CRM in Internet Era

Introduction

E-commerce is not a new kid on the block. Its presence is felt since the introduction of internet technology and the early ventures like pizza ordering site and amazon portal . It’s just an extension of the commerce—the game of creating, maintaining, and expanding customer relationships. Internet has become a powerful tool for communicating with customers, tracking the market , following up supply chain, and completing sales. To take part in business in this century i,e. e-commerce , it’s essential to know what e-commerce is capable of doing and how it’s changing customer expectations of the 21st century . In the Customer Relationship Management Strategy over internet, we can use new rules and the new tools offered by e-commerce to satisfy our customers. The Internet can enable and empower the customer relationship management strategy in following major ways:

First: Providing information to the customers

The Internet can provide a platform for availing information about the business, products and services to the current and potential customers. This refers to the allowing the present and potential customers to know about the company in a better way with respect to the offerings and services. It can be as simple as a web-based portals that describes the products and services and tells customers about the whereabouts of the company and the means to avail the offerings.

Second: Extracting information from the customers

The next level of Customer Relationship Management Strategy is that not only we provide information to the customers, but also learn more about them and from them. Here is what the major role of analytical tools come in. There are various Web related tools which can tell more about the customers and their locations, and web usage patterns.The Internet provides the scope  to collect all sorts of customers data. Sometimes customers respond to the various questions and provide useful information through the polls or satisfaction survey. In other cases you may be able to collect information that’s very useful to your business without interfering at all with the customer experience.

Third: Sales E-commerce

The highest level of Customer Relationship Management  strategy is to use the Internet to deliver products and services to the customers. There can be mutually rewarding relationships with customers . Entire relationship can successfully exist in cyberspace. With the technology available today, we can sell  products over the Internet, respond to customer questions, offer additional products and services based on previous purchases, and evaluate customers’ satisfaction with the offerings all without ever dealing with them in person. Leveraging the Internet potential can utilize the resources to deliver higher levels of value to customers in new ways.