Why customer care is key in marketing
Oct 08, 2006
MARKETEERS have been happy amateurs in being more ‘product/brand oriented,’ but time has come to change to ‘customer orientation/relationship.’ Best practices in marketing are about making the right decisions at the right time.
By Fatimah Alimohamed
MARKETEERS have been happy amateurs in being more ‘product/brand oriented,’ but time has come to change to ‘customer orientation/relationship.’ Best practices in marketing are about making the right decisions at the right time.
In order to make better decisions, marketeers need to stay focussed and control all marketing and sales efforts. To do this, we need accurate information about customers because only then can we grow our businesses and make our bottom lines have a competitive edge.
In Customer Relationship Management (CRM), you have to struggle to go beyond the ‘single customer view’ provided by the integrated CRM systems towards genuinely individualised interactions with customers, tailored according to what the company knows about them.
Tried and tested ways have shown that it is easier to keep an existing loyal customer than attract a new one. All this bows down to satisfaction. If we don’t keep a customer satisfied, they have a right to move elsewhere.
CRM allows companies build better relationships with customers than has been previously possible in the ‘offline’ world. By combining abilities to respond directly to customer requests and provide the customer with a highly-interactive, customised experience, companies have a greater ability today to establish, nurture and sustain long-term customer relationships than before.
The need to better understand customer behaviour and the interest of many managers to focus on those customers who can deliver long-term profits has changed how marketeers view the world. Traditionally, marketeers have been trained to acquire customers, either new ones who have not bought the product before or those who are competitors’ customers. This has required heavy doses of mass advertising and price-oriented promotions.
Today, particularly for the company’s ‘best’ customers, the tone of conversation has changed from customer acquisition to retention. This requires a different mindset and a different and new set of tools.
A good experiment for an executive audience is to ask them how much they spend and/or focus on acquisition versus retention activities. While it is difficult to perfectly distinguish between the two activities, the answer is usually that acquisition dominates retention.
Studies by consultants like McKinsey have shown that repeat customers generate over twice as much gross income than new ones.
A key problem is that CRM means different things to different people. For some, CRM means direct e-mails. For others, it is mass customisation or developing products that fit individual customers’ needs. For information technology consultants, CRM translates into complicated technical jargon.
Marketeers need to know that actions perceived by a customer as unreasonable or unfriendly may trigger a backlash, whose costs can easily exceed the narrow value of that customer’s business. We as a fraternity would be better off paying attention to the customer service and relationship problem than deny its existence or make excuses about it.
History is replete with cases of companies that have been brought to the brink of extinction because a ‘customer be damned’ attitude became embedded in the corporate culture.
Competition has never been stronger, and, more than ever, CRM is a key competitive battleground. A few chief executive officers (CEOs) I have spoken to have expressed surprise at learning the extent of the service and relationship problem. I suspect most CEOs or boards of directors never learn through internal processes about bad customer assessments of their service, or about questionable practices at the marketing level.
“A demanding customer is like a grain of sand within the mussel. It doesn’t feel so good but the result may be a beautiful pearl.â€
The writer is vice-chairperson of the Chartered Institute of Marketing (Kenya Chapter) and head of marketing and communications at Bidco Group
E-mail strateam@gmail.com
MARKETEERS have been happy amateurs in being more ‘product/brand oriented,’ but time has come to change to ‘customer orientation/relationship.’ Best practices in marketing are about making the right decisions at the right time.
In order to make better decisions, marketeers need to stay focussed and control all marketing and sales efforts. To do this, we need accurate information about customers because only then can we grow our businesses and make our bottom lines have a competitive edge.
In Customer Relationship Management (CRM), you have to struggle to go beyond the ‘single customer view’ provided by the integrated CRM systems towards genuinely individualised interactions with customers, tailored according to what the company knows about them.
Tried and tested ways have shown that it is easier to keep an existing loyal customer than attract a new one. All this bows down to satisfaction. If we don’t keep a customer satisfied, they have a right to move elsewhere.
CRM allows companies build better relationships with customers than has been previously possible in the ‘offline’ world. By combining abilities to respond directly to customer requests and provide the customer with a highly-interactive, customised experience, companies have a greater ability today to establish, nurture and sustain long-term customer relationships than before.
The need to better understand customer behaviour and the interest of many managers to focus on those customers who can deliver long-term profits has changed how marketeers view the world. Traditionally, marketeers have been trained to acquire customers, either new ones who have not bought the product before or those who are competitors’ customers. This has required heavy doses of mass advertising and price-oriented promotions.
Today, particularly for the company’s ‘best’ customers, the tone of conversation has changed from customer acquisition to retention. This requires a different mindset and a different and new set of tools.
A good experiment for an executive audience is to ask them how much they spend and/or focus on acquisition versus retention activities. While it is difficult to perfectly distinguish between the two activities, the answer is usually that acquisition dominates retention.
Studies by consultants like McKinsey have shown that repeat customers generate over twice as much gross income than new ones.
A key problem is that CRM means different things to different people. For some, CRM means direct e-mails. For others, it is mass customisation or developing products that fit individual customers’ needs. For information technology consultants, CRM translates into complicated technical jargon.
Marketeers need to know that actions perceived by a customer as unreasonable or unfriendly may trigger a backlash, whose costs can easily exceed the narrow value of that customer’s business. We as a fraternity would be better off paying attention to the customer service and relationship problem than deny its existence or make excuses about it.
History is replete with cases of companies that have been brought to the brink of extinction because a ‘customer be damned’ attitude became embedded in the corporate culture.
Competition has never been stronger, and, more than ever, CRM is a key competitive battleground. A few chief executive officers (CEOs) I have spoken to have expressed surprise at learning the extent of the service and relationship problem. I suspect most CEOs or boards of directors never learn through internal processes about bad customer assessments of their service, or about questionable practices at the marketing level.
“A demanding customer is like a grain of sand within the mussel. It doesn’t feel so good but the result may be a beautiful pearl.â€
The writer is vice-chairperson of the Chartered Institute of Marketing (Kenya Chapter) and head of marketing and communications at Bidco Group
E-mail strateam@gmail.com