Be a Good Listener . Listen to your Consumers.

We can believe that we know where the world should go. We are in touch with our costomers. Our Model of the world can diverge from reality. There's no substitute for innovation of course but innovation is no substitute for being in touch.

In the Technology world where Innovation is the name of the game there is greater emphasis on the importance of being in touch with your customers. All the innovation and the new product development that any company does not need to have the necessary consumer connect for it to have any chance to succeed.

The Innovation needs to be coming from the consumer need explicit or implicit else it would have a very limited appeal to the consumer and have a limited chance of succeeding.

Market Research is an aid to decision making in any consumer good company. A marketer should be tracking metrics like the consumer bonding and advantage which could be just by product of the methodology used by the market research agency. A marketer should be able to connect to the consumer at some level. One needs to ask the consumer the right questions or research findings can go off a complete tangent.

The customer can conduct business with the company through different channels such as at the branch, call center, online sales, franchises,use of agents etc. The more the channels the greater the need to manage your interaction across all the touch points. This is where CRM comes into play in these industries. Customer Relationship Management is not just the application of technology but it is the strategy to learn more about the customer needs and behaviour.

The CRM process makes available the real time data of each individual consumer. A major benefit can be development of better relations with the
existing customer base and offering them a number of individual products. The CRM can also be used to reach out to specific segments of consumer with tailor made offers.

ROI on Campaign:

Deliver the right message to the right person in the right way to increase relevancy.
Develop profitable long term relationship with them .
Business Intelligence is only as good as the data in the system. So CRM needs to have meaningful data to help the company connect and understand its consumers.

Bill Gates said that " Your most UnHappy Customers are your greatest source of learning. The motto of today needs to be keep the customer
happy and address their needs proactively building a far more profitable business and happier stakeholders.