The Origin and Development of Customer Relationship Management
The earliest country to develop customer relationship management is the United States. 1980 in the early days, there was a so-called "contact management", which was to collect all the information that customers contacted with the company. 1985, Barbara? Bender? Jackson put forward the concept of relationship marketing, which made people's research on marketing theory take a new step. By 1990, it has developed into customer service, including a telephone service center that supports data analysis.
1999, Gartner Group Inc put forward the concept of CRM (customer relationship management). Gartner Group Inc put forward the concept of ERP earlier, emphasizing the overall management of supply chain. As a part of the supply chain, why should customers put forward a CRM concept for it?
One of the reasons is that in the practical application of ERP, due to the limitations of ERP system itself and the development stage of IT technology, ERP system does not manage the downstream (customers) of supply chain well, and ERP does not solve the customer diversity in 3C factors well. On the other hand, by the end of 1990s, the application of Internet became more and more popular, and CTI and customer information processing technology (such as data warehouse, business intelligence, knowledge discovery and other technologies) made great progress. Gartner Group Inc put forward the concept of CRM in combination with the demand of new economy and the development of new technology. Since the late 1990s, the CRM market has been in an explosive growth state. In 2008, China Yundong CRM based on CloudCC platform completely created the future trend of the third generation enterprise management software.
Definition of Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Different research institutions have different definitions of CRM.
Gartner Group, which first put forward this concept, believes that the so-called customer relationship management is to provide a comprehensive management perspective for enterprises; Give enterprises better customer communication skills and maximize the yield of customers.
Hurwitz Group believes that the focus of CRM is to automate and improve business processes related to customer relations in sales, marketing, customer service and support. CRM is not only a set of principles, but also a set of software and technology. Its goal is to shorten the sales cycle and cost, increase income, find new markets and channels needed to expand business, and improve customer value, satisfaction, profitability and loyalty. CRM application software embodies best practices and uses advanced technology to help enterprises achieve these goals. CRM takes customers as the center in the whole customer life cycle, that is to say, CRM application software regards customers as the core of enterprise operation. CRM application software simplifies the process of coordinating various business functions, such as sales, marketing, service and support, and focuses its attention on meeting customer needs. CRM application also integrates various communication channels with customers, such as face-to-face, telephone contact, Web access coordination, etc., so that enterprises can use appropriate channels to communicate with customers according to their preferences.
On the other hand, IBM believes that customer relationship management includes the whole business process of identifying, selecting, acquiring, developing and maintaining customers. IBM classifies customer relationship management into three categories: relationship management, process management and access management.
From the perspective of management, customer relationship management (CRM) originated from marketing theory;
From the solution point of view, customer relationship management (CRM) combines the scientific management concept of marketing with software with the help of information technology, which can be widely promoted and applied worldwide.
As a solution, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) integrates the latest information technology, including Internet and e-commerce, multimedia technology, data warehouse and data mining, expert system and artificial intelligence, call center, etc. As an application software, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) embodies the management concept of marketing. Marketing, sales management, customer care, service and support constitute the cornerstone of CRM software.
To sum up, customer relationship management has three meanings:
(1) is the guiding ideology and concept of new enterprise management;
(2) Innovating enterprise management mode and operation mechanism;
(3) It is the sum of management methods and application solutions of information technology, software and hardware system integration in enterprise management.
Its core idea is that customers are important assets of enterprises, and customer care is the center of CRM. The purpose of customer care is to establish long-term and effective business relations with selected customers, get closer to customers and understand customers at every "contact point" with customers, and maximize profits and profit sharing.
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The core of CRM is customer value management, which divides customer value into established value, potential value and model value. Through the principle of one-to-one marketing, we can meet the individual needs of customers with different values, improve customer loyalty and retention rate, realize the continuous contribution of customer value, and thus comprehensively enhance the profitability of enterprises.
Although CRM was originally defined as enterprise management strategy, with the participation of IT technology, CRM has become a management software and enterprise management information solution.
So Gallup, another famous consulting company, defines CRM as: strategy+management +IT. IT emphasizes the position of IT technology in CRM management strategy. At the same time, it is emphasized that the application of CRM is not only the application of IT system, but also the enterprise strategy and management practice.
Causes of Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
The pull of demand
Looking around, on the one hand, many enterprises have done a lot of work in informatization and received good economic benefits. On the other hand, a common phenomenon is that in many enterprises, the informatization level of sales, marketing and service departments can not meet the needs of business development, and more and more enterprises demand to improve the automation and scientificity of daily business of sales, marketing and service. This is the demand basis of customer relationship management.
Listen carefully, we will hear all kinds of complaints from customers, sales, marketing, service personnel and business managers.
The voice of the salesperson. It is difficult to find real customers from the customer clues provided by the marketing department, and I often spend a lot of time on these clues. Should I look for clues myself? I hope I can see customer and product information on the company computer when I am on a business trip. I am facing an old customer this time. Should I quote him?
The voice from the marketing staff. Spent 20 million on marketing last year. How can we know the yield of this 20 million? At the exhibition, we collected 4700 business cards. How to use them? At the exhibition, I distributed company information to over 1000 people. What do these people think of our products? How many of them have contacted the sales staff? I should get in touch with those real potential buyers, but how can I know who the real potential buyers are? How can I know the contact information of colleagues and customers in other departments to avoid repeating the same information to customers? More and more people have visited our website. But how do I know who these people are? We have a wide range of products. What exactly do they want to buy?
The voice of the service staff. In fact, many customers' computer failures are caused by their own misoperation, and in many cases they can be solved by themselves, but answering such customers' calls takes up a lot of engineers' time and the work is boring; Why do colleagues in other departments think that our after-sales service department just spends money but can't make money?
The voice from the customer. I got different quotations for the same product from two salespeople in the enterprise, which one is reliable? What I bought before is broken now. These problems haven't been solved yet, so why do you want to sell them door to door? A month ago, I sent an email through the company's website, asking the sales staff to contact me. Why hasn't anyone talked to me yet? I have hinted that I don't want to send me many promotional emails. Why hasn't the situation changed? I signed up for the seminar posted on the company website, but I haven't received the confirmation message yet. The seminar will be held in a few days. Am I going or not? Why has my maintenance request been submitted for a month, or haven't I waited for on-site service?
The manager's voice In half an hour, a customer will come to talk about the final signing, but recently a direct person resigned. As a sales manager, I still know nothing about the ins and outs of contacting this customer, which is really urgent. Three salesmen have contacted this customer. As a sales manager, how do I know what they promised their customers? Now I have a big list. As a sales manager, which salesman should I send to rest assured? The technical requirements for product maintenance are very high this time. I am the new manager. Which maintenance personnel should be sent?
The above problems can be summarized into two aspects. First, it is difficult for the sales, marketing and customer service departments of enterprises to obtain the required customer interaction information. Secondly, the information from sales, customer service, market, manufacturing, inventory and other departments is scattered within the enterprise, which makes it difficult for all departments to fully understand and face customers on the basis of unified information. This requires all departments to integrate customer-oriented information and activities, form a customer-centered enterprise, and realize the comprehensive management of customer-oriented activities.
However, the pressure of competition is increasing. In terms of product quality and timeliness of delivery, many enterprises have little potential to tap. The improvement of the above problems will greatly help to improve the competitiveness of enterprises, help enterprises win new customers, retain old customers and improve their profit contribution. For many enterprises, especially those with considerable management and information foundation, this time has come.
In fact, like all "new" management theories, customer relationship management is by no means a new concept. It has only acquired new connotations under the new situation. The owner of the snack bar in front of your house will try to remember that you like spicy food. When you want a fried noodles, he will ask your opinion whether to add Chili. But if you go to a large fast food restaurant (for example, this restaurant has 300 seats), you won't get this treatment, even if you go there once a day. Why? The most important reason is that if we want to identify each customer, the amount of customer information collected and processed by fast food restaurants is n times that of snack bars, which exceeds the information collection and processing capacity of enterprises. The development of information technology makes this information application possible.
Customers of enterprises can visit enterprises by telephone, fax and Internet. , and carry out business dealings.
Any employee who deals with customers can fully understand the customer relationship, conduct transactions according to customer needs, know how to sell to customers vertically and horizontally, and record the customer information he has obtained.
Be able to plan and evaluate market activities and have a 360-degree perspective on the whole activity.
Ability to track various sales activities.
System users can access the business processing system of the enterprise at any time without geographical restrictions and obtain customer information.
Ability to analyze marketing activities and sales activities.
Information such as cost, profit, productivity and risk rate can be provided from different angles, and multi-dimensional analysis can be made on customers, products, functional departments and geographical regions.
All the above functions are customer-centric. Compared with the slogan "Customer is God", these functions put the respect for customers into practice. The importance of customer relationship management lies in listing customers separately and making a fuss about them.
Technological upgrading
With the rapid development of computer, communication technology and network application, the above idea no longer stays in the dream stage.
The improvement of office automation, employees' computer application ability, enterprise informatization level and enterprise management level are all conducive to the realization of customer relationship management. It is hard for us to imagine that customer relationship management can be realized technically in an enterprise with low management level, backward employee consciousness and low informatization level. There is a reasonable saying: the role of customer relationship management is icing on the cake. Now, the concept of informatization and networking has penetrated into the hearts of many enterprises in China, and many enterprises have a considerable informatization foundation.
E-commerce is in full swing around the world and is changing the way enterprises operate. Through the Internet, you can carry out marketing activities, sell products to customers, provide after-sales service and collect customer information. The important thing is that the cost of all this is so low.
Customer information is the basis of customer relationship management. The development of data warehouse, business intelligence, knowledge discovery and other technologies has greatly improved the quality of collecting, sorting, processing and utilizing customer information. In this regard, we can look at a classic case. Wal-Mart, the largest supermarket in the United States, shows that beer and diapers often appear on customers' purchase lists at the same time. It turns out that many men in the United States have to bring a few bottles of beer to their children when they buy diapers. On the shelves of this supermarket, the two kinds of goods are far away, so Wal-Mart stores redistribute the shelves, that is, put beer and diapers very close, so that men who buy diapers can easily see beer, which eventually leads to a great increase in beer sales. This is the famous data mining case of "beer and diapers".
In the foreseeable future, the communication cost of China enterprises will be reduced. This will promote the development of internet and telephone, and then promote the development of call center. The combination of Internet and telephone enables enterprises to face customers with a unified platform.
Renewal of management concept
After more than 20 years of development, the concept of market economy has been deeply rooted in people's hearts. At present, the focus of some advanced enterprises is shifting from product orientation to customer orientation. Some people put forward the concept of customer alliance, that is, to establish a win-win relationship with customers and achieve a win-win result, rather than trying to seek their own interests from customers.
Now is an era of change and innovation. One step ahead of the competitors, just one step may mean success. The redesign of business process provides a tool for enterprise management innovation. When introducing the concept and technology of customer relationship management, it is inevitable to change the original management mode of enterprises. The concept of change and innovation helps employees to accept change, while business process reengineering provides specific ideas and methods.
In the Internet age, traditional management ideas are no longer enough. Internet brings not only a means, but also the reorganization of enterprise organizational structure and workflow, as well as the change of the whole social management thought.