Key Components Of Customer Relationship

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) which is also known as relationship marketing recently emerged as an integral marketing concept in the business environment. It is an activity carried out to reach and connect with customers in an environment highly saturated with products, advertisements and promotions, businesses etc implementing a customer relationship management component in their marketing design. A Customer Relationship Management operation allows marketers to build a long lasting relationship with consumers at the individual level through the use and management of different programs and key components.

This chapter of the study does not intend to be involved in the general discussion about Customer relationship management but rather

Customer relationship management (CRM) has attracted the prolonged attention practitioners and scholars. Scholars in marketing discipline are studying the nature and scope of CRM and also conceptualizing the value and process of cooperative and collaborative relationship between buyers and sellers. Scholars interested in various sub-disciplines of marketing, such as services marketing, business-to-business marketing, advertising and so forth, are dynamically engaged in studying and exploring the conceptual fundamentals of managing relationship with customers. These scholars are interested in the following which are: strategies and processes for customer classification and selectively; one-to-one relationships with individual customers; key account management and customer business development processes; frequency marketing, loyalty programs, cross-selling and up-selling opportunities; and various forms of partnering with customers including co-branding, joint-marketing, co-development and other forms of strategic alliances (Sheth and Parvatiyar 2000).

Different viewpoint has been dispensed by different authors about the nature of CRM. Some authors proposed it as a set of processes that deals with the customer experience, while other authors viewed it as an approach to increase retention of customers in an organization. The

Services are delivered directly from the service provider to the consumer without the use of middlemen in the distribution channel (Parvatiyar & Sheth 2001). The absence of middlemen from the equation, made it possible for customers to be more visible as the “co-producers” when they personalize products and interact with employees and websites on a more intimate level (Vargo & Lusch, 2004). The prerequisite of a direct contact encourages a cordial relationship in an environment that is naturally formed, but the service quality of the provider is vital when developing a long lasting, satisfactory relationship (Crosby, Evans & Cowles 1990). The intention of capitalizing on profitable consumers, maintaining and strengthening the producer-consumer relationship, organizations turns to customer relationship management. In every interaction between customers and organization, at the end, there is a possibility that the customer’s expectations can be met, exceeded or fell short. As competition increases among organizations, there is a greater highlight on customer satisfaction and in turn, customer expectations are increasing. Although some customers value price over all other characteristics, many customers are not willing to compromise when it comes to products and services; base on that reason, organizations adopts the operation of customer relationship management to guarantee