Wednesday, September 17, 2008

eCRM

CRM

When I was sitting at a Computer in the library pondering about this discussion topic I noticed a very well know yet often overlooked company that includes CRM in their business routine, and that company my friend is DELL. What is CRM? You may ask, well it is nothing but the abbreviation of Customer Relationship Management and I can give you my word that DELL is good at it. They have been renowned for their branded computers and laptops which were later on accompanied by HDTVs and flat screen Plasma Televisions. But what good is it if a customer buys an expensive product but has a hard time or cannot maintain it? That’s where Dell’s customer care steps in. Follow me to the next paragraph and I’ll give a brief detail about it.


Two CRM features

The customer care is a very crucial CRM feature without which I guess a company would not survive nowadays. DELL is very keen on their customer care service, besides providing customer support over phone and ‘on demand/on premise’, they are sending tech docs to the home front to help customers set up its branded flat-screen televisions, home networks and data security systems and even their computers. As the general manager of Dell's consumer business, Mike George says,
"People are time starved, technology is more complex ... and many customers need better help navigating through the digital landscape, and dell is here to provide them with all the help they need."

Another CRM feature that I came across about dell is that they maintain a customer information database. Managing customer data is very important because the risk of managing a business without customer information is real; it results to lost opportunities with a valuable company asset (their customer base). They use a CRM package for this job, ACT! By Sage Softwares. It’s very robust and very handy in maintaining their very large and still growing customer database.

How does this feature as CRM?
It helps them in understanding their customers' needs, and allows them to keep in contact with customers at the right times, with valued products and services. Especially if they bring in a new salesperson or customer care operator, they can very quickly be brought up to speed by pulling up customer database and this will always make the customer feel like they are talking to the right person whomever it is.


eCRM

eCRM is simply the electronic version of CRM except the customer relationship is managed by making use of Information Technology. eCRM is more than just a high tech customer service having all sorts of self helping tools or web applications. It helps the organization to connect to customers and have a better learning edge in customer needs and wants, customer values and gain new market share. Like I mentioned earlier its simply CRM taking full advantage of the internet and communications age.




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