CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

Operations marketing (relationship management) is a complete web-based

business management application ideally featured to assist you in managing your
executive and continuing education programs. CRM enables you to have a
relentless focus on your customer (for open enrollment and custom courses) with
its full CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool set. COMs customer
interaction management, direct email marketing management, and sales coaching
and management tools are complemented by its comprehensive reporting
structure to provide the labor saving features and information you need to engage
your prospects and customers in a personalized and attentive fashion so as to
ensure long-term profitable relationships.

Customer and Operations Management with CRM are designed for organizations
with limited resources, infrastructure and time for an expensive and large-scale
technology implementation. Customer and Operations Management with CRM
can be fully operational within hours. Once operational you will immediately
begin to experience dramatic improvements in the effectiveness the efficiency of
your sales and course management activities.

There are no complex or cumbersome queries to write and rewrite in order to

gain access to the data you need to respond to key business questions. Customer
and Operations Management with CRM provides the information required by
marketing and sales managers to identify and create the path on which to migrate
prospects to leads, leads to students, students to repeat students, all with a simple
point and click. Because COM creates a collaborative communications network,
information on prospects, changes to program requirements, rescheduling of
instructors, etc. will all be shared among the team members instantly.

During the same week you install Customer and Operations Management with
CRM, you will be empowering associates in all departments with the information
and tools to communicate, streamline course management and marketing
processes, and manage individual and team efforts. You will also be making your
students and companies feel important and loyal, giving you an edge over
competitors.

Customer and Operations Management with CRM is a leapfrog innovation to

traditional course registration software. It provides a platform for a customercentric operation with significant efficiencies in its imbedded business processes.
COM enables you and your associates to convert the data in your course
management business processes into intelligent and intuitive views that provide
powerful marketing and sales information, customer relationship management
information,

and

performance

measurement

information.

Customer and Operations Management with CRM accomplishes all of this with
the point and click of a mouse, without the need to write or rewrite complex
database queries. COMs technology platform is not anchored in a personal use
database application or small business web page technology. It is robust
"industrial strength" Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft ASP.net. Because this
technology foundation is widely used in institutions of all sizes, IT shops can be
comfortable modifying the application, if the need ever arises.

Endless hours are consumed by the many tedious communications activities

related to: marketing messages, sales messages, course schedules, instructor
logistics, student pre-work assignments, task management, etc. Customer and
Operations Management with CRM provides an extensive array of tools to enable
you and your team members to be more effective and more efficient in you
operations. You will begin to measure your return of your investment in COM
immediately.

A strategy employed by an organization in which a continuous level of

engagement is maintained between the organization and its audience.
Relationship management can be between a business and its customers (customer
relationship management) and between a business and other businesses (business
relationship

management).

Relationship management is a focus of the financial and investing industries as a

way to identify potential cross-sales of products and services.

Relationship management aims to create a partnership between the organization

and its audience rather than consider the relationship merely transactional.
Consumers who feel that a business responds to their needs are more likely to
continue using the products and services that a business offers. Additionally,
maintaining a level of communication with consumers allows the business to
identify potential sources of costly problems before they come to a head.

OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

To understand and identify the

followed by the retail stores.

To study the various CRM techniques adopted by organized retail firms

and stores.
To study the benefits of CRM to the retailers and customers.
To provide the effectiveness of loyalty program adopted by retail stores.

Relationship Management Practices

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

The research methodology adopted in CRM in retail is a descriptive research

technique taking organized retail stores as the sample population and sample size.
The sampling technique used in the survey is non - probabilistic judgmental
sampling using a structured questionnaire, interviews and observation methods to
collect data from the customers.

RESEARCH DESIGN

A. PRIMARY DATA: The source for primary data was collected through indepth interviews and questionnaires from customer relationship managers of
selected shopping malls & retail factory outlets like Big Bazaar, Marks &
Spencer, Reliance, Value Mart, Pantaloons, Shopper Stop, Reebok& Adidas
factory retail outlet of Mumbai.

SECONDARY DATA: Secondary data was compiled from information

published on the official websites, published annual reports, company policies,
news paper articles, journals, web resources, media coverage in leading local
financial publications/magazines, etc.

Relationship marketing is emerging as the core marketing activity for businesses

operating in fiercely competitive environments. On average, businesses spend six
times more to acquire customers than they do to keep them (Gruen, 1997).
Therefore, many firms are now paying more attention to their relationships with
existing customers to retain them and increase their share of customers
purchases. Worldwide service organizations have been pioneers in developing
customer retention strategies. Banks have relationship managers for select
customers loyal customers, redeemable bonus points for increased customised
services to their heavy users, and
Service sector have personalized services for their regular customers

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Developing a core service around which to build a customer relationship,

Customizing the relationship to the individual customer,
Augmenting the core service with extra benefits,
Pricing services to encourage customer loyalty,
Marketing to employees so that they will perform well for customers

Key word: relation in retail

CHAPTER 2
THEORETICAL VIEWS

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a strategy for managing all your

companys relationships and interactions with your customers and potential
customers. It helps you improve your profitability.

CRM enables you to focus on your organisations relationships with individual

people whether those are customers,service users, colleagues or suppliers.
Some of the biggest gains in productivity can come from moving beyond CRM as

a sales and marketing tool and embedding it in your business from HR to

customer services and supplychain management.

A CRM system helps your business grow because it tracks the history of
customer interactions. Why is this important? Because tracking is everything.
From calls made and emails sent, to meetings held, presentations delivered, and
even the next steps needed to close the deal or grow that customer account.
To run smoothly, your business needs customer relationship data thats
automatically updated, with instant access for employees, and provides a full
history of all communications, meetings, and documents shared.

With a CRM system, your business has one place to store every customer, every
lead, every service request, all of their contact info, preferences,and history so
your conversations are always personal, relevant, and up-to-date. All available on
mobile, desktop and through powerful reports & dashboards.

Marketers can also use CRM to better understand the pipeline of prospective
sales making forecasting simpler and more accurate. You'll have clear visibility of
the path from enquiry to sale, available wherever & whenever you need it.

Try to imagine, for a moment, being unable to tell family and friends apart or to
distinguish them from strangers in a crowd. This is a real circumstance for some
people, such as a woman, featured in this video, who suffered an injury in her
work as a fire fighter and who now experiences face blindness because of her
injury. There are even people who, although theyre otherwise healthy, live their
entire life without being able to tell one person from another by just looking at
them, as most of us are easily able to do. One such person, Tom
Uglow of Googles Creative Lab, has written a blog post illustrating how he must
use clues to guess the identity of people he knows very well. For someone who
really cant recognize the faces of family, friends, coworkers, and acquaintances,
everyone looks like a stranger.

For any business, the interactions between associates and employees, on one
hand, and customers and prospects, on the other hand, tend to become numerous,
scattered, and fleeting. As a business grows, its possible relationships go well
beyond what we human beings can comfortably maintain as far as truly personal
relationships. A businesss leaders have to find ways to maintain and develop the
businesss relationships with its customers and prospects, and to the extent that a
business lacks such customer relationship management, it suffers something a
little like face blindness. Every contact the business has with a prospect or a
customer remains like a first and only meeting with stranger.

10

Customer relationship management, defined in one way as the practice of

building a strong relationship between a business and its customers and potential
customers, requires developing within a business the internal functions or
abilities it must have, if its even to be capable of developing and sustaining
relationships with prospects and customers. The business, as a whole, gains social
abilities only to the extent that its leaders see whats missing and give the
business new organization.

Fortunately, they dont have to invent better systems of customer relationship

management from scratch. inter link ONE has experience and software tools that
will help.
Successful companies are focused on implementing customer-centric processes
and technologies to optimize customer relationships. Customer Relationship
Management (CRM) is ranked as a top priority for organizations striving to
enhance profitability, revenue growth and customer satisfaction. Companies can
now acquire and serve customers across a wide range of channels.

As a result, increased competition and readiness mandate executives to gain a

360-degree customer understanding to facilitate satisfaction and acquisition. An
understanding of the potential value and profitability of acquiring, satisfying and
retaining customers requires knowledge-based solutions that identify key

11

customer requirements. The new insights surrounding customers can make the
difference between winning and losing in today's global economy.
CRM is an enterprise business strategy encompassing a broad range of processes
and functions, including call center management, sales force automation, ecommerce, field service and e-mail management.
At Think Analytics, the CRM market is viewed in two segments:
o

CRM front-office operational processes; and

CRM analytical business processes.

CRM front-office solutions have been a primary focus for organizations; and
unfortunately, very little emphasis has been placed on customer analysis. And
even though many companies have successfully implemented CRM front-office
capabilities to provide new and immediate customer interaction channels, these
same companies are missing the value generated by analyzing new and existing
customer

information.

Without Customer Relationship Analytics (CRA), organizations lack the ability to

discover meaningful correlations, patterns and trends required to recognize return
on investment from CRM front-office investments and existing customer data.

12

IMPLEMENTATION

Implementation process. CRM manages to reduce operating costs through a

workforce management system. This helps to maximize skills and thus reduce
cost. These reduced costs enable an organization to achieve greater efficiency. If
cost reduction is management's objective then the CRM implementation should
be carried out in such a way that this is achieved. Throughout the process
maximum reduction in costs should be adhered to in order to meet this particular
CRM goal.

Aiding the Marketing Department:

Another goal of CRM is generally aiding the marketing department in all its
efforts. This includes marketing campaigns, sales promotions etc. If this is fixated
as one of the goals of CRM, then it should be communicated to those involved.
This goal is fundamental as it boosts sales indirectly thereby increasing the
profitability.

Customer Relationship Management has no longer remained as a science of

customer satisfaction but has moved towards being an integral part of corporate
strategy. Customer service, delivery methods and price have become more
predominant factors influencing customer decision-making. Companies are

13

adopting latest tools and techniques for enhancing customer value through
sophisticated CRM programs. CRM applications have significant relevance in the
services sector in general and retailing in particular.

CRM is emerging as a core marketing activity for business in fiercely competitive

environment. Therefore many firms are paying more attention to their
relationships with existing customers to retain them and increase their share of
customers purchases. Service organizations are shifting their focus from
transactional exchange to relational exchange for developing mutually
satisfying relationship with customers (Jain at al., 2005). The need for mutual
benefit through relational exchange has also been explained in many studies.
Morgan and Hunt (1994) and Groonroos (1994) emphasized relationship
marketing as set of activities towards developing and enhancing customer
relationship for mutual exchange and fulfillment of promises. Strengthening
relationship is reported to have a significant impact on profitability and customer
life time value.

Fox and Stead (2001) have described customer relationship management as the
establishment, development, maintenance and optimization of long-term mutually
valuable relationships between customer and organizations. They further
mentioned that successful CRM focuses on understanding the needs and desires
of the customer and is achieved by placing these needs at the heart of the business
by integrating them with the organizations strategy, people technology and

14

practices. The scope of CRM is very wide and includes different aspects like
customer satisfaction, service quality, relationship quality, trust, loyalty,
commitment, customer retention etc. The shift from transaction marketing to
relationship marketing has not been sudden. Levitt (1986) introduced the concept
of augmented product stressing that consumers are interested in the total buying
experience not just the core product. Researchers have linked increased CRM
expenditure to greater customer satisfaction (Srinivasan and Moorman, 2005).
Customer satisfaction is also linked with increased customer loyalty, reduced
customer complaints (Bolton and Forenell, 1992) and shareholder value
(Anderson et al., 2005). In the current era of hyper- competition, marketers are
forced to be more concerned with customer retention and loyalty. As several
studies have indicated, retaining customer is less expensive and perhaps a more
sustainable competitive advantage than acquiring new ones. Marketers are
realizing that it costs less to retain customers than to compete for new ones
(Rosenberg and Czepiel, 1984). Long time customers tend to be less price
sensitive and provide free word-of-mouth advertising. Customer expectations
have also rapidly changed over the last two decades. Fueled by new technology
and growing availability of advanced product features and services, customer
expectations are changing almost on daily basis. Consumers are less willing to
make compromises or trade-off in the product and service quality. In the world of
ever-changing customer expectations, cooperative and collaborative relationship
with customers seems to be the most prudent way to keep track of their changing
expectations and appropriately influencing it (Sheth and Sisodia, 1995).

15

Buttle (1998) and Silverman (1997) opined that companies are aware of the need
to manage customer referrals. Delighted customers have engaged in referrals
leading to increase sales (Biyalogorsky et al., 2001). It will be imperative for
retail companies to focus on developing long term relationship with their
customers. One of the determinants of the success of the relationship marketing
strategies of a firm is how the customers perceive the resulting service quality. It
is the perceived quality that is the key driver of perceived value. It is this
perceived value, which determines the strength of company customer relationship
(Berry, 1983). Kotler and Keller (2005) further explain the concept of Customer
Lifetime Value (CLV) in terms of the present value of the stream of future profits
expected over the customers life time purchases. Peppers and Rogers (2005)
have pointed out that while return on investment gives an indication on how well
the firm creates value from its investments, return on customer quantifies how
well company creates value from its customers. CRM enables companies to get a
better grip on the customer equity and offers a realistic indicator of the worth of
the

customers.

LIFE WITHOUT CRM

MORE ADMINISTRATION, LESS SELLING
An active sales team generates a flood of data. They can be out on the road
talking to customers, meeting prospects and finding out valuable information

16

but all this information gets stored in handwritten notes, laptops, or inside the
heads of your salespeople.
Details can get lost, meetings are not followed up promptly and prioritising
customers can be a matter of guesswork rather than a rigorous exercise based on
fact. And it can all be compounded if a key salesperson moves on.
"How you gather, manage, and use information will determine whether you win
or lose."Bill Gates
On top of this your customers may be contacting you on a range of different
platforms phone, email and social media. Asking questions, following up on
orders or complaining. Without a common platform for customer interactions,
communications can be missed or lost in the flood of information leading to an
unsatisfactory response to your customer.

Even if you do successfully collect all this data, you're faced with the challenge
of making sense of it. It can be difficult to extract intelligence. Reports can be
hard to create and waste valuable selling time. Managers can lose sight of what
their team are up to in reality, which means that they can't offer the right support
at the right time while a lack of oversight can also result in a lack of
accountability from the team.

17

IDENTIFY AND CATEGORISE LEADS

A CRM system can help you to identify and add new leads easily and quickly
and categorise them accurately. You can create customised pitch documents in
less time, cutting down on response time and enabling sales teams to move on to
the next opportunity.

With complete, accurate, centrally held information about clients and prospects,
sales staff can focus their attention and energy on the right

Increase referrals from existing customers

By understanding

your

customers

better, cross-selling

and

up-selling

opportunities become clear giving you the chance to win new business from
existing customers.
With better information you'll also be able to keep your customers happy with
better service. Happy customers are likely to become repeat customers, and
repeat customers spend more up to 33% more according to some studies.

18

Improve products and services

A good CRM system will gather information from a huge variety of sources
across your business and beyond. This gives you unprecedented insights into how
your customers feel and what they are saying about your organisation so you
can improve what you offer, spot problems early and identify gaps.
CRM and

the

Cloud

Computing Revolution
Perhaps the most significant recent development in CRM systems has been the
move into the cloud. Freed from the need to install software on hundreds or
thousands of desktop PCs and mobile devices, organisations worldwide are
discovering the benefits of moving data, software and services into a secure
online environment.
Work from anywhere
Cloud-based CRM systems such as Salesforce mean every user has the same
information, all the time. Your sales force out on the road can check data, update
it instantly after a meeting or work from anywhere. The same information is
available to anyone who needs it, from the sales team to the customer service
representatives.

19

Reduce costs
CRM can be quick and easy to implement. A cloud-based system doesn't need
special installation and there's no hardware to set up, keeping IT costs low and
removing the headache of version control and update schedules.

Generally, cloud-based CRM systems are priced on the number of users who
access the system and the kinds of features you need. This can be very costeffective in terms of capital outlay, and is also extremely flexible enabling you
to scale up and add more people as your business grows. Cloud-based CRM
platforms such as Salesforce are flexible in terms of functionality, too - you're
just paying for the range of features that are useful to you.

20

BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT

Objective: Business Relationship Management aims to maintain a positive
relationship with customers. ITIL Business Relationship Management identifies
the needs of existing and potential customers and ensures that appropriate
services are developed to meet those needs.

Processes
These are the Business Relationship Management sub-processes and their
process objectives:

21

Maintain Customer Relationships

Process Objective: To ensure that the service provider continues to

understand the needs of existing customers and establishes relationships
with potential new customers. This process is also responsible for
maintaining the Customer Portfolio.

Identify Service Requirements

Process Objective: To understand and document the desired outcome of a

service, and to decide if the customer's need can be fulfilled using an
existing service offering or if a new or changed service must be created.

Sign up Customers to Standard Services

Process Objective: To capture customer requirements and agree service

level targets with customers who request the provision of existing
standard services (no modifications to existing Supporting Services are
necessary in order to fulfill the customer's needs).

Customer Satisfaction Survey

Process Objective: To plan, carry out and evaluate regular customer

satisfaction surveys. The principal aim of this process is to learn about

22

areas where customer expectations are not being met before customers are
lost to alternative service providers.

Handle Customer Complaints

Process Objective: To record customer complaints and compliments, to

assess the complaints and to instigate corrective action if required.

Monitor Customer Complaints

Process Objective: To continuously monitor the processing status of

outstanding customer complaints and to take corrective action if required.

NATURE AND SCOPE OF CRM

The Customer is King! This credo is more powerful, relevant and true
today than ever before. In a truly customer driven economy, success depends on a
company's ability to be with the customer on a round the clock basis satisfying
all their product and service specific needs. Simply stated, Customer Relationship
Management (CRM) is about finding, getting, and retaining customers.

23

Customer Relationship Management is one of the hottest and most talked

about topics in the industry today and for good reason. Industry analysts recently
reported that CRM expenditures will grow grows year on year basis

CRM is all about building long term business relationships with your
customers. It is best described as the blending of internal business processes:
Sales, Marketing and Customer support with technology. CRM solutions
empower businesses to more efficiently and effectively manage the activities that
affect their relationship with their customers. The ultimate goal of CRM is to
meet and exceed customer expectations, create a positive customer experience
and build customer loyalty.

CRM changes all of this and represents a continuing evolution in

managing front office operations. With CRM, traditional departmental
applications for sales, marketing and customer service are consolidated into a
single unified system capable of managing the entire customer life cycle. This
approach allows employees throughout an organization to have immediate access
to a complete profile of important customer information. Organizations who are
implementing CRM solutions feel confident that providing access to this level of

24

information will assist their sales and support staff in better understanding the
needs and buying patterns of their customers.

CRM (customer relationship management) is an information industry term for

methodologies, software, and usually Internet capabilities that help an
enterprisemanage customer relationships in an organized way.

CRM is at the core of any customer-focused business strategy and

includes the people, processes, and technology questions associated with
marketing, sales, and service. In today's hyper-competitive world, organizations
looking to implement successful CRM strategies need to focus on a common
view of the customer using integrated information systems and contact center
implementations that allow the customer to communicate via any desired
communication channel.

What exactly is the definition of Customer Relationship Management?

Ask a dozen professionals, get a dozen different definitions. Here's a general
overview:

CRM is used to learn more about your key customers needs in order to develop a
stronger relationship with them.

25

Customer Relationship Management can be defined as a companies activities

related to increasing the customer base by acquiring new customers and meeting
the needs of the existing customers. CRM is about building partnerships with
your customers. It uses internal business processes from Sales, Customer Service
and Marketing.

The philosophy of CRM is the recognition that your long-term relationships with
your customers can be one of the most important assets of an organization,
providing competitive advantage and improved profitability

The most important part of CRM is the "customer-focus".

CRM uses technology, strategic planning and personal marketing

techniques to build a relationship that increases profit margins and productivity. It
uses a business strategy that puts the customer at the core of a companies
processes and practices. It requires this customer focused business philosophy to
support effective sales, marketing, customer service and order fulfillment.

Regardless of company size or industry, businesses have begun to

recognize the value and importance of customer retention and are embracing new
technology for automating customer service and support. For the new
millennium, it seems that the customer has finally become King

26

CHAPTER 3
RETAIL SECTOR AND ROLES

Retail industry is going through a paradigm shift in its structure, composition and
practices in India. Emergence of organized retailing in the recent past has
strongly influenced the lifestyle of every consumer. Increasing levels of
competition and spiraling demands of customers are posing serious challenges for
retaining customers. Be it a traditional grocery store from unorganized sector or a
chain of retail stores from organized sector, each one of them is finding out
innovative and superior ways to attract and keep customers for market share and
profitability. Managing effective relationships with customer is the key to achieve
sustainable

competitive

advantage

in

todays

business

environment.

Understanding and responding to cognitive and emotional expectations serve as

the core for developing, nurturing and sustaining lifelong relationships with
customers. CRM has been widely accepted and practiced as the most effective
marketing technique involving human and technical dimensions. It involves an all
round customer centricity and commitment of the entire organization to align its
people, process and technology to serve customers. The present paper provides
insights into behavioral dimensions of CRM in retailing and proposes valuable
implications for professionals.

27

In the pre development era, buyers ruled the market. As these buyers were short
in number and customers were more. The choice available was very less. Later
stage by stage development has changed the complete market scenario. Now
customers have a wide range of choice. These customers are now considered as
the King in the market. To persuade and convince this King is an important part
of marketing. Building and maintaining a healthy relation with this King will
determine the stand in this competitive market. Thus customer relationship
management has an important role. CRMs main aim is to develop long-term
trusting relationship with customers, distributors, suppliers and other parties in
marketing environment. Building a healthy relation with the customer is usually,
integral to small business units, like an owner of small corner shop, small
shopkeeper who has direct knowledge of all regular customers and become
familiar with their needs, likes, dislikes, bonding a loyal relationship. Customer
relationship management is a process whereby the seller & buyer join a strong
personal, professional, mutual profitable relationship overtime. This is nothing
new, what is new is that in todays market place emergence of internet &
associated influx of global customers paired with reduced human interaction
makes it impossible to build relationship with customers in traditional way. CRM
is implication of attained information, technology, process and enhance a healthy
relation with the customers.

28

The Indian retail business has shown tremendous phase of dramatic growth and is
one of the most promising industry today. Retail industry in India has become
modern which can be seen from the fact that there are multi storey malls, huge
shopping centers and sprawling complexes which offer food, shopping and
entertainment, and all under the same roof. Shopping in India has witnessed a
revolution with respect to the changing consumer buying behavior. Customer has
become a smart shoppers. They dont want to pay more for identical brands,
especially when service differences have diminished. In todays scenario where
customer has become king there customer relation management has become an
essential element of retail industry to secure the loyalty of customers. The
purpose of this study is to analyze the several components of Customer
Relationship Management used by retailer of Mumbai to attract the customers
and to gain their loyalty.

29

Figure Completing the CRM vision

30

We're not saying that the last decade's investment in CRM has been wasted. Quite
the contrary: what began as a solution for providing more efficient customer
transactions evolved into a process by which companies could foster more
meaningful customer interactions (see Figure 2). This was the right direction to
take. However, companies haven't reached the end of the CRM road. Today, the
challenge is to take this evolution one step farther - to focus on building lasting
and profitable customer dialogues at all interaction and transaction touch points
to build customer and brand value.
Figure Evolution of CRM

31

As CRM evolved, many companies assumed that just bolting on new technology
(e.g., client/server, call centers, salesforce automation software, data warehouses,
etc.) or adding new services would enhance customer relationships. This
assumption was as pernicious as it was false. After all, you can't sell what people
don't want to buy, no matter how efficient and service-oriented your sales
channel. And as for gathering customer insights, be careful what you wish for.
Many companies faced the unsettling paradox of having advanced data
availability and analytic techniques that quickly outpaced their ability to absorb
and apply the information. They were left with sophisticated tools that offered
little real value.

The belief is that the third wave of CRM will bring about the ultimate
transformation of customer experiences - not just by strengthening sales and
service or even promoting interactions with your customers - but by creating a
series of "intelligent conversations" that build over time into a long-term,
meaningful dialogue. In this next evolutionary phase of CRM, information will
be exchanged and acted on in real time. Consumer history will be recorded (and
remembered) and the expectations of both parties will be met. Naturally, not
every conversation will be profitable. But the series of conversations and the

32

ongoing knowledge transfer will continue to grow, creating a memorable and

differentiated customer experience, and, in the long run, a profitable relationship

ROLE OF MARKETING IN CRM

"CRM IS ONLY A TOOL, ATTITUDE IS EVERYTHING".

HEAD CRM & ERP, TATA INFOTECH

ROLE OF MARKETING IN CRM

To continuously attract and retain the most valuable customers, companies must
act aggressively to increase the economic value of both their brand and customer
relationships. In addition, they must sustain bottom-line performance in the face
of skyrocketing marketing costs. To realize these goals, companies must continue
their efforts to maximize their investments in the sales and service technologies
that help reach, understand and interact intelligently with customers. But they
must also extend this traditional scope of CRM to reach a higher standard of
excellence in three distinct disciplines: analytical, creative and operational
marketing.

33

Once these improved marketing processes are linked with core CRM capabilities,
companies will be able to drive seamless, consistent and real-time response
across marketing, sales and customer service. The result will be a sustainable
process that not only enables lasting customer relationships but also harnesses
that elusive construct: superior brand value.

Analytical Marketing drives market segmentation and identifies your most

profitable customers. Information from each customer interaction channel is
collected, analyzed and used to develop predictions of your individual customer's
behaviors.

34

Analytical marketing utilizes those processes and sophisticated technologies that

allow businesses to direct their overall marketing investment across the brand and
customer. In a sense, analytical marketing tools are the "nuts and bolts" of the
marketing engine.

Specifically, analytical marketing converts customer data, gathered at various

touch points, into relevant insights that direct market segmentation activities and
feed into more effective campaign design. Through predictive modeling,
analytics lead to a more robust understanding of customers and markets and an
improved ability to make strategic and operational decisions about customer
treatment. The ultimate outcome is increased profitability, based on customer
differentiation, and more informed decisions related to the development of
product, pricing, promotion, packaging, and channels.

Without analytics, companies will keep investing in CRM without ever knowing
where their money is having the greatest impact. In short, analytical marketing
puts customer insights to work for the organization and prevents the company
from delivering the wrong content to the wrong person at the wrong time.

35

Creative Marketing relies on analytical tools and customer insight capabilities to

improve marketing programs, optimize the overall marketing investment and
deliver the brand promise. As the number of customer channels has exploded, so
has the need for creative marketing, which involves all the activities associated
with building and sustaining a compelling brand and ensuring that customer
interactions reflect a satisfying brand experience.

In the past, creative marketing efforts have been applied to CRM efforts in much
the same way as technology. It's been far too easy for companies to develop a
host of messages - from ad campaigns to customer service representative scripts that are unintentionally inconsistent. Such inconsistent messages delivered via a
number of different channels - when coupled with poor understanding of why
brand and message consistency is so critical to the customer experience - often
produce fragmented experiences that frustrate the customer who probably won't
come back.

Fortunately, companies are changing the way they approach creative marketing.
By integrating its processes with those of analytical and operational marketing,
and by focusing on the total customer experience, creative marketing can now be
used to build a unified brand across all of a company's online and offline

36

channels. In other words, creative marketing is no longer considered an

"afterthought".

Operational Marketing relies on customer insight information to personalize

interactions, differentiate sales and service across segments, drive continuous
improvement across customer interaction processes and generate revenue lift.

When these marketing disciplines work in tandem with your existing sales and
service capabilities, your entire CRM effort becomes revitalized. Information
becomes dynamic. Insights become powerful barometers of customers' likes and
dislikes. Comprehensive marketing campaigns become targeted and compelling.
The result is a customer base that is pleased with the unique and personalized
interactions you provide. Customer loyalty rises, as does your brand value and,
ultimately, your revenue.

Its efforts encompass all the activities of data mining and data warehousing,
which continuously harvest customer information from a variety of contact
points. Leveraged by creative and analytical marketing capabilities, this
information is assessed and converted into meaningful insights that drive
ongoing, personalized marketing efforts. The goal of operational marketing is to
enable ongoing "conversations" with individual customers across all channels.

37

CRM TO ICRM (Integrated Customer Relationship Management)

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is developing into a major element

of corporate strategy for many organizations. CRM, also known by other terms
such as relationship marketing and customer management, is concerned with the
creation, development and enhancement of individualized customer relationships
with carefully targeted customers and customer groups resulting in maximizing
their total customer life-time value.

Industry leaders are now addressing how to transform their approach to customer
management. Narrow functionally-based traditional marketing is being replaced
by a new form of cross functional marketing - CRM. The traditional approach to
marketing has been increasingly questioned in recent years. This approach
emphasised management of the key marketing mix elements such as product,
price, promotion and place within the functional context of the marketing
department.

The new CRM approach, whilst recognising these key elements still need to be
addressed, reflects the need to create an integrated cross-functional focus on
marketing - one which emphasises keeping as well as winning customers. Thus
the focus is shifting from customer acquisition to customer retention and ensuring

38

the appropriate amounts of time, money and managerial resources are directed at
both of these key tasks. The new CRM paradigm reflects a change from
traditional marketing to what is now being described as customer management.

The adoption of CRM is being fuelled by a recognition that long-term

relationships with customers are one of the most important assets of an
organisation and that information-enabled systems must be developed that will
give them 'customer ownership'. Successful customer ownership will create
competitive advantage and result in improved customer retention and profitability
for the company.

In many companies there is still confusion as to what CRM is all about. To some
it is about a loyalty scheme, to some it is about a help desk. To others it is about a
relational data base for key account management and for others it is about mass
profiling the customer base without undertaking detailed segmentation.
Relatively few organisations have implemented an integrated approach, which
addresses all the key strategic elements of CRM. Only a small number of
businesses have a clear idea what should be done with information technology in
order to successfully implement CRM.

39

INTEGRATED CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT (ICRM)

The development of the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) marketing
practice has made more and more people realize the importance of strong
customer relationship in building sustainable competitive advantages in their
market competitions and in generating sustainable profits in the long run.
However, the currently popular CRM marketing practice often produces
disappointing outcomes. Surveys after surveys, a surprisingly high rate of failure
has been reported for CRM practices. The failure rate of CRM systems ranges
from 50% to over 80%. The major CRM system developers received much lower
Customer Satisfaction scores than companies in other industries did. The more
popular this marketing practice gets, the more people who realize that the current
CRM practice hardly manages customer relationship.

The current CRM practice was originated from a combination of database

technologies and database marketing (analytical techniques), so unavoidably, it
inherits database as its only focus. When it gets into the spotlight and becomes a
major marketing practice, its inherited characteristics become its limitations. It
incorrectly defines customer purchase and contact behaviors as customer
relationship, restricts its marketing scope within a company's database and
ignores customers needs by focusing on purchase correlation in a companys
database.

40

Any good customer relationship management practice should start by

answering the following 6 critical questions:
1.

What is customer relationship

2.

What drives customer relationship

3.

How to measure customer relationship

4.

Which customers should you build relationship with

5.

How to improve customer relationship

6.

How to develop effective customer relationship management strategies

However, no existing CRM system is able to answer (or is designed to answer)

these questions. Without clear answers to these critical questions, how could a
company know what customer relationship it needs to manage? How could it
know if it has a strong relationship with its customers under market competitions
and how could it know with which customers it needs to build strong relationship

To effectively manage customer relationship, one should follow the following

rules:

41

Rule 1: Building strong customer relationship should be set as the primary goal
of a companys marketing practice and all marketing functions should serve to
the enhancement of a companys customer relationship;

Rule 2: Customer relationship should be defined and constructed based on

customers basic needs. In the Customer Centric customer relationship
management practice, needs construct value and value determines customer
relationship;

Rule 3: Customer relationship should be measured and improved under market

competitions. Customer relationship is competitive and a company should
manage its Competitive Customer Relationship.

Rule 4: Customer relationship management practice should not be a sub-function

of a companys IT department. Customer relationship management should be an
INTEGRATED part of a companys marketing practices.

Integrated Customer Relationship Management (ICRM) is the latest marketing

strategy, which has developed to meet the challenges raised from our daily
marketing consulting services. It is our solution to overcome the limitations of the
current CRM practice. ICRM provides a theoretical framework to define and to
construct customer relationship based on customers needs under market
competitions. ICRM also provides a practical guideline of a standard process for
effective customer relationship management.

42

ICRM is based on the very fact that by building a strong customer relationship, a
company can build sustainable competitive advantages in the long run. Therefore,
in ICRM practice, building strong customer relationship is set as the primary goal
of a companys marketing practices and it requires all marketing functions in a
company to serve to the enhancement of its customer relationship.

ICRM puts customer needs in the center of marketing practices and defines
customer relationship based on customers basic needs under market
competitions. It integrates all major marketing functions in the process of
building strong customer relationship.

E-CRM
The rules of the game have changed for CRM. Customer demand for increased
value, greater convenience, and more control over products and services, along
with heightened pressure from competitors, have increased customer acquisition
costs and decreased customer and brand loyalty. At the same time, advancements
in technology have enabled the cost-effective distribution of huge amounts of
customer data, the delivery of customized products, and the efficient use of
interactive channels. These technology developments are creating major

43

opportunities to collect and use customer information to gain a better

understanding of customer needs and to strengthen customer relationships. To
take advantage of these opportunities and address the escalating demands of
customers, companies are shifting the focus of their efforts to adopt a customercentric approach. Product excellence, innovation, and operational efficiency are
still important; however, successful companies are building on these existing
business strengths as they shift their attention to their customers.

E-CRM refers to the set of activities that enable a firm to utilize the power of the
Internet and the electronic medium to implement CRM. Firms all around the
world have realized the potential of the Internet as a medium for CRM and have
been actively pursuing e-CRM strategies.

To achieve positive results like these from their eCRM efforts, companies must
develop a comprehensive strategy for managing and utilizing customer
knowledge. This strategy should include three key objectives:

Know Your Customer

44

Reach Your Customer

Grow Your
Customer

CHANGING
NEEDS

Figure --- Key Aspects of e-CRM

Know Your Customer

Know Your Customer is about understanding your individual customer's

value and needs. This understanding comes only from collecting information
that customers provide in their interactions with your company, and developing a
360-degree view of customer behavior across all touch points. As you begin a
dialogue with individual customers, you create a learning relationship with your
customers; each interaction becomes an opportunity to build and extend your
relationship with that customer. The more extensive the learning relationship, the
more invested the customer becomes in the relationship and the more difficult it
will be for the customer to switch to a competitor.

45

Reach Your Customer

Reach Your Customer is about reaching the right customers with the right
offer at the right time through the right channel. Based on your knowledge of
each customer, you are able to reach specific customers with targeted offers,
information, products, and services. You reach each customer with a personalized
message based on his or her needs, behaviors, and value.

Grow Your Customer

Grow Your Customer refers to your company's ability to effectively execute

Marketing strategies based on your knowledge of customer share and
customer lifetime value. You must use scarce investment dollars to target your
efforts to your best, most valuable customers. Increasing the total value of your
customer base by retaining and growing your best customers, is significantly less
expensive than trying to generate the same amount of value by acquiring new
customers. Focusing on your best customers requires you to re-examine and reallocate total Marketing and sales investments from less profitable customers and
the acquisition of new customers.
A complete e-CRM architecture would comprise of the following components

46

1. Sales Force Automation (SFA)

2. E-Mail Management System (EMS)
3. Interactive Voice Response (IVR)
4. Knowledge Management (KM)
5. Call Centers
6. Instant online querying through Chat

Managing a full range of customer relationship involves two related

objectives
1.

Provide the firm and its customer-dealing personnel, a complete singular

view of each and every customer

2.

To provide the customer with the same singular uniform level of service in

every interaction with the company through every channel.

The above-mentioned proposition can be illustrated with a simple

example. A person dealing with a bank should be able to get the same level of
service whether he contacts the bank through phone, the Internet or in person.
This implies that all details about the person and his past transactions need to be
consistent and available vis--vis every channel.

47

Additionally, IT is expected to support the selection and

implementation of the best management tools that not only
provide an integrated solution, but also leverage prior and future
IT investments. For both IT and Marketing, resource constraints
make it critical that the technology solution enables Marketing to
manage its increased responsibilities with minimal intervention
and assistance from IT

48

CHAPTER 4
CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP ANALYSIS

POLICIES OF CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT

CRM is a combination of policies, processes, and strategies implemented by an

organization to unify its customer interactions and provide a means to track
customer information. It involves the use of technology in attracting new and
profitable customers, while forming tighter bonds with existing ones

Customer relationship management is an emerging tool that enables marketers to

maintain their presence in the dynamic marketing environment. Customer
relationship management is high on the corporate agenda. Recent research carried
out by Business Intelligence reveals that six out of ten companieshavealready
started out on the CRM journey.

CRM needs a deep understanding of the customer expectations, attitude &

behaviour through a well organized& maintained customer database & innovative
customer strategies. The goal of CRM is to ensure customer satisfaction &
delight at every level of interface with the company (Pahuja&Verma, 2008).Key
Principle of Customer Relationship Management

49

The most challenging and exciting time to live in is on the cusp of change. And
that is where India is today. This huge, multicultural country India is transforming
from a socialist economy to a consumption led creative economy. The scope and
depth of change that is taking place across the India defies description .This
Change provides both a humongous challenge and a gigantic opportunity for
marketers and retailers.

Retailing is not only an important aspect of the economic structure but very much
a part of our lives. Though trading of goods has been in existence since the older
days, it is only in the recent past that the buying and selling of goods have
become moredominated activity. In fact, today retailing is evolving into a global,
high tech business.

50

M and Organized Retail Sector

Products are easy to copy, services are harder to copy but the learned relationship
that a customer has with or his supplier is nearly impossible to reproduce. It
increases profitability of the retail business in five key ways:

Customer loyalty translates into reduced price competition

Customer information allows companies to target profitable customers.
Predictable buying patterns lower inventory holding costs, spoilage, and

distribution costs.
Customer loyalty reduces advertising and marketing costs.
Customer loyalty extends products life cycle.

Penetrating Customer Model

Descriptive Method was undertaken to conduct the research.To attain information
about CRM & its competitive advantage,

LARGE DISCOUNTS/ EXCHANGES/ SCHEMES

The remarkable discount offered by these malls and retails outlets has induced the
customers on a larger scale. The customers gets a large amount of flat discounts
on the product purchased. The loyal customers are intimated from time to time
about the various discounts and exchange schemes offered by the outlets and
malls. These malls offer extra special discounts on weekends and special
religious and national holidays.

LOYALTY POINT PROGRAMMES

51

Shopping Outlets like Shopper Stop, Pantaloons etc, issue loyalty cards to
customers. These cards are debited with points on every purchase made. The
customer can redeem these points from time to time purchase and available
various discount offers. These customers are also given an additional discount
Benefit during sale period. The names and details of these customers are
registered and are followed up by the malls through SMS and Phone calls from
time to time and on various occasions.

LARGE VARIETIES OF PRODUCT UNDER ONE ROOF Retails and

shopping malls have varieties of branded quality products under one roof e.g.
Shirts and trousers of various brands like Louis Philippe, Vanheusen, Pan
America, Indigo nation, Peter England etc are available under one roof. The
customer can prefer his brand or can prefer as per his budgeted cost the shirt or
trouser he wants. The product purchased does not compromise the quality. Thus
people prefer purchasing from these malls.

SPECIAL OFFERS & PERSONALIZED SERVICES Various shopping malls

prefer providing personalized services and special offers on various occasions.
These malls give special offer like flat 50%, 30% etc. on products on occasions
like customers birthday or anniversaries , wedding etc. These malls send warm
greetings, emails and personal calls on such occasions which ultimately induce
the customer and maintain a loyalty towards the firm

52

INFRASTRUCTURE Facilities like lifts, escalators, parking, food malls, etc.

are provided by various outlets. In comparison with the other stores, customers
usually find these problems while shopping at other stores. These infrastructural
facilities make it flexible and simple for the customer to shop at such malls.
Cities like Mumbai where parking is a major problem, it has been eased by
providing underground parking in the malls

QUALITY PRODUCTS AT LESS PRICE Quality is in high demand by

customers today. The customer wants the best at cheapest cost. These malls
provide a wide range of quality products at the cheapest price. These malls give
special price off on occasions, weekends, other special days. To attract
customers ,these malls also keeps one day a week when products are offered at
low prices. Eg: Big Bazar offers all its products on a special discounted price on
Wednesday. The customers are satisfied by these quality products with best price
offs.

TIME SAVINGS People in world today have become very busy. They are just
focused on attaining things at a fast speed. They have a very little time to move
from one place to another to shop things therefore they want things under one
roof. So these malls have a large demand. Time saving factor has been covered by
these outlets and plazas.

53

FREE OFFERS, SAMPLES, GIFTS To attain a competitive advantage, stores

and outlets today provide free gifts and vouchers on purchase of products till a
specified amount. The customer to get an added advantage and attain various
price off makes purchases. Eg. Mega mart offered Cherokee watch on total
purchase of amount exceeding Rs.6500 and then a Reebok sunglass, watch and
travel bag on purchase of products above Rs. 10500/-., 25% customer in this case
shopped and got the free gifts. Stores and outlets today also provide various
sample free gift on purchase of various products, thus inducing and keeping the
customer happy

CONSUMERS CONTESTSVarious stores and outlets today arrange various

contests for the consumers. The consumer part take and attain various
opportunities to win various goodies and gifts. Eg.BigBazaar, arranged a quiz
competition for few customers on various product knowledge. The winners were
awarded various free vouchers. These contests in various firms build a long-term
relation with the young and the kids are also induced towards these mall and
stores.

FINANCING FACILITIES Stores and outlets gives a wide range of financial

facilities. Croma has made tie ups with Bajaj finance to provide 0% interest loan
on various consumers durable products. These financing facilities have made, the
customers remain loyal and customers are ready to shop and visit again and
again.

54

AFTER SALE SERVICES After sales services is another area where customer
focuses on. Only purchasing the product wont make the customer satisfied, he is
keen about the after sale services provided by these firms. After sales service like
demo, repairs, free services, feedbacks etc, makes the customer happy and
induced. These keeps the firms customers loyal and emotionally attached to the
firm.

CUSTOMERS LOYALTY: CRM helps the firm to maintain a long term healthy
relationship with the customers. It helps the customer to be an important part and
contributor of this firm. The customers are induced by the various price off,
discounts, exchanges, schemes etc. provided by the firm. The special discounts,
personalized services attract the customers more and more. Technological
advancement helps in intimating the customers who are there by happy and
remain loyal

LONG-TERM RELATION RESULTING PROFIT: The main motive of every

business is ultimately profit, and this motive cant be met unless adequate
customers are available, to maintain customers, services and facilities given by
the firm should be such that the customer get emotionally bended with the firm.
This binding makes the relationship of customers with the firm strong and
healthy. A healthy and strong bended relationship contributes a profit to the firm.

55

Customers having good relations pay any amount thus helping the firm to attain
its profit.

COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE: CRM is an important factor in todays market

Scenario. Maintaining the customers with the firm helps the firm attain
competitive advantage over other firms. Malls and stores today are focusing on
giving the best personalized services through various sources and media. To
maintain the customers and be at the top of competition.

LOWER COST ON ADVERTISEMENTS/GENERATING CUSTOMERS:

CRM helps in maintaining an effective, efficient, enthusiastic and ethical long
term relationship. These customers are part marketers for the firm. The higher
marketing costs associated with generating interest in new customers are opposed
as that of already informed customers. The cost estimated for attracting new
customers is six times high that of maintaining existing customers. Implication of
CRM has thus reduced and helped in maintaining loyal customers.

56

SHOWING SEGREGATION OF CUSTOMERS AS PER AREA OF

INTEREST

USING MCOMMERCE A VITAL TOOL FOR CRM IN ORGANIZED

FORMAT

CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS THROUGH MOBILE CRM IN ORGANIZED

Mobile Customer Relationship Management (mCRM) system is one of the recent

advancements in CRM systems. Recent years, customers using mobile phone
have presented a very fast growing on value added services, SMS and
information services. Advances in technology have changed the way in which the

57

retail sector conducts business and are increasingly providing customer with
greater conveniences. The purpose of this paper a study on managing customer
relationships through mCRM in organized retail outlets discusses about strategies
adopted and advancements mCRM work effectively. Mobile CRM promotes
satisfaction to customers through the mobile medium on communication. The
research paper resulted in Mobile customer relationship management is an
efficient tool that will make great adjustments, savings and benefits Mobile-CRM
system very low costs and a great impact on the customer satisfaction for
organized retail outlets. Retailers gain a competitive advantage and improve
customer relationship management by Mobile CRM.

Mobile-CRM services play an important role in a new trend which aims to create
and manage personalized customer relationships. The performance of the
retailing sector for the past few years is outstanding and witnesses a huge
revamping exercise, significantly contributed by the growth of the organized
retail services. Rapid urbanization, exposure to large number of foreign brands
and changing lifestyle and preferences has contributed to the growth of retailing
in India

Advances in technology have changed the way in which the retail sector conducts
business and are increasingly providing customers with greater conveniences. It
is also increasingly imperative to provide CRM activities through media that
customers are interested in interacting with the company. In practice, the

58

development of digital channels and their consideration to create unique and

positive experiences for customers by mixing aspects of product, service, brand
and communication has led to a situation where several companies and industries
have started utilizing the mobile medium to promote CRM activities.

Communication, for the purpose of building and maintaining customer

relationships between company and its customer.
The communication would be about sales, marketing, and customer
service activities conducted through mobile medium between the
company and the customer.

Communication can be initiated by either the company or the customer.

Communication

thorough

SMS

(short

message

service),

MMS

(multimedia service), JAVA applications and browsing.

One of the parties engaged in the communication must be human and,
naturally, communicate through mobile medium.
Mobile medium is seen as a complementary channel for CRM activities
instead of seeing it as a substitute of traditional ones

59

ADVANTAGE OF MOBILE CRM

Mobile CRM system does Not require you to carry any loyalty
membership cards in your wallet.
Mobile CRM system Increase customer satisfaction and increase
productivity.
Mobile CRM

More

efficient

processes

and

improved

internal

communication.
Mobile CRM, customer are many retail outlets loyalty program can
participate through individual mobile phone.
Mobile CRM system Improved information transparency and data quality.
Mobile CRM system Low costs for customer relationship management.

Impact of Technology Today in CRM Problem Major key issues impact on

customer satisfaction faced problem in CRM system.

Major key issues-

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.

Understanding individual customers

Customers wish product and service round the clock
Speed of response
Personalized
Customization
Loses membership cards & rewards points
Advertising & Promotion cost high
High cost Customer Relationship Management

60

Concept of Mobile Customer Relationship Management (mCRM) has emerged,

as a one-to one marketing strategy focused on services built for individual
customers in an increasingly mobile CRM. There are many benefits to using a
mobile CRM system. To begin, it allows remote employees to use mobile
devices, such as tablets and Smartphones, to access, update, and interact with
customer data whenever they want, wherever they are. Everyone in the company
who touches the customer in any way uses the CRM system.

Mobile customer relationship management (mobile CRM) is a type of customer

relationship management application designed to be executed, operated and
accessed through mobile platforms. Mobile CRM enables organizations to add,
edit and manage their interaction and relationships with current or prospective
customers through mobile applications on handheld mobile devices and tablet
PCs.

Advanced features and application mobile customer relationship management :

Marketing, sales, services

61

 Mobile phones replace physical loyalty cards and provide personalized

mobile services.
Rewards point status information sent directly to Mobile phones.
Mobile apps better ways product characteristics and product price,
discount and information finding store location and account managed
directly to mobile phones.
Payment conformation to help credit/debit card holder provide
information is sent directly to mobile phones.
Advertising and promotional information is sent directly to mobile
phones.
Mobile phones used to capture, manage and redeem coupons and
discounts.

Retail player adopted advancement Mobile CRM system

62

Presently retail players adopted Mobile CRM system using by marketing tool and
mobile based loyalty program, mobile apps & retailers to customers provided
customized & personalized services.
1. mobile apps work presently retail player adopted Mobile CRM: Dominos
pizza , caf coffee day, pizza hut
2. Mobile based loyalty program work presently retail player ;
Peter England, John players, Pepe jeans, Adidas, Woodland, Reebok, Puma, Reid
& Taylor, Lee, Gini&jony ,Vanheusen,ColorPlus.

3. Snapshot mobile apps dominos pizza retail players

Snapshot for mobile apps caf coffee day & pizza hut

63

 Mobile-CRM System No hardware, like card readers or scanners are

necessary at the POS investment for retailers is low.
Speed of response and understanding each individual one of the major key
issues CRM
Mobile-CRM has emerged as a popular business strategy in todays
competitive environment help of mobile CRM, retailers can gather
information about the customers needs and preferences. Possibility
ofdata collection for CRM.
Mobile-CRM related mobile services can provide more timely and
relevant information to customers, increasing customer loyalty and
retention.
Fast Communications are important for the purpose of building and
maintaining customer relationships between retailers and its customers.
Customers largely select their retail outlets based on how greater
conveniences, understand customer needs better and suitable responses
customer inquires transactions, complaints and problem solved.
Customers prefer services can provide more timely and relevant
information to customers. It is also found that customer are demanding
personalized service when and where they need them.
No plastic or paper card is necessary & No need to carry multiple bulky
membership cards.

64

RESULT
In this study, we found that that efficiency, convenience and personalization,
customization are the most important of retailers customers. Analyzed retailers
ways of build good relationship with customer provided m-coupons & discount,
mobile based membership program, promotions & advertising SMS, mobile apps
and customization product demanding and With a technological in wireless
networks development, 3G is a part of life and 4G is coming in the near future. A
well mobile infrastructure is implemented through the mobile medium to increase
customer satisfaction and build long term relationship to customer through
Mobile CRM.

RESEARCH ANALYSIS

Percentage of Target Income of customer for retail out let in Mumbai

65

There are 27% of the organised retail outlets in Malls which are targeting the high
income consumer segment, and then it is followed by the medium income
consumer segment (23%) being targeted by the retail stores in Mumbai . Only
10% of the retail stores are targeting very high income consumer segment. Some
of the stores which are targeting very high income consumer segment are: Flying
Machine, Provogue etc.

Percentage of retail stores collecting customer data:

From the responses given by the 30 retail stores it is found that 80% of the
organized
retail stores are heavily relying on the constructing customers' database to let
their CRM system work effectively.

On the other hand only 20% of the organized retail stores say that they are not
collecting data and constructing the customers' database.

66

These facts indicate that there exists a trend of maintaining customers' database to
maintain further relationship with the customers. These retail stores are having an
added advantage over the other players in the retail industry which are not
maintaining customers' database.

Percentage of type of information collection by retail stores

About 23% of the total retailers require the personal information of the customers
and
the same number of the retailer also collect the all types of the mentioned data
relating to the customer.
The above % data are based on the total number of frequencies for each of the
factor of the information relating to the customers.
The total number of 12.31% of the retailers who collects only the occupation
relating information also collects the personal information of the customers.
These % figures are not supposed to be in exclusive manner.

67

Different ways used to collect customer data:

43% retailers prefer to use feedback forms to collect
the customers' information. The simple reason is that it not only provides the
customers' personal information but also provide the customers'' views in the
form of feedbacks regarding their service and product quality etc.
36% of the retail outlets prefer to collect customersregardinginformation through
the entry form.12% retailer use bill records to collect the customers' information.
These are desired by those retailers who want to have to records of only those
customers who make purchase at their retail stores. Only 9% of the organised
retail stores exercise all the methods of collecting customers' information.

CRM software status of organized retail stores:

68

67% per cent of the organised retail outlets are using computerized CRM system
to have a smooth CRM process and an added advantage over the other players in
the industry. But there also exists contrasting figure of 13% retailers who say that
they don't require any kind of the computerized CRM system.

They believe manually process the data. The retail stores in Mumbai who don't
have CRM system at present but are willing to implement it in their organization
amounts to a handsome number of 17%.Only 03% of the total surveyed retail
outlets in Mumbai assert to have ordered the CRM system to the organization for
the effective implementation of the CRM principles and the strategies.

Percentage of the uniformity of the implemented CRM software system:

The 70% of total retail stores who have implemented the CRM system in their
organization say that CRM software system is uniformly implemented
nationwide. All the features and customers' data collection methods are same for
all the outlets of their retail firm are same. Whereas only 30% of 67% retail stores
have their own exclusive CRM software systems.

69

Retailers views about the importance of CRM in sales:

Total 77% of the organised retailers strongly agreed that CRM is very important
in maximization of sales. This point of view of retailers about CRM'srole in sales
generation reflects that without effective CRM implementation in the retail store
the retailers would not be able to achieve their target goals and they will remain
illusive.

On the other part only 3% of the retailers were neutral on the importance of CRM
in sales. These facts say that CRM is anonymously considered as the key aspect
of the sales generation tools but the level of the impact if CRM may very strong
or average on sales of the retail stores.

70

Retailers view about attending the customer:

Managers of the retail stores of Udaipur are giving less personal touch to the
consumers as only 7% of the retailers believe in personally communicating with
the customers. Only 3% of the retailers say that they do not attend the customers
personally as they provide
self service to the customers and when customers face any problem then they
help them.

71

Different ways to build good relationship with customer;

Almost all of the retailers of Mumbai are using various mean to build a good
relationship with the customers. Festival offers, Regular feedbacks and after sales
services constitute the major part of the practices used to build a healthy
relationship with the customers.

There are only 8% of the retailers who are making the use of all kind of the
practices to have the faith of the customers in them.

Retailers view about customer complaints regarding their product and

services:

Only 23% retailers said that the customers never complain.

72

But this per cent is very low which reflect that in Mumbai 77% retailers are
facing complaints of the consumers regarding their products and services and
they are not providing up to the mark services and products to the consumers
though the complaints may be rare and few.

The total number of 40% retailers admit that there are rare chances that the
customers complain about their products because these try to satisfy the
customers up to their best level. 37% of the total retailers admit that sometimes
there may be faults in the products and services provided to the consumers but
only few consumers complain depending on the impact and level of the fault and
defect in the product.

Percentage of assessing change needs in product :

16.67% retailers thinks that they always try to provide what the customers desire
and for this they daily asses any change from the customers, who visit their retail
store, regarding the product enhancement. 33.33% and 20% retailers take the

73

view of customers, often and rarely respectively, regarding any change in the
product and services they provide.
There is a handsome number (30%) of the retailers who say that they are bound
to offer what the parent company supplies. The exclusiveness of the store restricts
them to offer what they produce.

Percentage of special schemes offered by the retailers:

15% of the total retailers are very aggressive in offering the special schemes to
the customers and they offers all schemes like heavy discounts, free product with
special purchase, gifts and bumper prizes, any other schemes like festival offers
etc. to attract the customers and to have maximum footfalls. There are 17%
organised retail store in Udaipur which not offering any of the special schemes to
the customers. The reasons vary from the retailer to retailers. Some of the
retailers say that they incur high production cost and their products' quality is

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much higher than the products offered by the competitors, so why to use these
cheap gimmicks.

Various ways by retailer to maintain customer loyalty:

Only about 9% retail stores are making the use of all the methods of the building
customer loyalty like guarantee and response forms, accepting credit/ debit cards,
mail orders, loyalty cards, and credit sales.

The maximum number of 33.33% retailers focus on accepting credit/debit cards

as higher income segments and the foreign customers prefer to use the
debit/credit cards to make purchase.Guarantee and response forms and credit
sales are also given high weightage (about 21% and 18% respectively).Loyalty

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cards and acceptance of mail orders are least in trend in the tier II city like
Mumbai

Retailers sending greeting cards to the customer:

The graph shows that 80% of the organised retailers believe in to be in touch with
thecustomers. They send festival greeting, birthday greetings, and anniversary
greeting to their customers especially loyal ones. Festival greetings constitute a
major part of these greeting cards. Reason being is that along with these festival
greeting cards these retailers can also send the special offers of schemes of the
specific customers only.

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CHAPTER 5
CONCLUSION & SUGGESTIONS

Customer relationship management is highly exercised in the industry like

hospitality, services industry etc. but it is having equal importance in the retail
industry also. The customers don't take a single second when it comes to change
the preference and break the loyalty for an organization, in such a situation it the
customer relationship management of the organization which will compel the
customers to visit the retail outlet again and again.

Based on the findings & observations, of the Customer Relationship Management

Practices in Retail Sector, the following suggestions will give boost to the
retailing:

Retail stores should keep the purchase record of the customers along with
the personal information of the customers. It would provide them a way
analyze the buying behavior of their customers.

The management of the retail store should give a personal touch to the
customers. It will encourage the customers to make frequent visit to the
retail store. It also helps in building personal relationship with the
customers leading to the higher level of the customer loyalty.

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The management of the retail store should provide special training to the
sales staff of the organization to keep a healthy and friendly relationship
with the customers.

Timely feedback from the customers should be taken by the retail store it
would make the customers realize that they are important for the growth
of the organization.

Keeping in mind the diversity and the innumerable opportunities that our city
offers, we have devised a multiple array of ideas and solutions that are uniquely
Indian. From small kiosks that serves the average Indian with snacks and food
that cater to local Indian
taste whenever and wherever he wants, to large scale formats that will cater to
every need and requirement of homemaker, Thus we are implementing concepts
that will ultimately help it achieve its vision of delivering "Everything,
Everywhere, Every time, for every Indian consumer in the most profitable
manner."

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