The Stage

Understanding customer relationships, satisfaction, and perceived value is paramount to business success and survival. Customers are constantly being marketed by new products and services that, potentially, will pull their buying decisions away from one brand and onto another. To know customers beyond what will satisfy them and into the real and often emotionally-based motivating factors behind re-purchasing (loyalty) is to hold the knowledge necessary to plan with confidence for new or further business growth. Nevertheless, many organisations often only have a limited understanding of their customers' needs, expectations, purchasing habits, and of their own interactions with them. Used appropriately, CRM systems facilitate collection and use of data about customers. This provides the foundation for a business to be run in a customer-centric manner, which is necessary in order to provide a basis for building long-lasting relationships with key customers. Successful implementation of CRM systems is not merely governed by correctly aligning and operating sophisticated technology, human interactions also play a critical part. Customer-centricity is a key building block of successful CRM system implementation, neither the CRM System nor a customer-centric culture can function efficiently without the other. 

To continue reading this report in html click "Next" below or use the links in the Article Index above right.  If you are a member and are logged in you can download the entire printable report as a pdf file. ...