What if it were possible for a large corporation to serve its customers with the same intimacy and attentiveness that is the norm for doing business with many small proprietorships? In dealing with small businesses managed by actively-involved owners, customers can often count on getting exactly what they want or something just as good or better, because the owners know each customer personally, remember his or her preferences, and anticipate his or her needs. Unfortunately, this capability is often lost by large corporate organizations that serve thousands of customers and invest in initiatives that focus on the profitability of business units and functions within the organization. Some organizations have tried to capture the customer-centric focus of many small proprietorships, but have been disappointed with the results as the returns in terms of customer loyalty and profitability have fallen short of expectations. These attempts have been unsuccessful, not because the investment in customer relationships was inappropriate, but rather because the investment was not appropriately balanced between value to the customer (VTC) and value from the customer (VFC).

Today’s organizations increasingly seek to drive corporate performance by maximizing the value of their customer relationships. Technology is a key component of any customer-focused strategy. Beyond technology, however, many companies fail to appreciate the importance of developing specific, well-defined, and integrated business processes focused on the customer.

Activity-based costing was introduced in the mid-1980s through several Harvard Business School cases and articles.1 While the settings of these cases differed, they all had one characteristic in common. The resource expenses assigned to an activity were determined through interviews, time logs, and direct observation of the amount or percentage of time people spent on various activities.

In a perfect world, customers would never call to complain. They would never dispute a bill, ask questions about how your product works, or cancel their service. When they wanted to order a new product, they’d do it at your web site. If they had a question, they’d read your Frequently Asked Questions document.Your contact center agents would spend more time turning positive customer service interactions into sales opportunities.

Understanding how to effectively manage relationships with customers has become a very important topic to both academicians and practitioners in recent years. Yet, the existing academic literature and the practical applications of CRM strategies do not provide a clear indication of specifically what constitutes CRM processes.

Customer relationship management (CRM) is that part of an enterprise’s business strategy that enables the entire enterprise to understand, anticipate and manage the needs of any current and potential customers. CRM is not an event or a technology, or even an application or a process. Ideally, CRM is a comprehensive strategy that integrates all areas of business that touch the customer – though mainly, it is limited to marketing, sales, customer service and field support — through the integration of people, process and technology. To be successful, CRM requires acquiring and distributing knowledge about one’s customers across the enterprise, to balance costs, revenue and profits with customer satisfaction. Obviously, business processes and key technologies are required to optimize CRM strategies.

In most markets there are one or two relationship leaders who outperform their rivals by staying more closely connected to their customers. Among these leaders are Enterprise Rent-ACar, Pioneer Hi-Bred Seeds, Fidelity Investments, Lexus, and Intuit. They are well rewarded for their prowess. In the credit card industry, Capital One has consistently out-performed First USA with a strategy that leverages their superior customer-relating capability.1 They earn 40 percent more interest income from each customer, with double the profit margin, despite being half the size of First USA. The boxed insert – “Winning the Credit Card War” – explains why Capital One is a relationship leader.

Successful implementation of enterprise CRM is critical to the success of just about every company. Customers, after all, are any company’s most important asset. Enterprise CRM ensures this asset is fully leveraged by optimizing sales, marketing and service interactions. With effective enterprise CRM, customer relationships can be appropriately managed to maximize revenue and lifespan while keeping operational costs low.

Great customer service is all about answering customers’ questions quickly and accurately every time. An effective knowledge base can be extraordinarily useful in fulfilling this critical business requirement. In fact, many companies have achieved dramatic business results through the use of customer service knowledge bases.

The CRM silver bullet solution has made its way from the boardroom into the classroom as organizations and universities alike continue to become more and more customer/student centric. Both are currently implementing successful support systems in order to meet their end-users needs. As early as 1995, University College Cork (a Third-level Irish university) introduced online support to provide learning material for students ranging from full / part-time undergraduates and postgraduates to distance-learners. However, students identified a need for more support, the type that only a more interactive system can provide. This research study is focused on the use of an interactive e-learning management system (eLMS) to enhance and manage the relationship between the students (customers) and the educators. The case study indicates a strong requirement for the utilization of such an environment. This type of system has the potential to eliminate the barriers imposed by the traditional classroom and increasingly focus on the needs of the student. Through the adoption of the CRM philosophy the system presented here strengthened its link between the different actors and additionally provided the university with a more in-depth view of its target audience.