Partner Article

Riding on the CLM Wave – How companies can capitalize on it

Enterprises are finally waking up to a new era in business management. They have now shifted the focus from the product to the customers. In my opinion all enterprises will soon start targeting their customers in a segmented and highly refined manner, breaking away from the traditional demographic mold of geography, industry, and size.

As an alternative, they will direct their attention on the patterns related to customer behavior and buying style. Since these patterns are not constant and keep changing with the customer lifecycle, managing and analyzing them with technology and integrated tools empowers businesses with vital data that can result in a high customer response and even higher profit levels.

CLM as a Business Strategy

This innovative and dynamic selling strategy called as Customer Lifecycle Management uses customers as the core for designing the business policy. In essence the model involves understanding how different types of customers both individuals as well as enterprises want the interaction to be in every part of the lifecycle. When this data is arrived at, I think it is easy to design the processes, people, and technologies to respond to customers in a highly efficient manner.

Realizing the Significance of Customer Lifecycle

Many companies have started using the customer lifecycle as a key component in developing business strategies they plan on. While product lifecycle and management is something that all companies are familiar with, the enterprises will gain a sustainable advantage only when the management of customer lifecycle is targeted at. A customer lifecycle is basically the various stages through which a customer moves on while buying a product and the relationship or bond created with the vendor. Assessing the value of a customer is also easy when you recognize lifecycle.

The lifecycle stages are used to gain attention of a potential customer, communicate in the right way on how your product is useful, and influence positively the customer’s decision to buy and retain his loyalty. This process powers an organization to establish as well as maintain an optimized process, which helps customers to consider, buy, and promote the product after using it. In my opinion, knowing customer preferences enables marketers to gather valuable data which can be exploited in various level of the business including

Improving the product Creating service bundles Using optimized marketing strategy

Blending CRM and CLM

Customer relationship management systems basically give valuable data on the customer behavior and characteristics at a particular point of time. Since customer behavior evolves over the long term, I’d suggest using the changes in behavior, which when tracked and stored can give businesses valuable input. CLM improves on the CRM information, leading to a better strategy on the service and marketing aspects, which are in perfect line with changing customer patterns. This allows enterprises to focus on every interaction with the customer and make it highly effective, resulting in an overall satisfaction and profitable solution for both the customer and the business.

How companies can deal with CLM optimally

Businesses can engage CLM companies to manage their customer lifecycle, as it forms the core of the business management and decides the future of the company. Some of the ways I’ve seen in which professional companies like TATA BSS deal with CLM include:

• Management of customer lifecycle by discussing with customers the issues related to product or the service provided and also on the product development aspect of the company. Process maps on the issues will help in isolating the inefficiencies present.

• Providing you with effective tools that result in proper CRM in all stages of the lifecycle and product development.

• Engaging customers in an optimal manner by creating awareness about the company, attracting prospective customer’s attention, building interest in the product, so they turn into lifetime customers.

• Capturing data on customer ideas for improving and introducing new concepts in the business. The ideas help to maintain the attention of the customer and use their initiatives to further your business development.

In short, I’ve found that an easier process of capturing data, managing it, and using customer feedback for business development is enabled. This helps business to build a loyal customer base, retain them permanently, and get a high level of profitability.

Customer lifecycle management when followed in an optimal way can drive appropriate sales behavior, supervise the key metrics involved, and support customers capably, so they are retained and a long term growth is brought about.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tata Business Support Services Limited .