Customer Relationship Management Dealing With Term Paper

just an isolated or siloed strategy. Gartner's definition is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Gartner Group's Eight Levels of CRM

Gartner has defined CRM using both purely technologically-based approaches and the processes that occur in any company looking to serve customers. Yet the most important area of this graphic is the interaction of the valued customer experience and organizational collaboration. At the store level of the example of the manager short two cashiers, its' clear from looking at this graphic of CRM in Figure 1 and also considering the significant investment in building demand that it is unthinkable to do nothing and just try to make the sale work with the two cashiers and the manager working the entire store.

What needs to happen is that the manager needs to immediately call, instant message or e-mail their manager and tell them that given the two cashiers being out sick there needs to actually be four more employees brought in. The reasons for asking for a more than doubling of the existing staff in the store include the following reasons:

For many shoppers this will be their first experience with the store given how heavily promoted the sale has been. it's critical these customers get exceptional service and also find assistance in the store when they need it. The store, the manager needs to remind their manager, is just as much about selling products as it is about building relationships. Erring on the side of spending during the sale to build customer relationships is even more important than having enough associates on hand to sell the products. The manager needs to think "relationships: and not so much "transactions."

The need to have the fastest and most accurate cashiers the store has on staff on the registers during the sale is critical.The pet peeve of many shoppers is to wait in long lines to check out. Instead, the checkout lanes should be kept as clear as possible to make sure customers get out of the store quickly and on to the rest of their days once they have made their selections.

The role of the store is to function as "the last mile" so to speak of the marketing efforts of the store chain which has invested in marketing to drive customers into the store. The manager needs to see this as a critical event to not only sell but also to build relationships with customers as well.

The role of world-of-mouth implications and reputation of the company need to be also considered in the context of the sale, and the manager needs to invest accordingly.

In summary, the manager may be fearful of bringing in more associates to work and paying time and a half, yet adding four more employees to the store, two of which will be on the registers, two helping customers, and the manager handling the many other customer-related exceptions is critical. The converse of this is to risk appearing to be running a store out of control, harried, eventually stressed out, and lacking the ability to help customers. The bottom line is that there is really no way to predict how much traffic will be in the store during a sales and therefore its critical to staff with more than enough associates as the relationship with customers, not merely the transactions, matter the most.

Bibliography

Gartner 2001 - Eight Building Blocks of CRM: A Framework for Success. John Radcliffe. December 13, 2003.

Gartner Group. Groton, CT.

Accessed from the Internet on September 16, 2007 from….....