内容发布更新时间 : 2024/11/16 20:44:14星期一 下面是文章的全部内容请认真阅读。

英文资料及译文

CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT

As. univ. drd. Mihaela Cornelia Prejmerean

Lect. univ. dr. Alina Mihaela Dima Academy of Economic Studies, Bucharest

Abstract: After 17 years of economical and market development, Romanian companies face a new challenge: the tough competition from the European Union and the battle for the customers. The Romanian enterprises will have to learn not only how to attract customers, but also how to keep them. Marketing programs include now aspects regarding customer orientation, relationship management, loyalty and quality. In this paper, we will follow the main aspects, characteristics, dimensions and processes of Customer Relationship Management, and we will analyze the challenges that the local companies will have to face. Examples from the financial service sector will round the actual situation of the implementation of the CRM rules and principles in Romania.

Keywords: marketing information system; customer relationship management; business asset, customer acquisition; customer retention.

1. Introduction

In the last decade, the majority of the companies were preoccupied with production, recession, mergers, new technologies and business regulation. Romania’s accession in the European Union will bring many advantages for further development, together with membership in a Common Market with common policies on product regulation, and freedom of movement for all the four factors of production (goods, services, capital and labor). This means that Romanian companies will compete with other companies from the EU directly in their home market. European companies are more flexible and mobile and will put a high pressure on the local companies in order to produce better products, launch better offers and services and orientate more towards their customers. High revenue equals important customer is a classic rule when the company organises its customer policy. “An important customer brings a gross amount of money for our enterprise” has become a reflex for many companies abroad and perhaps in Romania, too. But is this always true, or do we need more information than a simple figure reported at the end of the year?

2. Marketing information system

A winning company is more productive in acquiring and retaining customers, to expand its clientele (Kotler, 2003). This company improves the value of the customers by reducing the rate of defection, increasing the longevity of customer Management & marketing relationship, making low-profit customers more profitable or terminating them etc. Gathering information on the actual or potential marketplace not only allows the organisation to monitor trends and issues concerning its current customers, but also helps it identify and profile potential customers and new markets, to keep track of its competition, their strategies, tactics and future plans (Brassington and Pettitt,2003). In order to collect and organize a high quantity of diverse information, the enterprises started to build marketing information systems. There are, mainly, a set of procedures and methods by which pertinent, timely and accurate information is continually gathered, sorted, analysed, evaluated, stored and distributed for the use of marketing decision makers (Zikmund and D′Amico,1993). The marketing information system includes data from external and internal sources (sales records, customer records, marketing communications, and sales force information). The focus on the customer and the integration of the marketing function helps the company to create customer databases with comprehensive information about individual customers or prospects.

3. Customer relationship management

Customer Relationship Management has been around for the last 30 years, but it became very important when companies changed their attitude towards marketing function. Nowadays, the cross-functional approach to marketing requires an organizational culture and climate that encourages collaboration and cooperation between departments. People within the business must understand their role in serving customers, internal or external one. CRM builds on the principles of relationship marketing and recognizes that customers are a business asset and not simply a commercial audience, implies the structuring of the company from functions to processes, information are used proactively rather than reactively and develops the ne-to-one marketing approaches (Payne, 2006).

When defining CRM, we must first explain the difference between customer acquisition and customer retention. The two concepts have different drivers. Attracting customers has become very difficult these days, when people are harder to please. They are smarter, price conscious and sensitive, more demanding, less forgiving, and they are approached by many more competitors with equally good or better offers (Kotler,2003). Companies focus more on sales analysis, customer segmentation, advertising, merchandising and campaign management. The more difficult part is keeping the customers. According to Bruhn, a customer is satisfied when the comparison between offer and consumption fulfils his/her expectations, after he/she accepts the company, trusts it and exhibits a positive attitude towards it, becomes loyal to that company. In this situation, the customer talks favourably about

the company and about its products, pays less attention to competing brands and is less sensitive to price, which turns transactions into routine (Bruhn, 1999). With customer retention, the company must pay attention to service satisfaction and trust in Customer relationship management the organization and its staff. Some companies believe that if a customer complaints the problem will be solved, but 96% of unsatisfied customers don’t complain and go to another company. Therefore, Customer Relationship Management is the mechanism for retaining customers (Russell-Jones, 2003). Mainly CRM allows the company to understand who their customer is, isolate the best customer (those with whom you desire to have long-standing relationships), create relationships stretching over time and involving multi-interactions, manage the relationship to mutual advantage, seek to acquire more of those “best” customers. Inputs like marketing strategy, customer base, products, and regulation, competitors and staff skills are synthesized in a CRM programme which creates outputs as customer service, customer retention, higher share of wallet, customer referral, more predictable revenues streams, improved profitability, lower costs and better compliance (Russell-Jones, 2003).

4. Developing a strategy in customer relationship management

Because CRM is a cross-functional activity and large companies have thousands and millions of customers, the need for a strategic framework is very high. The dimensions of a CRM strategy are mainly focused on defining the following topics: - object of the customer relationship management – the company has three options: focusing on the company itself, on a brand or on the distributor;

- target segment – the company usually sets priorities between different customer segments, it defines strategic customers based on the portfolio analyses, factors as revenue, length of the relationship, income, collaboration with the customer. These are its analysis criteria;

- ways of retaining the customers – customers’ satisfaction is in the centre of all the decisions, but customers retention can also become a central issue through contractual clauses, such as service, leasing and warranty;

- choosing the instruments of CRM – the company combines the instruments of the 4P′s with focus on the customer;

- intensity and timing of the CRM decisions – show when and how should the company introduce different instruments; programmes can last from one day to one week, or from three month to two years;

- cooperation within the CRM programme – sometimes the company must cooperate with other partners from the distribution channel, mainly between producer and wholesaler and retail.

5. Instruments of customer relationship management

The communication policy plays an important role in the instruments mix. It follows two objectives: first, to build a permanent dialogue with the customer in order