Managing Customer Relationships in the e-Business Economy

Old business practices built around traditional product marketing and sales are being rapidly modified or replaced by customer centric relationship marketing in which share of customer is the economic driver. Technology has reached a state where quantum leaps can be made toward the ultimate competitive form of relationship building, one-to-one marketing. In this new paradigm, customer data is both a strategic asset and critical success factor. Relationship marketing in its best competitive expression, one-to-one marketing, rests on three very simple ideas about reducing costs and increasing long-term profitability: customer loyalty, scope and efficiency. ECRM, i.e., Customer Relationship Management at the convergence of e-business is a discipline as well as a set of discrete software and technologies which focuses on automating and improving the business processes associated with managing customer relationships in the areas of sales, marketing, customer service, and support. eCRM software applications not only facilitate the coordination of multiple business functions (sales, marketing, customer service, and support) but also coordinate multiple channels of communication with the customer-face to face, call center and the web-so that organisations can accommodate their customers' preferred channels of interaction.