Introduction
Customer relationship management is a critical key player in modern business management. This strategy aims at analyzing the relationship of the organization and its customers bearing in mind that customers form the basis of any successful organization. Building a successful customer relationship management plan in any organization can be a complicated process bearing in mind that the process requires the organizations to come up with steps of actualizing this plan. Therefore, the plan should focus on evaluating matching goals between the organization and its customers, forming effective customer communication, and developing positive feelings for them.
Discussion
Problem statement
Concerning the case study of the Startech CRM system, the CRM strategy of this company has various challenges and issues that can be identified. With the increased use of CRM systems, there is also a significant increase of problems related to implementing the systems. Even though the business might seem profitable at the start, it might face problems in the future. The case shows that the company has a poor data management system when implementing these customer relationship management strategies. This is the case where the workers might assume that they are integrating the CRM strategy while not in a real sense.
Maintaining, evaluating, and applying data is of significance to the success of the strategy. This is the case where top managers might come up with problems or issues affecting their departments and, in this case, hiring. Still, they later found out there is a lack of data to analyze the existing management and align the issues and challenges according to the existing workforce. The failure of technology integration is also a factor that can be attributed to the problems in the company, as in the case where the methods used to analyze data are not connected. Therefore the flow of data is poor, and hence some departments may not have sufficient data to fuel their implementation processes.
Therefore, it is evident that the company staff does not have full access to the information necessary to support customer relationship management activities. Also, those involved should fully understand the CRM system that will enable them to maintain a high level of customer service (Andersen & Johansen, 2016). The role of leadership is also another factor that affects the implementation of customer relationship management. The Leadership model is part of the CRM behavior theory applied in management of customer relationships. This is the case where issues of implementation are handled by mid-level staff bearing in mind that they have less knowledge and may be limited by the availability of information. The leadership process is a major factor that, if not handled properly, reduces the motivation of workers, and therefore the implementation process is not achieved.
Alternatives
In my perspective, there is a dire need to involve workers and staff in training. Training is an important process that the company can use instead of hiring new workers. This move is important, especially with the company’s move to implement a modern CRM system, and therefore involving employees in early training is significant as the company will grow with trained workers who, in turn, will make the process of customer relationship management effective (Friday et al., 2018). This process can also be done by picking the key personnel in each department directly interacting with the system and involving them in thorough training. In return, the trained staff are expected to train their fellow staff hence stimulating teamwork.
Leadership as a major factor of CRM behavior theory and a major issue in the management and implementation of the CRM system should be an inclusive process where every employee is involved in the decision process. The business can align the expected achievements with the workers’ efforts through training. In the process, the business can determine the necessity of hiring new workers. Therefore, the business should educate its staff on the role and significance of the CRM system and align the system’s objectives with those of the organization and contribute to the wholesome achievement of the goals of the customer relationship management system.
The second-best alternative that the company should consider in evaluating the deployment method of the CRM strategy (Guerola-Navarro et al., 2021). The process of deploying a CRM strategy involves the coordination of the organization’s resources coupled with the involvement of the staff. Therefore the company should consider coming up with a committed customer relationship management team that is inclusive of the executives of the company, owners of the company, IT department as well as the staff that is involved in customer support to understand the problems and challenges that face them in achieving effectiveness of the plan.
Through this team, the company can also aid the company in coming up with better ways of boosting productivity. In other words, the deployment type that a business uses is key to achieving its objectives. Therefore, evaluation is key to gauge the current strategy’s productivity and understand if the deployment type fits the company.
Recommendations
One of the important aspects of customer analysis is customer segmentation. The company should consider using Pareto’s law, the 80:20 rule. The company can categorize Customers into three based on the principle. The first 20% accounts for 80% of the company’s turnover. The second 20% of customers account for 80% of the company’s profits. Finally, 20% of customers account for 80% of the service and supply problems that occur to the company. It is, therefore, recommendable that the company understands the category of its customers and therefore comes up with management strategies. The company should consider the customers who get the highest satisfaction from their products. These are the customers that market the company; therefore, the company should nurture and maintain these customers.
The second most is considering the ‘moments of truth,’ the customers’ interactions with the staff. This issue is subject to the modern CRM theory that focuses on the integration of the customer. Therefore, they can develop conclusions based on their experiences, especially considering their expectations (Ngo et al., 2018). A customer’s expectations towards the services and products that a company offers can be achieved or, on another occasion, can be overdone or disappointed. Therefore based on the customers’ expectations, the experiences may be positive or negative. Therefore, the company should consider these moments and focus on correcting and bettering the areas highlighted in the ‘negative moments of truth.’
These moments should therefore be a chance of improvement to the company, and therefore chances of repeating mistakes should not be allowed. Continuous actions should be undertaken to prevent repetition. Customer relationship management relies on the ability of the company to identify mistakes and make efforts to correct the mistakes. Hence, customers can see the company’s ability to manage quality (Dalla Pozza, Goetz & Sahut, 2018). According to the CRM theory the loyalty of customers is attributed to the ability of the company to observe poor service issues and rectify the issue. In that case, the loyalty of the customer is elevated.
Implementation plan
Some of the notable actions that can be derived from the Startech implementation plan are; first, the company is the better performance subject to the upgrade of the company’s CRM strategy. The performance can also be attributed to converting the company’s platform from the local platform to a more modernized cloud platform. The platform, therefore, comes with improved factors of increased efficiency and effectiveness that will ensure the company achieves optimum customer relationship management subject to the modern CRM theory.
The plan is incomplete as it fails to highlight the approach used to manage and maintain a good customer experience. Therefore, I can’t entirely agree with the company’s implementation plan because the company fails to consider certain issues in this process. An important issue is that of training and deployment plan, which essential factors are contributing to the successful implementation of CRM strategy (Anaam et al., 2018). In my perspective, I would consider implementing a plan that considers the company’s resources and, at the same time, considers the inclusion of every stakeholder of the company involved in customer service.
The implementation process
- Updating the sales data and process will involve updating existing systems to match the upcoming CRM strategy. The information will be kept ready for the CRM team to use.
- Setting up training for the staff on the upcoming plan; the success of the implementation lies on the staff, and therefore, it is important to train the staff so that they know the application and management of the system (Dewnarain, Ramkissoon & Mavondo, 2021). This process includes the training on collecting feedback and understanding the ‘moments of truth’ of the customers and therefore understanding, analyzing, and formulating improvement strategies.
- I am dividing the roles of each company’s staff in the success of the plan’s implementation.
The experts will be a team of individuals who will ensure that the plan runs efficiently in the company without failure. The team will also ensure that any errors observed are rectified immediately.
The employees will play the biggest role in the success of the plan. The plan hopes to use committed workers to ensure that the system’s operations run smoothly without fail.
Corporate management will be run by a managing director who will oversee the implementation plan’s activities and layout an example to other employees. The individual should also be able to formulate constructive CRM strategies.
Departmental heads will ensure that various company departments achieve the expected goals concerning the implementation plan. They will also be in the frontline of actualizing the CRM strategies and evaluating performance.
- Exploit support and customer success resources; the company’s CRM plan hopes to shift into offers support, which the implementation plan hopes to exploit (Chatterjee, Ghosh & Chaudhuri, 2020). The company also will look for external assistance through hiring to ensure that the CRM strategy is implemented effectively.
- Moving data; the plan will move the existing data into the upcoming system in small bits, providing the company with time to observe the system’s changes and provide the staff with time to adapt to the new system.
- Testing the new system; together with the team, the plan will test the new system’s workability and effectiveness and provide the staff a chance to interact with the new system fully.
- Finalizing on the system; the plan hopes to finally integrate the system in the company’s system, including moving all the data from the existing plan into the new system and doing away with the old system.
Conclusion
Using strategy against tactics, I feel that tactics are the best as they are the direct steps one needs to take to achieve success. Therefore the implementation plan is tactics-based, explaining the steps that an implementation plan should have to achieve the success of the CRM system. The statement, alternatives, and recommendations are subject to research and learning from the implementation planning session. Therefore, they are based on CRM theories, which can be attributed to the knowledge offered by the session.
References
Anaam, E. A., Khairul, A., Abu Bakar, N. S., & Mohd, S. (2018). A theoretical review of conceptual model for E-CRM success in telecommunication companies. International Journal of Engineering & Technology, 10.
Andersen, S. E., & Johansen, T. S. (2016). Cause-related marketing 2.0: Connection, collaboration and commitment. Journal of Marketing Communications, 22(5), 524-543.
Chatterjee, S., Ghosh, S. K., & Chaudhuri, R. (2020). Knowledge management in improving business process: an interpretative framework for successful implementation of AI–CRM–KM system in organizations. Business Process Management Journal.
Dalla Pozza, I., Goetz, O., & Sahut, J. M. (2018). Implementation effects in the relationship between CRM and its performance. Journal of Business Research, 89, 391-403.
Dewnarain, S., Ramkissoon, H., & Mavondo, F. (2021). Social customer relationship management: a customer perspective. Journal of Hospitality Marketing & Management, 30(6), 673-698.
Friday, D., Ryan, S., Sridharan, R., & Collins, D. (2018). Collaborative risk management: a systematic literature review. International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management.
Guerola-Navarro, V., Oltra-Badenes, R., Gil-Gomez, H., & Gil-Gomez, J. A. (2021). Research model for measuring the impact of customer relationship management (CRM) on performance indicators. Economic research-ekonomska istraživanja, 34(1), 2669-2691.
Ngo, M. V., Pavelkova, D., Phan, Q. P. T., & Nguyen, N. V. (2018). Customer Relationship Management (CRM) in small and medium tourism enterprises: A dynamic capabilities perspective. Tourism and hospitality management.
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