Customer Relationship Management: A Necessity for Automotive Sector 2016 is a year of experiential marketing and providing an unmatched experience garners the loyalty of the consumers.

By Ravi Kumar

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We belong to the generation of mobility that also caters to needs of the customer, more than ever before. With the advent of GPS, connectivity reach spans from India to Australia and beyond. There's a dissemination of information available at our disposal.

The consumer is now well equipped with knowledge to distinguish between brands. Hence, since the midst of 21st century, the focus on building brands with more products has left the market in an unstable state. Increase of competitors in the market mean more available options for the customer. Dynamics between the customer and provider has drastically evolved, today. Consumers know which brand to purchase, so to sweeten the purchase up, businesses need to provide an added benefit to the customer.

2016 is a year of experiential marketing and providing an unmatched experience garners the loyalty of the consumers. A unique experience can only be created through a seamless expertise- providing a solution in the most hassle-free way possible. This is where CRM makes an impact. It involves keeping track of customer information and trends, therefore it is more than just about database as it involves a fair amount of management strategy and customer insight to launch a successful goal-oriented campaign for customer retention.

How CRM works for Automation

  1. A good CRM help capture the customer requirements more efficiently. Through its varied parameters and analysis techniques, CRM equips automation establishments with the necessary consumer data to act upon. The key here is smart data. Through CRM, establishments know how to optimize the data to their benefit by entailing customer preferences. This help organizations reinvent their retailing approach according to customer's needs and expectations.
  2. Helps in Competition analysis. Complete analysis of competition can be done with the help of CRM. This technology enables establishments to gauge competition through tracking their purchase cycle. With this inference, companies can plan their point of action in accordance to market scenario. A healthy market analysis ensures constant enhancement plans to suit the need of the moment.
  3. Keep track of activities to be done. CRM helps organizations keep abreast with internal happenings. Activities can be planned and shared amongst every member in an efficient manner. This cuts off internal miscommunication to a great extent. Also the head of departments can keep a check on subordinate progress and provide necessary changes.
  4. Can help in better management of inventory. With CRM, reliability on manual inventory decreases as this cloud-based software keeps a record of every past and present activities of the organization. This reduces error as option of data being lost due to calamities such as storm, fire and more, is overcome to a large extent. Also CRM can be configured to keep data safe from external factors and misuse.
  5. Helps in the management of risks- A comprehensive data on customers helps in identifying core strengths and weaknesses, the opportunities and the threats. Through CRM database, sales personals are more likely to predict their future revenues. An insight on customer interaction and past sales would help to predict the path to be chosen for better retention of customer.
  6. Promotes seamless Customer-Organization interaction. An added benefit of CRM is that it helps organizations keep consumers updated through automated emails- be it a promotion or a consumer loyalty program. Plus, it provides your employees a reliable tool to access and update customer information with. Collaboration amongst teams is promoted through a designated platform for sharing information and tracing updates.

As an organisation, one is always in search of ways to manage customer relationships while improving customer service. CRM helps consolidate all relevant business information from various departments and sources into a single easy–to–access database.

Ravi Kumar

Director CRM Consulting at Cubastion Consulting

Ravi Kumar is the Director CRM Consulting at Cubastion Consulting. One of the founders of company, he received both his bachelors and masters degree in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Bombay. A Seasoned CRM professional with Specialization in Oracle Siebel & its ancillaries, Mr. Ravi is with over 11 years of experience in Oracle Siebel. He worked as a Global Coordinator in Reckitt Benckiser in 2006 at its Slough office in UK. The responsibility was CRM deployment for Reckitt Benckiser. He joined Inforte as CRM Consultant at Gurgaon in India. He has resourceful experience in CRM deployment for diverse industry verticals such as automobiles, travel and many others.

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