A CRM program primarily attempts to monitor and/or manage three things: an organization's customers , sales force , and customer service level . List two different tools or components of CRM for each of three areas:

Question

a. Customers
b. Sales Force
c. Customer Service LevelDescribe how each tool or component is utilized in the monitoring and/or managing of the customers, sales force, or customer service level.

Answer 1

a . Customers

1 . Segmenting Customers - Using data to categorize customers so that specialized communications can be used to more effectively utilize target marketing efforts.

2 . Permission Marketing - Allowing customers to select the type and time of communication with individual organizations.

3 . Cross-selling - Selling, or attempting to sell, additional products to customers during or following the sale based on initial purchases.

4 . Customer Defection Analysis - Utilizing modeling technologies to find data patterns among customers who have quit purchasing, as opposed to those data patterns of customers that continue to purchase.

5 . Customer Profitability Determination - Determining the value/profitability of each customer. This allows organizations to determine the amount of resources they invest in each customer.

6 . Event-based Marketing - Individual marketing programs based on the customers birthday, anniversary, etc.

b. Sales Force

1 . Sales Activity Management Tools - Based on a firm's sales policies and procedures, these tools and aid a salesperson through a sequence of sales activities during their interactions with each customer.

2 . Sales Territory Management Tools - Allows managers to monitor the status of each salesperson's activities on each customer's account.

3 . Lead Management Tools - Assist sales reps by providing them with sales tactics that will aid them in completing sales.

4 . Knowledge Management Tools - Provide sales reps with a large amount of information relating to contracts, clients, corporate policies, regulatory issues, sales presentations, promotional materials, etc.

c. Customer Service Level

1 . Customer Service Defined - Determining what service means to your customer and building metrics to measure an organization's performance in delivering service are important steps in creating programs to support customer service.

2 . Call Centers - Modern call centers are sophisticated enough to be capable of collecting, organizing, and evaluating call data in order to provide better service in the present as well as in the future.

3 . Web Site Self-service - well-designed web sites allow customers to find information, e-mail questions or complaints, communicate in real time with a company personnel, collect information concerning customer needs, etc. in addition, the services offered through the sites can reduce staffing requirements.

4 . Field Service Management - effective field service tools and processes can now organizations to quickly diagnose problems, and dispatch the required specialists to quickly address customer problems that must be addressed in the field.

5 . Measuring Customer Satisfaction - CRM programs allow personalized service to have it specific customer segments. Furthermore, these results can be compared to with those inside or outside of the respondents segment.

6 . Customer Privacy Capabilities - CRM applications are attempting to monitor the preferred channel or channels of communication for each customer.