Manage customer relations to survive
In present economic environment, efficient managers with aggressive intentions are simply not adequate enough. New and innovative management skills and approaches are required.
"One of the biggest problems facing managers today is how to continuously attract customers and attain growth, often in an environment where products and prices among competitors are steadily moving closer together. Traditional bases for differentiation, such as product features or cost, are becoming less tangible" (Thompson and Stone)
Indeed, it is no longer easy to survive or stand out in today 's business world. Businesses are facing management challenges from both external and internal market forces, increasing competitive intensity and changing customer needs. Managers need to find their way to breakthrough and maintain attractive to a target market. Customer relationship management (CRM), a long-existing management strategy, may be a breakthrough for businesses situating at bottle neck. Contemporary businesses have changed their formal vision and mission statements to include the element of customer relationship. It seems that dealing customer relationships and keeping customers, account for the greatest concern for businesses nowadays, also for the foreseeable future. (Thompson, 2000) In this essay, I will address the challenges faced by companies, followed by introducing customer relationship management, as a solution. The essay will then concluded by stating the prospective of customer relationship management development.
Rapid progress of technology has accelerated people’s pace of living. Time is the essence and has become a key competitive dimension.(Cram,2001) With the widespread of internet information, customers’ expectations and sellers’ competitions are drastically reset and elevated almost every second. Everyone finds himself or herself has great stress on time. Pressures are aroused from extended
References: Colomo-Palacios, R., Varajão, J., & Soto-Acosta, P.(2012). Customer Relationship Management and the Social and Semantic Web: Enabling Cliens Conexus, 10 (3), 205 Cram,T.(2001). Customers that count, London : Financial Times Prentice Hall,2-40 Gomez-Mejia, L. & Balkin,D. (2012). Management People Performance Change, Boston : Pearson/Prentice Hall, 1 (2),4 Thompson, H.(2000). The Customer-Centered Enterprise, New York : McGraw-Hill,1-17 Zikmund, W., Mcleod, R.& Gilbert, F.(2003). Customer Relationship Management : integrating marketing strategy and information technology, Hoboken, N.J. : Wiley, 3-17