Customer Relationship Management and Customer Managed Relationship -Need of the hour

Udupa N

Prologue business practices are increasingly becoming more complex. Focuses of the companies have shifted from selling of products to identifying the needs of customers and serve them with the tailored products. More and more companies are adopting the mantra of retaining the customers and thereby try to reduce the customer churn.

Companies are using various technologies to improve customer services and enable a greater degree of customer interactions. Companies are trying to attract old and new customer through more personalized communication. This is equally applicable to pharmaceutical field as companies are trying to provide the information to customers (i.e. Physicians) by various means.

Role of customer relation management

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has become a buzzword in the industry. More and more companies are now realizing the importance of customers and implementing various strategies to retain the customers. CRM is the process of managing all aspects of interaction a company has with its customers, including prospecting, sales, and service. CRM applications attempt to provide insight into and improve the company/customer relationship by combining all the views of customer interaction into one picture. A customer-managed relationship (CMR) is a relationship in which a business uses a methodology, software, and Internet capability to encourage the customer to control access to information and ordering. CMR allows a customer to define how they communicate with the company, what services or products they will purchase, and how they will pay for them. CMR is an attempt by enterprises to change with the times by addressing customer demand for more control. In pharmaceutical industry the customer is the physician and patient is the consumer. If the customer is not taken care then one cannot think of being in business. Smarter about selling means smarter who is buying. To make CRM more effective, companies should think over and again on certain questions such as what a customer is looking for in a product? Is product offering a value to the customers? What value proposition should be enhanced in order to make product more acceptable to the customers? Why a customer makes repeat purchase? Answers to these questions will give a fair idea about the customer relation management.

Changing model of CRM to CMR

Instead of blindly following or emulating the model of CRM companies have to shift their focus to finer aspects of customer emotional appeal. Companies should try to blend it with CMR. Here the idea is to probe the customer to identify the attributes that a customer would like in a product. Let the customer tell what he is “interested in” and “not interested in”. The availability and choice of products a company offers to customers is the major determinant of success. The model of CMR will fetch the results for the company for a longer term. The companies should train their marketing professionals to apply both the models of CRM and CMR in tandem to get the maximum amount of information from the customers. Information once collected has to be put into practice and companies have to strive to tailor the products according to the needs of the customers. Reducing customer defections by even a fraction might increase profits.

Behavior Analysis

Behavior analysis of the customers can help the company to unearth the personalized needs of the customers. Professionals should be inducted in the company, who has a good knowledge of customer monitoring and analysis. By understanding how a customer is likely to behave regarding a particular product, a company can make a swarm of marketing decisions. Based on this knowledge one can predict the need of customers for new product, product modification, combination, packaging and pricing. It’s not that companies should try to sell a product to as many customers as possible, instead they should try to sell a single customer as many products and product lines as possible over a long periods of time.

Conclusion

Profit maximization by the companies can be achieved only when they understand the need of their customers. Customers are the backbone of any business entity. Therefore the focus should be on customer retention by identifying and satisfying the needs of customer. Help of perfect blend of CRM and CMR can help any company to achieve their organizational objectives.

References:

1. Newell Frederich; Why CRM does not work How to win by letting Customers Manage the Relationship; Published by Kogan Page; 2004; Page 3-42

2. Dyche Jill; The CRM Handbook, Published by Pearson Education; 4 ^th Indian Reprint 2004, Page19-35.

3. http://marketingadvocate.com/marketingadvocatemain/AboutUsHome.aspx

4. http://www.txsystems.com/loyaltybox.html

About Authors:

Sreedhar D, Manthan J, Ajay P, Virendra S Ligade and Udupa N. ^*

Manipal College of Pharmaceutical Sciences, MAHE , Manipal – 576 104, Karnataka ,  India

Udupa N.

*For correspondence : n.udupa@manipal.edu

Sreedhar D