Customer Relationship Management

Caselets- Discussion
Internal Assessment

Submitted To: Submitted By:

Dr. Pooja Pastore Shukla Rakesh Maheshwari
Avadhi Tongia
Krishanpal Singh Thakur
( MBA MM B III Sem)
Que. 1. The retail landscape of the world is currently witnessing an explosion of connections,
data, and innovations. And even though this hyper connectivity has changed the game, it’s
the customers that are radically changing the rules – demanding simple, seamless, and
personalized experiences at every touch point. Telecom giant Airtel ventured into DTH
services to acquire new customers for its entire range of offerings, is a brilliant example of
how running businesses need to build, partner or acquire technology to maintain their share.
The question is how organizations under such scenario do, maintain ethical integrity and use
technology more responsibly. Comment.

Various ways to maintain ethical integrity in today's scenario are:

1. Truth-in-Selling: When an organization markets a product or service, it is obligated to

deliver what was promised to the customer. Whether it is a TV ad or a print ad in a
newspaper, the product described should be what is delivered to the customer.

2. Personal integrity: It is important that business leaders live a lifestyle of honesty, integrity
and high ethical standards because what these leaders do can damage the reputation of the
organization.

3. Customer Value Strategy: Ethical standards in business are based on customer focus and
commitment to providing value to our customers. When an organization is committed to
improving the lives of its customers, it is when that trust is breached that it would be a
strategic concern.

4. Accounting procedures: Financial honesty and transparency is a basic expectation of

shareholders, customers and employees. It does no one any good when an organization
“cooks the books” – be it on purpose or by accident. Careless accounting practices limit an
organization's ability to operate with good financial management.

5. Customer service integrity: Service integrity is primarily after-sales service. It's easy to
make promises before selling, but following through and delivering a great customer
experience is what makes some organizations stand out.

6. Integrity in management practices: Management practices are the basic foundation of

organizational integrity. Whether it's a commitment to good customer service or fair
employment practices, a company's reputation can be tarnished by unresolved service or
product issues. Additionally, employees watch how management solves problems and
delivers on promises.
Different ways of using technology to improve their customer service focus on the following:

• Self-service optimization. Find ways for customers to interact with your business when
they want to.

• Workforce efficiency. Encourage your employees to embrace new ways to improve

customer experience by providing them with tools and training to deliver better service.

• Data management and analytics. Using data collected from customers to analyze their
preferences.

• Marketing driven by statistics. Gain insights about your business from customer data to
target marketing more effectively.

• Marketing automation. Streamlining and automating business processes to increase

efficiency and keep costs low.
Que. 2. From MIS to e-mail automation to call centers to social CRM, from SAAS to mobile
CRM, CRM in India has made considerable progress to its present situation and is far to
proceed. Considering the huge and diverse market that India has, arrangements intended for
the western countries cannot be deployed here. Hence it is of great significance for the Indian
market to have a CRM streamlined on the basis of Indian management principles and
practices. What could be better than we doing it for ourselves, hence following the statement
“Of the Indians, by the Indians, for the Indians?” Comment.

CRM or Customer Relationship Management is as old as business itself. However, in the last
few decades, the meaning of CRM has changed to CRM software. The concept of CRM has
evolved to a great extent, especially in the Indian context. A few decades before, it was
mostly used by large enterprises and was also limited to basic functionality, generally just a
customer database. However, in recent years, small and medium-sized enterprises have also
started using CRM. This has been made possible by the advent of newer technologies and
concepts such as SAAS and social media integration. Now, the scope of CRM has also
increased from just a customer database to a 360° view of customer interactions from various
channels, including but not limited to phone, chat, email, customer portals and mobile apps.

Evolution of CRM as a concept:

Social CRM

The latest buzzword in CRM is social CRM. Consumers and buyers rely heavily on social
media to make purchasing decisions. So salespeople use CRM with social media features to
track and influence buyers' buying patterns. With the advent of online e-commerce, the
importance of social media in CRM has increased manifold.

The advent of email automation

As email became the primary tool for business communication, people began to realize the
importance of email automation in their CRM strategy. In the case of CRM definitions, the
line between marketing and sales has slowly started to disappear. Email marketing has started
to become part of CRM.

Internal sales

In addition to the marketing and sales department, the internal sales team also began to take
shape. Inside Sales is more relevant to B2B compared to B2C. The primary role of the inside
sales team was to generate direct leads for the sales team or to conduct prospecting for leads
generated by the marketing teams.
Mobile CRM - Enterprise to Personal

Cheap smartphones with more affordable mobile internet plans have helped push Mobile
CRM to the next level. Mobile CRM has completely changed the way CRM is understood
and used in India. It has now become one of the biggest productivity tools for sales and
service teams.

Telephony and CRM

The integration of telephony and CRM has led to the popularity of Call Centers or better
known as Contact Centers. Initially this was achieved with On Premise Telephony Servers.
These are now being replaced by Cloud Telephony Solutions. It has become essential for
businesses to use a telephone solution to interact with their customers. Therefore, the
integration of telephony with CRM is a must.

Basic customer database

Initially, CRM was used as a customer database and an extension of any larger ERP
implementation. These were large database applications that had basic query management
functionality. The primary purpose of these CRM systems was to provide MIS reporting.
These were reporting tools rather than the everyday productivity tools that CRM is today.
MIS reports were used only by the marketing division to understand customer segments and
target marketing efforts accordingly.

SAAS - The Great Equalizer

Initially, CRM was only available to businesses due to its enormous cost. This was due to the
expensive software and infrastructure required to implement CRM. But SAAS changed
everything. Now expensive CRM software has become available as a service, available to
almost everyone. The biggest challenge in mainstream SAAS adoption was internet access.

Internet - The Game Changer

With the widespread use of the internet across the country and the cheapening of broadband,
CRM is available to almost everyone and everywhere in India. The mobile internet revolution
in India is also changing the CRM landscape in India to an extreme level.