information systems and
technology, often in the form of software) to record and manage their overall data
and interactions with current, past and potential customers.

The Components of CRM

People
Process
Technology
Information

Customer Life Cycle

The customer lifecycle begins the moment you first catch a potential customer’s
attention. It is often depicted as an ellipsis because ideally, this is a process your
customers should move through over and over again. Managing and maintaining
the customer lifecycle is crucial for businesses to remain competitive in today’s
marketplace.

Understanding the customer lifecycle can help your company maximize revenue
for each potential and existing customer. And this really starts by understanding
the five stages of the customer lifecycle.
Business to Business CRM
Stayin Front B2B is a business to business CRM that is designed to improve
business effectiveness and assist companies as they adjust their business process
around their customers and provide an integrated view of how their customers
interact.
Rich functionality, fast deployment and easy-to-use tools are key features of Stayin
Front B2B – all that is required to deploy a robust business CRM system into a
business to business environment, and give teams the right tools to sell more and
manage better.
Stayin Front has been delivering business CRM solutions for over 20 years to
industries as diverse as chemicals, insurance, manufacturing, media, packaging,
telecommunications, tourism and utilities. Companies have relied on StayinFront
B2B to help grow their businesses and prosper in the marketplace.

Understanding the Goal of CRM

In order to get the most from Customer Relationship Management, you have to a
have a clear set of CRM objectives and goals.. Although customer relationship
management can be loosely defined as the process of building and maintaining
good relationships with your customers, there are many improvements that a well-
designed CRM plan can help you accomplish. These can include learning more
about staffing needs so that you can refine your search for talent, tailoring your
production efforts and inventory to better meet the needs of your targeted market
or improving your online reputation among other things.

Using Customer Touch Points

Identify your customer touchpoints by making a list of all the places and times
your customers might come into contact with your brand. We’ve put together a list
of touchpoints here, but it can vary a lot depending on your business

Customer Touch Points

Social media Store or office Billing

Ratings and reviews Website Transactional emails

Testimonials Catalog Marketing emails

Word of mouth Promotions Service and support teams

Community
Staff or sales team Online help center
involvement

Advertising Phone system Follow ups

Marketing/PR Point of sale Thank you cards

Deciding Who Should Lead CRM Funnction

As we've discussed, CRM covers the activities of the four functions normally
labeled Marketing, Sales, Product Support, and Customer Services. It also covers
any third-party organizations you have contracted to perform any of these activities
for you. Of course, we know that the customer's total experience is also governed
by product and other back office experiences. But we have to set boundaries on our
program scope somewhere.

Creating New Role of Marketing

Marketing plays an important role in establishing relationships between customers

and the organizations offering to the market. It gives us the confidence to want to
try a new product in the market as opposed to situations where the products enter
the market without publicity. This makes the marketing function critical in every
organization irrespective of whether the organization is a profit or non-profit
centred. Marketing shapes the image of the organization, how people associate the
organizations products or services and indeed give people the confidence about
their products or services.
When it come to the profit led organizations, marketing is responsible for the
increase in revenue and by extension increase in the organizations profitability. In
addition, the function also helps growing of the customer/clientele base for the
organization. This is especially so when the organization is dealing with more of
corporate customers, and where decisions involve more than one party.