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Electronic Customer Relationship Management (ECRM) - do you know what they want?

What makes for good online customer service? Read more here.

What is needed to keep customers loyal? Find out more here.

Changing consumer attitudes are driving Electronic Customer Relationship Management (ECRM).

We live in a technological age and consumers are now fuelled by internet-induced expectations and an even increasing mood of self-reliance.

So you have to compete in an environment where communication, buying processes, data management, delivery and service are all-important in the battle for long-term, profitable relationships.

ECRM helps you to measure, create and increase income and reduce costs and operate more efficiently and profitably.

ECRM is the customer focussed management of the whole EBusiness relationship with each customer, in order to measure, create and increase income and reduce costs for each customer & segment and thus to generate greater positive lifetime value.

ECRM for SMEs has taken a major leap forward over the last few years.

Effective ECRM means you need to know the answers to questions such as:

• Which of my customers are profitable or unprofitable?

• Do I know their lifetime value?

• Which of my products and services are they buying and not buying?

• Have I measured customers' purchase behaviour patterns, their loyalty/retention/repeat purchase and multiple product purchases?

• What channel preferences do customers have?

• Who are my most profitable customers and what is their ranking/grouping by risk, by product service grouping, by profit, and by revenue?

• What strategies can I use to improve a customer's profitability profile?

And, nowdays you can't afford to ignore social media when it comes to customer relationship management - especially on the web. Here are a few thoughts about what you have to address.

ECommerce and social media

Social media can allow a consumer to search for and identify comments or reviews made by their friends or other people in their social network during the shopping process and provide Twitter updates of sales and promotions.

Social media can influence search

Social media's influence on natural search results is increasingly important for link-building. Social networking can help to build high quality links. A well thought through search strategy is crucial for optimizing your social media spend.

Social media impacts acquisition and retention

Integrating social media means asking "what is in it for your customers and their social network?" You'll need to test what works. It may be reward points or something.

Conversation complements customer support

Conversations and feedback at networks such as Twitter complement your customer phone support channel.

Think mobile

Social activities are mobile. There are apps ("there's and app for that") to allow easy sharing of messages, photos, videos, location and more. So start exploring all these mobile services (and the information they provide) to expand and enhance your social presence.

ECRM is there to help companies become "customer machines" by allowing staff to provide the service that customers everywhere expect these days, to reduce attrition rates improve advocacy among customers and increase the lifetime value of each relationship to improve revenue and profit.

Good ECRM needs to encourage users to interact as well as be in-tune with the business and:

• Helps you to define your customer markets and target new prospects

• Allows your staff to access all information relating to each of your customers in real time for better decisions

• Helps improve overall sales and customer services processes

• Provides functionality around marketing campaigns, website leads and sales

• Provides fast and easy user adoption and is a flexible solution to blend with current business processes

• Have open standards for low cost integration with legacy systems

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