Online retailers-—especially the clicks-and-bricks merchants—understand the power of Internet customer relationship management, says a new study of e-CRM by
The Gantry Group, a custom
market research and advisory firm. ”ECRM programs are
rapidly gaining in popularity as their ability to develop close customer
relationships is heightened, particularly for ‘brick-and-click’ companies
selling through stores, catalogs and e-commerce channels,” the Gantry study, released today, concludes.
Among the findings:
--Of the companies who have not implemented an
e-CRM solution yet, over 81% are planning to introduce an integrated
e-CRM program in the next 12 months;
--Of those who have a non-integrated e-CRM
solution in place now, over 91% plan to integrate it over the next 12
months.
Respondents said they are instituting e-CRM programs to better analyze
customer data in order to improve margin and profitability, and
to improve customer retention and customer
satisfaction via their e-CRM solutions, Gantry said.
"One of the most interesting insights we exposed," said Dawna Paton,
managing partner of the Gantry Group, "was that almost two-thirds of survey
respondents clearly stated their interest in solutions that provide integrated
e-CRM that include data warehousing, analysis infrastructure, reporting and
data mining tools for segmentation and list generation. There is no doubt
about the value proposition of integrated e-CRM programs now that the ROI of
these solutions is being proven out."
The Gantry Group said one surprising finding is the fact that what companies
consider the most important element to monitor is not necessarily what they
actually do monitor. Although monitoring of online call center turns out to be the second most important activity to all companies, and the most important to bricks-and-click companies it is, in fact, only the 7th most often deployed tool within e-CRM solutions in-house and 8th outsourced, much less often, for example, than outbound email.
Other findings include the fact that companies who are already using
integrated e-CRM to gain insight about customer lifetime value, are now trying
to better understand price optimization and precision merchandising. On the
other hand, companies without integrated solutions are trying to better
understand more fundamental issues such as lifetime value of customers and the
impact of customer service on profitability. Companies with no e-CRM in place
at all are seeking the lowest level of information -- namely monitoring user
experience.
The Gantry study also reported that with over 92% of respondents believing in e-CRM's ability to develop
personal relationships that enable companies to match offerings to the
individual customer, and over 91% of respondents seeing their web site
as a critical part of their business model, customer service profitability via e-CRM programs has become a major focus of companies hoping to gain a
competitive advantage in the next year. These respondents also believe in
e-CRM's ability to improve customer retention and offer high-quality service to their most valuable customers.
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