The Role of Multichannel

Integration in CRM

Adrian Payne and Pennie Frow

Industrial Marketing Management, 33 (2004), 527-538

1
• CRM is a management approach that
seeks to create, develop, and enhance
relationships with targeted customers to
maximize customer value, corporate
profitability and shareholder value.
• CRM is oftern associated with utilizing
information technology to implement
relationship marketing strategies.

2
 5 key cross-functional CRM
processes
1. Strategy development
2. Value creation process
3. Multi-channel integration process
4. Information management process
5. Performance assessment

3
 Channel options
1. Sales force
2. Outlets
3. Telephony
4. Direct marketing
5. E-commerce
6. M-commerce

4
 CRM Channel Strategies
• Mono-channel provider (First Direct Bank)
• Customer segment channel (Zurich Financial
Services)
• Graduate account management (B2B
companies case)
• Channel migrator (EasyJet)
• Activity-based channel (Dell)
• Integrated multichannel: seek to capture all
customer information across all channels and
integrate it within a single data repository.

5
 Strategic CRM
• The channels need to be considered in the
context of the whole interaction over the life
cycle (pre-sale, sale, post-sale) of the customer
relationship (not just in terms of the sales
activity).
• 3 stages of customer relationship: acquisition,
consolidation, enhancement.
• Short product lifecycle -> offer stream of
products tailored to most valuable customers

6
 Customer Experience (CE)
• High quality experience vs. emotional
goodwill vs. loyalty
• Channel experience needs to be
considered:
– Typical and perfect CE within channel
– Typical and perfect CE across channel
– How to sustain and improve the cusomer
experience within channel, across channel,
and substitute an existing channel for better
ones
7
 Technology in improving CE
• Caller line identification (CLI)
• Rule-based systems
• Interactive voice response (IVR)
• Computer-telophony integration (CTI)

8
 Develop a Multi-channel Strategy
• Clear Objectives
– Improve the CE
– Increase account coverage
– Improve revenue growth
– Decrease operating expenses
– Utilize full skills and resources of our business and employees
• Understand customer and channel touchpoints
• Review of industry structure and channel options
• Channel usage patterns
• Channel economics
• Integrated channel management strategy