All these depend on good marketing and people. Technology is just a lever, a mechanism, a fixed cost of business, like a shop to a traditional retailer. Customer Relationship Management is the process of getting to know who customers are, understanding their behaviour and needs and then driving profitability through more efficient marketing communications and high customer retention. It is growing in importance because of the rise in consumer power (ignore your customer's needs at your peril - we all know the Marks & Spencer story).
AGE OF DIRECT MARKETING
It is the coming of age of direct marketing - companies have learned how to collect data, and now that data is being used to optimise customer relation- ships and improve profibitability. Example: The Woolwich bank recently scrapped its product-based marketing teams and replaced them with a centralised structure to target groups of cus- tomers with multiple products. Head of Group Marketing Paul Birkett said: "A marketing strategy based on CRM means that none of our firepower will be wasted by offering inappropriate services". From a marketing and strategic perspective, customer loyalty, CRM and one-to-one marketing - whatever you want to call it - depends on finding out everything possible about your customers, and then building an appropriate and profitable relationship with them. At the moment, CRM is being delivered as a method of combining one or more of the IT systems that exist or can be placed into an organisation.