Rules of the Road to CRM Success

	How To Advice, Anecdotes and Case Studies

by Geoff Choo

February 20, 2001

Why Should I Care About CRM?
A key factor of business success today is customer retention, and nothing is more important to returning customers than good customer service. Recent surveys by NPD Online and Jupiter Communications discovered that shoppers believed that customer service is a critical factor in shopping satisfaction, and that good customer service would make them shop at a site. 

"Businesses have to put customer service where it counts. Imagine going into a physical shop and not finding any sales assistants around to help you," says Mike Barretto, a Munich-based e-CRM leader working at IconMedialab. "I recently tried to purchase a record at an online shop, but I couldn't find any track listings for the record that I wanted. Since I also could not find any customer support (i.e. where do I find track listings?), I left the site. This particular online shop lost my business there and then.  What would any other customer do in this circumstance? They'd surf over to the nearest competitor, and this is much easier to do in the online world than in the physical world."

The bottom line is that if you focus only on acquiring as many new customers as possible — at the expense of properly serving your customers over time — you might find your customers quickly moving on to your competition when they are not completely satisfied with your offerings.