Ans.

1
The prime reason for existence of any enterprise is its customers. Customers care is the process that seeks to acquire new customers, providing appropriate services and therefore building customers loyalty. The customer care system has three major stages: Listening Responding Improving 1) Listening:- Organizations should have well equipped channels of communication to listen to their customers. An extremely frustrating experience for customers is when they do not find a method of communicating their queries or grievances. Several channels and strategies, from traditional complaint centers to modern use of technology like mobiles and internet, can help communicate with customers. 2) Responding:- Every call from customers must be acknowledged and the complaint or service request should be handled appropriately. The capability in terms of internal processes, methodology, procedures and manpower should be built up for responding to the complaint within expected time and quality. 3) Improving:- Organizations need to learn from previous experiences of complaints and grievances, so that recurrence of the same problems is minimal. The customer are mechanism should provide inputs to product improvement, new product development, improvement in service delivery system, training of workforce, campaign planning, brand building exercise and so on.

Ans. 2
In Customer Relationship Management, customer life cycle is a term used to describe the progression of steps a customer goes through when considering, purchasing, using, and maintaining loyalty to a product or service. Marketing analysts Jim Sterne and Matt Cutler have developed a matrix that breaks the customer life cycle into five distinct steps: reach, acquisition, conversion, retention, and loyalty. In layman's terms, this means getting a potential customer's attention, teaching them what you have to offer, turning them into a paying customer, and then keeping them as a loyal customer whose satisfaction with the product or service urges other customers to join the cycle. The customer life cycle is often depicted by an ellipse, representing the fact that customer retention truly is a cycle and the goal of effective CRM is to get the customer to move through the cycle again and again.

These are the following phases of customer life cycle:Reach Reach is defined as the likelihood of gaining your prospective visitors attention. This can be displayed in a number of ways, depending on the vehicle you use for advertising: The number of searches completed for your paid search keyword phrases. The number of users who view banner impressions served on a website. The number of reads an article written by someone representing your company received. The number of subscribers to a newsletter you sponsor or that contains your advertisement. The number of readers who subscribe to a newspaper or magazine and will see your advertisement. The number of views your billboard ad receives. The number of viewers who watch a commercial on TV. Each qualifier is both easy and difficult to accurately measure. Any banner network can tell you how many banner impressions were served or the number of times your search phrases were used; any newsletter or magazine can tell you how many readers they have. Any marketing manager can tell you how many valid addresses your direct email piece was sent to. But it is impossible to accurately calculate how many people read your article or actually received your piece of mail? And if they did receive it, how do you know they opened it? This is why Reach is difficult to measure. No matter how powerful the Web analytics solution, no one can tell you the number of people who actually read and think about your marketing message. That is why Reach is usually tied to Acquisition; though we cant measure the number of people who read a message, we do can infer this value from the percentage of people you are able to acquire. So when measuring Reach keep in mind that it is correlated to the actual acquisition of visitors. Acquisition If reach is defined as the likelihood to gain a prospective visitor's attention, then Acquisition can be defined as how successful you are in getting it. This is reflected in the number of people who click on a link or type your domain in their browser and bring themselves to your site. This is the Acquisition. Some analytics measure Acquisition in terms of a visitors not only arriving, but also engaging in some sort of action, like a purchase. However, any visitor who lands on your site as a result of one of your ads has the potential to complete an activity of value. Thus, it can be considered an act of arrival or response.

Acquisition stats are primarily focused on the source of traffic, which can be the referring sites, a search engine or a search key phrase, or in a word, those who bring visitors to you. Web analytic solutions extend this measurement and allow the visitor categorization. Doing so allows it to act as measurement of Conversion. Conversion Conversion and the activities leading to this action are the reason you run your website. Conversion is the successful completion of specific activities by the site visitors that somehow result in a positive contribution to your online business. Conversion can be measured differently for a variety of activities. Conversion does not have to be equal to online purchase. It can be: 1) Downloading of a document or application; 2) Submission of information to generate leads; 3) Locating of information in an FAQ or support document; 4) Navigating from a general to a more specific page; 5) The specific amount of time spent on a website; 6) Viewing of a specific number of pages; 7) Viewing of key pages like the services page with pricing information. Studying the sales funnel to Conversion will help you to modify your website and influence marketing innovations that will impact your visitors ability to complete desired goals. This is the best possible path because it leads to customer satisfaction and increased profits for your business. Different websites may want to measure many different conversion rates. It is important to measure all the conversion rates that matter, but not to compare your rates to those of others. Research companies have published studies about conversion rates by business category, and this information is interesting, but it should not be used to measure your own success. Your gauge of success should rely on your sites key performance indicators increasing over time. Select several key performance indicators (perhaps three or four) for your website and measure these over time, track the progress and make changes that will improve future conversions. And of course, guard your conversion rate as if it were one of your trade secrets. Retention The Reach, Acquisition and Conversion phases in the customer life cycle have been a large time-investment, but you still need to work to keep customers coming back. Research says that an existing customer is worth more than a new customer, so you need to monitor and hold on to them which is no easy task perhaps because there is very little loyalty on the Internet. If you sell a product today, tomorrow your competitor can make it cheaper. If you provide a service, someone can always do it better or more quickly. Unless you are selling a brand or services that are unique, you will always have to deal

with

churn.

That is why we should measure Retention. Retention measures the activities of your repeat customers, tracking whether they are back to get support information, to make another purchase or just to do additional research. By watching individual behavior and habits of your repeat customers, you can respond optimally to their needs, then up sell and cross sell products and services to them. Visitor segmentation tools are an important aid to understanding different classes of repeat visitors.

Ans. 3
In the current competitive scenario the organization needs to focus on maintaining these relations and retaining the customers. The graduation of the customer to a loyal customer requires continued customer satisfaction over a long period of time and mutual value addition for both, the customer and the organization. The focus during retention is on after sale services and understanding and fulfilling new expectations and requirements of the customers. Research has already proved that an existing customer always provides better returns than a new customer, as maintaining an existing customer is always a more cost effective proposition than acquiring a new one. Hence, an organization needs to be conscious of the fact that it needs to put continuous efforts to hold on to them which is not an easy task in todays exceedingly competitive environment and with far-reaching technological access to the users, which has made it possible for even the small players to challenge the big players. If a company sells a product or service and has a leadership position in the market today, someone else can make it more innovative, technologically enhanced and value- driven tomorrow. Unless the products and services offered are highly differentiated and well branded, customers will always be prone to churn. In an era when technology changes are accelerating, low price competition abounds, sales channels are shifting daily, and loyal customers are in short supply, the company that invests in a customer retention strategy and makes a commitment to customer loyalty gains an important competitive edge. The key is to understand where that commitment and investment can be best applied and what tools and programs can make them work. Empirical evidence suggests that success in retaining customers often boils down to doing the basics right, such as: Building a customer database that identifies and characterizes loyal customers and collects their individual attributes and needs. Using this information to segment customers and prospects based on high, medium and low value. Building trust to get customers to give permission to receive ongoing marketing and special offers (permission-based marketing). Matching the right type of loyalty marketing program to your customers values. For example loyalty programs should include elements that focus on recognizing

and retaining high value customers, growing medium value customers, and either growing or disengaging low value customers. Making sure that employees deliver the promises made by marketing and sales departments.

Ans. 4
These are the following steps involved into CRM implementation process:1. Analysis of current internal situation: Identify the problem areas in the present customer relationship life cycle that are affecting the present service delivery process, marketing campaigns and sales management. Measure the existing key performance matrix with respect to three areas: The key service performance parameter generally involves Mean Time between Failure (MTBF), Mean Time to Repair (MTTR), Number of complaints/services requests within a period and the percentage of repeat complaints. Key sales management performance parameters to be measured are lead to sales time, leads to sales conversion efficiency, number of customer referrals, repeat purchase by existing customers, etc. The key marketing campaign parameters to be measured are leads per campaign, lead capturing, lead segmentation, etc 2. Competitive situation Analysis: No organization works in isolation but faces competition from others in the market. The performance of the organization should be compared with that of its competitors in the same business areas, its strengths and weakness analyzed with respect to other player. It is also important to identify the parameters where competitors are ahead of ones organization. 3. Define CRM Objectives and Priorities CRM Requirements: Every organization may have different CRM objectives and within each organization, every department, depending on its specific requirements, needs and sense of priority, will have different CRM objectives. 4. Strategic Alignment: CRM objectives should be properly aligned with the overall strategy of the organization and the implementation of CRM should be a strategic decision, fully supported by the top management. 5. Financial Analysis: Return on Investment (ROI) vis--vis the cost of implementation of CRM in the organization should be assessed. Measuring ROI of CRM. Measuring ROI of a CRM project is a complex process as the return and benefit can be both, tangible and intangible. However, ROI of the project should be estimated for financial justification of the projects. These financial return can be revenue enhancements like an increase in sales and margin enhancement due to customer retention. 6. Selection of CRM tools and technology: There are various CRM application and technologies available in the market and they vary in terms of functionalities, capabilities, deployment strategies, integration capability and of course, cost.

While some are suitable for large organization, others are meant for mid size and small organization. 7. Managing CRM Adoption within an organization: The implementation of CRM within an organization should not simply be the implementation of a software application. It is a change in the management process, a tool to shift the focus of the organization from product focus to relationship focus and a tool to empower employees with more information and facilities that will help them in meeting customer expectation. The road map to the implementation of CRM should include: Creating Awareness Building teams Traning Motivating through Incentives 8. Integration: An organization does not does not consist only of sales, marketing and services units, but also has other important functional and operational areas like finance, HR, production, supply chain and logistics. A stand alone CRM cannot give the desired synergy without getting it integrated with all organizational functions. 9. Data Migration: While implementing CRM, one must ensure that existing method of capturing customer information are not lost until better methods settle down. Besides this, there will be lots of information on customers available with different organizational units. The method to enter these existing knowledge assets into the system is of utmost importance. The changeover to a new system should not destroy the existing knowledge asset. If the information is in physical form, employees should be encouraged to enter this into the system, but if the information is in the database of other software system, data migration should be carefully planned.

Ans. 5 Sales force automation

Sales force automation (SFA) involves using software to streamline all phases of the sales process, minimizing the time that sales representatives need to spend on each phase. This allows a business to use fewer sales representatives to manage their clients. At the core of SFA is a contact management system for tracking and recording every stage in the sales process for each prospective client, from initial contact to final disposition. Many SFA applications also include insights into opportunities, territories, sales forecasts and workflow automation, quote generation.

Sales Force Automation Features

Sales force automation solutions help make sales processes more agile, more efficient, and more effective. With sales force automation, a company can enhance collaboration and information sharing, and improve the productivity of sales-related activities by

replacing manual, disjointed, and redundant tasks with simplified, tightly-aligned, fullyautomated procedures. Sales force automation offers a broad range of functionality that will address the needs of many different user types within a sales department. From sales representatives who need to effectively manage their prospects, to managers who want to track the activities of their teams, and analysts who have to generate accurate sales and revenue forecasts sales force automation positively impacts end-to-end sales operations.

Most off-the-shelf sales force automation solutions provide the following features: Contact Management
This function, which is the cornerstone of most sales force automation solutions on the market today, enables sales reps to better coordinate and prioritize their opportunities. Reps can keep up-to-date contact information, as well as complete and thorough history of all interactions, for each account they are engaged with. They can also generate a variety of reports that include timely data and statistics about their activities. Additionally, they can more efficiently manage their schedules by utilizing a fully-integrated electronic calendar that allows them to set appointment reminders, flag contacts for future follow up, and more. Managers can also gain complete visibility into the activities of their sales teams. They can monitor tasks and interactions, track the status of opportunities in progress, and make sure each rep is on track to achieve their goals.

Sales Forecasting
The forecasting capabilities within sales force automation solutions make it easy for sales analysts and financial staff to accurately predict future sales revenue. This is accomplished through thorough in-depth analysis of past history and trends, as well as the status of all opportunities in progress.

Mobile Access
Sales representatives spend most of their time traveling to visit potential clients. That's why most sales force automation packages provide remote access - through a Web-based interface, or handheld devices such as a Palm Pilot, Blackberry, or Windows Pocket PC. This allows sales staff to access real-time account, inventory, and product data at any time, from any location. So, they can stay fully-connected, even when on the road.

Order and Purchase History Tracking

This function allows sales reps to monitor orders and deliveries, to ensure that customers receive their products and services in a timely manner. Additionally, it gives them the intelligence they need identify vital purchase trends, understand customer needs and preferences, and implement more effective up-sell and cross-sell strategies.

Sales Performance Reporting and Analysis

The reporting and analysis capabilities of a sales force automation solution allow companies to accurately assess the performance of individual sales reps, as well as sales territories, specific product lines, and more. Managers and analysts can measure actual sales against forecasts and quotas, revenues generated by product line, and other critical sales performance metrics. As a result, they can more accurately manage commissions, and identify areas in need of improvement.

Hosted Solution Model

Because most companies have limited technical resources, many sales force automation packages are available as hosted, Web-based solutions. Hosted sales force automation solutions can be implemented quickly, are easy to maintain, and require no additional infrastructure. So, they can significantly minimize burden on IT staff.

Customization and Personalization

Some sales force automation solutions provide robust customization capabilities, so they can be tailored to meet the specific requirements of your business. Individual personalization capabilities are also available in some sales force automation packages, so each member of your sales staff can structure the interface, data views, and other properties in a way that will work best for them.