When I started my job as management trainee for CEM (customer Engagement Management) at PT Sari Husada, I was initially hesitated. I had no idea about what CRM is. Thanks to Mrs Rini, my mentor, who gave me a book concerning customer relationship management. After read this book, “Romancing the customer”, I started understand of what CRM is. Through this forum, I want to share a mini recap of this book. I hope there will be more people who aware to CRM.

What is CRM?
A revolution has been happening in the world of branding. Customer relationship management has been influential in triggering the shift of this revolution. What is CRM actually? CRM is about collaborating with each customer, we add value to them and they will give loyalty in return. On the other words, CRM is a way to benefit our customers and our self at the same time. We may think that the aim of CRM is to “share the wallet”. However, CRM is more like “share of heart”, creating an emotional bond with the customers such that they pledge allegiance to your brand. If we achieve the allegiance, the term “share of wallet” will natural happened by product.

We all know that every single customer is crucial but all customers are not equal. Take a moment to remind Pareto Principle (the 80:20 rule). 20 % of our customers may represent 80% of our revenue. Thus the purpose of CRM is to recognize the best customers and hold on to them.

People may still get perplexed about CRM. Is that similar to advertising? Which one better? I’d already running advertisement on my brand, is that enough? And many more questions. Advertising is essential to our brand. It’s great for creating general corporate, product and brand awareness along with brand building. Invariably, advertising, for example TVCs, are based on monologue. They make a statement but they don’t particularly call for response. Advertising is aimed at wide audiences as well. Ultimately, the aim of CRM is to communicate and interact with an audience of one. CRM is based on dialogue and highly targeted.

Some people also associating CRM as direct marketing. Are they the same? Let’s associate this to our daily life. Direct marketing is like trying to get someone you have never met to go out on a first date. Can you imagine that? What is the likelihood you would accept? Compare to a situation where one of your best friends asking you to go out for the dinner. That is what CRM actually.

If you still confused of what is CRM, let’s explore the term “customer relationship management”. Focus on the word relationship. Think about our personal relationship, with our spouse, our friends, our parents and so on. In those relationships, there are some factors involved. Firstly is the person that we interested to. Relationships are also involving the length of time and the amount of emotions we have invested. Solid relationships are built around trust, understanding, effective communication and faith. These are the heart of CRM.

How CRM works?
CRM works by several actions, they are:

1. Creating continuous communication loop between brand and customer. This can be telephone based, face to face, digital based or any combinations of these. The core point of this action is to make it easy for the customer to interact with us.

2. Getting to know the customer, use the communicational channel to get to know our customer data and habits.

3. Using existing customer data, take a look at the potential customers data. How often they buy from you? How much do they spend when they do?

4. Asking the customer what they want, gain insight from our customers. Ask what they want from our brand and product.

5. Establishing the unlocked potential, creating the knowledge, combines all the data collected to create a database. This will drive every single piece of targeted sales and marketing activity.

6. Re-using the knowledge time after time, every time a customer interact with us, make sure that we use the knowledge of them, so that we can talk to them like a friend.

Why Companies lose customers?
If we concern to why companies lose customers, we may find a way to prevent this happened. Let’s go back to human relationship. May relationships end because one partner was so busy looking at others, they forget to appreciate and cherish the partner they already had. In reality, most of companies lose their customers because their customers feel lack of attention r interest to the companies. The moral of this is that if we don’t to talk to our customers, they won’t interest to us. So let’s begin a dialogue with them!

It is important to offer products and services that we know it will be useful to our customers, that will add value. Adding value to our brand means that it has to do one of the following. Save the customer money, Save them time, Save them hassle and be customized specifically to their needs

It is important for brands to changing their mindset. Traditional marketing tend to think “a product centric”. The product centric mindset is thinking from the inside out. In this mindset, we are asking some questions such as: what skills do we have? What are we good at?

While “the consumer centric” mindset will always think “what am I doing today to add value to my customers’ lives?” we can see what a fundamental change in thinking this way. We have to thinking from the outside in

New media trend
The world wide web and mobile communication as a part of digital media provide us a mass opportunities to get closer to our customers. It is no longer optional to getting on the web. It’s crucial! The key issue of this is we need to keep the internet brand consistent with the traditional brand offering. Some useful tips to running this are we have to make the site useful to customer, we also make the site intuitive, keep the site as simple as possible, don’t forget to plan to regularly update the site, and always make the site interesting and entertaining for our customers.

Let’s start CRM program
In running CRM program, it’s crucial to do these steps:

In creating tactical CRM initiatives, we have to focus on some key components of CRM strategy. Firstly, make the company the type of company people really want to do business with. Next we have to create a mechanism to identify, reward and retain the best customer. After that, let’s create a means to organically grow the value of existing customer base. And don’t forget to find new customers with the right potential

Before we start a CRM program, we have to remember the three golden points. First of all develop clear objectives, ensure that everyone understands what we want to do. Then make things easy for customer, don’t get carried away with its design without thinking about its use in practice. Lastly, be realistic, CRM program is a strategic initiative that will make significant contributions.

If we follow these rules and always “think customers” the CRM program will help to build a brand, build revenue and surely, build a loyalty from our customers   