The
main principles of CRM can be grouped into seven guiding factors:
1.
Customer
focus
The first and foremost important
guiding principle in CRM is customer focus. Who is a customer? This question is
very fundamental. A customer is a person or group of persons who receives the
product or service—the final output of a process or group of processes. A
customer is the final arbiter of quality, value and price of a product or
service. A satisfied customer only assigns value to a service, on the contrary,
to a dissatisfied customer a product or service has no value, even if the concerned
service or product has been designed with lot of effort, energy and cost after
a thorough planning.
A satisfied customer motivates his
fellow members to go in for the service or product that he has already
acquired. But a dissatisfied customer always counsels his friends, and fellow
members not to go to banks where his experience proved to be wrong or
other-wise. So customer’s delight or customer’s satisfaction is the essence of
any CRM program. As a part of this focus on customers, banks should ensure that
clients are identified; their requirements are determined, understood and met
enhancing customers’ satisfaction.
The main thrust of CRM is to improve
an organization’s efficiency, economy and effectiveness through reduction of sales
cycle times and selling costs, identification of new markets and channels for
expansion, improvement of customer value, satisfaction, retention and thereby
increasing profitability and market share of the enterprise. Successful CRM
focuses on understanding the needs and desires of the customers and is achieved
by placing these needs at the heart of the business by integrating them with
the organization’s strategy, people, technology and business processes.
(Heygate, 1999). There must be total commitment for the enterprise towards this
end.
2. Leadership
Persuasion, judgment and
decision-making abilities are the main attributes of quality leadership. When
there is a slight chance of getting a business but the client is hesitating or
in a fix, or not in a position to decide properly, it should be followed up by
the relationship manager by patient hearing, mild counseling and to stand by
the side of the prospective client to help clear his doubts and to make him
feel happy by realizing that he is going in the right direction and he is very
right in choosing his requirements.
The
following points may be found helpful in this regard:
(a)
It is to be communicated to all employees that all customers should be given a
proper hearing and it should be supported from all levels.
(b)
Ways and means should be identified and practiced of getting and staying closer
to customers.
(c)
Proper respect should be extended to the customers. All relevant information
should be collected from them with humble and polite approach. Proper value
should be given to their feedback.
(d)
There should be proper re-action to the information and feedback provided by
the customers in designing, developing and providing desired products at
afford-able cost.
3.
Process approach
A process transforms an input into
desired output by the use of resources, energies and time. In producing an
output there may one single process or a group of inter-related processes. In
case of inter-related processes, often the output from one process directly
forms the input to the next. For effective functioning of an organization, it
has to identify and manage numerous linked activities with the help of
different processes for accomplishing its goal.
Proper
attention should be given to the following points:
(a)
All processes should be de-signed keeping in view the requirements and desires
of the customers, within the policy, resource availability, strategy of the
company.
(b)
All processes should meet the legal and statutory requirements to perform the
activity or deliver the product or service.
(c)
Time involved in processing should be minimum with least waiting time to the
customers. If required delegation of authority and assignment of
account-ability at various executive levels should be addressed, revised and
fine-tuned to meet the requirements.
(d)
All the processes should be properly integrated to meet the goal congruence and
should not function at cross-purpose.
(e)
There should be in built control mechanism for ease of measuring, reviewing and
taking corrective action.
4.
System approach
Customer’s requirement is one level
of commitment. That level implies a system that is reactive and provides to
customers what they want but the target should be to achieve more and to exceed
the customer’s expectation to accommodate future requirement and to build a
cushion against the competitors’ attributes.
CRM denotes the management of the
entire system and is not confined to only one or the other sub-systems or
functional departments. CRM is based on a system approach to management. Its
primary objective is to increase value to customers on a continuous basis by
designing and improving organizational processes and systems on a ongoing
basis. Meeting Each sub-system may have its own goal but the goal and
objectives of all sub-systems are to be integrated to achieve the overall goal.
5.
Involvement of people
The fundamentals of CRM bear the
genes of customer relationship through involvement of people, i.e., the
work-force at the disposal of the organization. The whole gamut of CRM is for
the people, of the people and by the people. People involvement at all levels
is essential for the success of a CRM program. The bank managers and staff must
be in a position to exploit the concept of customer relationship completely.
Customer relation may be defined as
that dimension of relationship marketing that seeks and ensures customer
loyalty by fulfilling promises and continuing to satisfy customer’s wants and
needs so that defection is zero. It comprises of three levels of relationships;
financial relationship, social relationship and structural relationship.
6.
Mutually beneficial customer relationship
The relationship with the customer
should be based on a mutually beneficial relation-ship. A bank should not
concentrate its attention towards earning of profits only, but focus should be
directed to the customers’ wealth creation or value enhancement with the motto of
earning through service.
As an example we can talk of a
savings account that’s ‘fixed up’ to give you more interest. It ensures that
any balance in your savings account above a certain amount, say, Rs 3,000
automatically gets transferred to a fixed deposit to give you higher returns,
which will be swept back into your savings account, when you need it.
7.
Continual improvement
Another objective of CRM is the
efforts towards continuous improvement in the customer relationship through the
provision of value added ser-vices at favorable cost. Business processes in the
areas of finance, system integration, human resource management etc. are to be
automated and optimized with an aim to increase the efficiency and
effectiveness of operations.
The most effective way of
improvement lies in innovation and change management. Today’s successful
organizations must stimulate and foster innovation and master the art of
change. Organizations that maintain their flexibility, spontaneity and
unpredictability, continually improve their quality and, beat their competitors
to the market place with a constant stream of innovative products and services,
will be the winners.
The
major areas to be targeted are:
(i) Improving the effectiveness of marketing.
(ii)
Implementing multichannel trigger driven marketing.
(iii)Implementing
a strategic analysis capability to support strategic decision making.
(iv)
The ability to deliver the increasing levels service demanded by customers.
Building
a transparent communication system and employee participation to better define
the needs of the customers and deliver the right services and products
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