Cambridge Business Association
Customer Relationship Management
Book

Customer Relationship Management

Kristin Anderson and Carol Kerr
McGraw-Hill, 2002
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Editorial Rating

9

Qualities

  • Innovative
  • Applicable

Recommendation

Despite the tens of millions dollars now being invested in new customer relationship management solutions, customer satisfaction with service dropped almost eight percent from 1994 to 2000, according a study by the University of Michigan’s business school. Consultants Anderson and Kerr suggest some reasons why: a failure to distinguish between CRM strategy and CRM technology and a tendency to view meaningless data as useful information. getAbstract highly recommends this concise and thorough examination of CRM to all managers and students of business.

Summary

Calling All Customers!

Some companies seem to be great at attracting customers, but not so good at keeping them. When you consider the fact that it’s at least five times more expensive to find a new customer than to sell more to an old one, the importance of keeping the customers you have becomes clear.

In your daily fight to hold on to your customers, proper customer relationship management can be your best weapon. It’s important to keep in mind, however, that technology does not equate to strategy. According to Forrester Research (March 2001), 45% of companies are considering CRM upgrades, while another 37% already have installations underway or recently completed. Many tens of millions of dollars are being spent to insure that customer needs are being addressed.

That said, the quality of customer service continues to swirl downward. According to the University of Michigan Business School’s customer satisfaction index, the service satisfaction levels of American consumers declined 7.9% between 1994 and 2000. If technology alone were the answer, customer satisfaction should be going up instead of dipping down.

The point is that technology is merely a ...

About the Authors

Kristin Anderson is president of the consulting firm, Say What? She is author of Great Customer Service on the Telephone, and four volumes in the Knock Your Socks Off Service series. Carol Kerr is president of VisionResearch, an organizational-effectiveness consulting group. Her clients include Motorola. She is a frequent guest lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin.

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