Business

Customer relationship management has historically failed to deliver on the ‘relationship’ piece. But ‘Neo CRM’ could be about to rectify this. If there’s a fundamental flaw in customer relationship management (CRM), it’s that historically there has been little – if any – focus on relationships. Even the emergence of CRM 2.0 (social CRM), some eight years ago, failed to resolve this serious shortcoming. However, a new take on the discipline is being hailed as the solution – ‘Neo CRM’. “The concept of building a relationship with the customer is an old one,” says Steven Walden, managing director UK at   Strativity. “CRM itself had this intent but has been reduced to more of a customer acquisition model, even with the application of AI. Most of CRM is about the sales m...

The Relationship Economy In the emerging Relationship Economy well-facilitated, ongoing customer-supplier interactions have the power to reveal value for both parties, and, In the process, dissolve the instinct for a customer to make choices on the basis of competitive comparisons. In simple terms, customers have traditionally measured value as benefits / costs. In the Relationship Economy, they measure value as relevance / time (“Was this interaction time well spent?) ‘Relationship’ has, of course, always had a place in customer-supplier activities. But it has generally applied to upmarket customer-supplier activities – luxury (or, at least, expensive) goods and services – because, in the industrial age, it was generally true that customers could either have quantity or quality, but not b...