Deck 11: Building a Customer-Centric Organisation - Customer Relationship Management

Question 1

Entrepreneurship is all about finding niche markets, which arise from an untapped potential in a corner of an existing market ignored by major companies. Finding customers for a specialized or niche business is no longer an arduous manual task. Somewhere there is a list of names that will allow a business, no matter how "niche," to locate its specific target customers.
Vinod Gupta was working for a recreational vehicle (RV) manufacturer in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1972. One day his boss requested a list of all the RV dealers in the country. Of course, at this time no such list existed. Gupta decided to create one. Gupta ordered every Yellow Pages phone book in the country, 4,500 total, took them home to his garage, and started manually sorting through each book one-by-one, compiling the RV list that his boss coveted. After providing the list Gupta told his boss he could have it for free if he could also sell it to other RV manufacturers. Gupta's boss agreed, and his company-infoUSA Inc.-was launched.
Today infoUSA no longer sells lists on yellow pieces of paper, but maintains one of the nation's largest databases, including 14 million businesses and 220 million consumers. More than 4 million customers access this resource. More than 90 percent are entrepreneurial companies and have only one or two employees. These small businesses account for 60 percent of infoUSA's annual revenue of $311 million.
The point is that entrepreneurial businesses that want to thrive in specialty markets can use databases for reaching customers. While this resource does not do the whole job, it can and should comprise the core of a marketing program which also includes publicity, word-ofmouth recommendations, or "buzz," savvy geographical placement of the company's physical outlets, such as retail stores and offices, and, if affordable, advertising.
Slicing and Dicing
Put another way, databases, which slice-and-dice lists to pinpoint just the right prospects for products or services, enable entrepreneurs to find the proverbial needle in the haystack. An entrepreneur might target a market of only 200 companies or a select universe of individuals who might have use for a specific product or service-such as feminist-oriented prayer books for Lutheran women ministers in their 20s, or seeds for gardeners who grow vegetables native to Sicily, or, like one of infoUSA's own customers, jelly beans for companies with employee coffee-break rooms.
Databases have the ability to take the legwork out of locating specialized customers and make the job as easy as one, two, three. According to infoUSA, to use databases effectively, company owners must take three distinct steps:
Step 1: Know Your Customers
"In any business, there is no substitute for retaining existing customers. Make these people happy, and they become the base from which you add others. As a niche marketer, you have at least an idea who might want what you have to sell, even if those prospects aren't yet actually buying. Get to know these people. Understand what they are looking for. Consider what they like and don't like about your product or service."
Step 2: Analyze Your Customers
"Your current customers or clients have all of the information you need to find other customers. Analyze them to find common characteristics. If you are selling to businesses, consider revenue and number of employees. If you are selling to consumers, focus on demographics, such as age, as well as income levels. Armed with this information about your customers, you are ready to make use of a database to look for new ones."
Step 3: Find New Customers Just Like Your Existing Customers
"In a niche business, you find new customers by cloning your existing customers. Once you know and understand your current customers, you can determine the types of businesses or customers to target.
"An online brokerage, for example, was seeking to build its business further and needed a list of names of people 'with a propensity to invest' just like its current clients. Our company used proprietary modeling to provide a set of names of individuals from throughout the U.S. with the required level of income.
"You should buy a database-generated list only if you have analyzed your current customers. In addition, you should wait to buy until you are ready to use the list, because lists do have a short shelf life-about 30 to 60 days if you are selling to consumers and six to nine months if you are selling to businesses. Indeed, about 70 percent of infoUSA's entire database changes over annually."
No Magic Bullet
The magic of databases is that there is no magic. Every entrepreneur has a product or service to sell. The trick is to match what you are selling with people who are buying. Used effectively, databases serve as the resource for making that happen. Do not make the mistake of expecting a database to perform the entire job of securing customers for products or services. An entrepreneur must be ever vigilant about prospecting-and not only when business is slow. Entrepreneurs must encourage sales representatives to call on customers even when business is booming and they do not require their revenues to keep the company afloat. Once customers are secured, make servicing them a top priority.
Explain how technology has dramatically affected the efficiency and effectiveness of finding customers.

Answer 1

The customers can be found out dramatically by the use of CRM tools and technology. The RV owners cannot be found out easily. The improvement in search is due to the advancement in technology.
With the help of certain tools, RV owners can be searched quickly. The search has become quite simple, easy and effective.

Question 2

Illustrate the business process used by a customer of Actionly following Twitter tweets.

Answer 2

The first part of the business process is for the information to be transferred from the social medial site to company A's database. This information is then sorted by the company's machine learning algorithm into a category relevant to the website user's query. This information is then presented in the digital dashboard to the customer, along with any other information that matches the customer's query. Finally, the customer can use this information in his own business for whatever goal he intends.

Question 3

Entrepreneurship is all about finding niche markets, which arise from an untapped potential in a corner of an existing market ignored by major companies. Finding customers for a specialized or niche business is no longer an arduous manual task. Somewhere there is a list of names that will allow a business, no matter how "niche," to locate its specific target customers.
Vinod Gupta was working for a recreational vehicle (RV) manufacturer in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1972. One day his boss requested a list of all the RV dealers in the country. Of course, at this time no such list existed. Gupta decided to create one. Gupta ordered every Yellow Pages phone book in the country, 4,500 total, took them home to his garage, and started manually sorting through each book one-by-one, compiling the RV list that his boss coveted. After providing the list Gupta told his boss he could have it for free if he could also sell it to other RV manufacturers. Gupta's boss agreed, and his company-infoUSA Inc.-was launched.
Today infoUSA no longer sells lists on yellow pieces of paper, but maintains one of the nation's largest databases, including 14 million businesses and 220 million consumers. More than 4 million customers access this resource. More than 90 percent are entrepreneurial companies and have only one or two employees. These small businesses account for 60 percent of infoUSA's annual revenue of $311 million.
The point is that entrepreneurial businesses that want to thrive in specialty markets can use databases for reaching customers. While this resource does not do the whole job, it can and should comprise the core of a marketing program which also includes publicity, word-ofmouth recommendations, or "buzz," savvy geographical placement of the company's physical outlets, such as retail stores and offices, and, if affordable, advertising.
Slicing and Dicing
Put another way, databases, which slice-and-dice lists to pinpoint just the right prospects for products or services, enable entrepreneurs to find the proverbial needle in the haystack. An entrepreneur might target a market of only 200 companies or a select universe of individuals who might have use for a specific product or service-such as feminist-oriented prayer books for Lutheran women ministers in their 20s, or seeds for gardeners who grow vegetables native to Sicily, or, like one of infoUSA's own customers, jelly beans for companies with employee coffee-break rooms.
Databases have the ability to take the legwork out of locating specialized customers and make the job as easy as one, two, three. According to infoUSA, to use databases effectively, company owners must take three distinct steps:
Step 1: Know Your Customers
"In any business, there is no substitute for retaining existing customers. Make these people happy, and they become the base from which you add others. As a niche marketer, you have at least an idea who might want what you have to sell, even if those prospects aren't yet actually buying. Get to know these people. Understand what they are looking for. Consider what they like and don't like about your product or service."
Step 2: Analyze Your Customers
"Your current customers or clients have all of the information you need to find other customers. Analyze them to find common characteristics. If you are selling to businesses, consider revenue and number of employees. If you are selling to consumers, focus on demographics, such as age, as well as income levels. Armed with this information about your customers, you are ready to make use of a database to look for new ones."
Step 3: Find New Customers Just Like Your Existing Customers
"In a niche business, you find new customers by cloning your existing customers. Once you know and understand your current customers, you can determine the types of businesses or customers to target.
"An online brokerage, for example, was seeking to build its business further and needed a list of names of people 'with a propensity to invest' just like its current clients. Our company used proprietary modeling to provide a set of names of individuals from throughout the U.S. with the required level of income.
"You should buy a database-generated list only if you have analyzed your current customers. In addition, you should wait to buy until you are ready to use the list, because lists do have a short shelf life-about 30 to 60 days if you are selling to consumers and six to nine months if you are selling to businesses. Indeed, about 70 percent of infoUSA's entire database changes over annually."
No Magic Bullet
The magic of databases is that there is no magic. Every entrepreneur has a product or service to sell. The trick is to match what you are selling with people who are buying. Used effectively, databases serve as the resource for making that happen. Do not make the mistake of expecting a database to perform the entire job of securing customers for products or services. An entrepreneur must be ever vigilant about prospecting-and not only when business is slow. Entrepreneurs must encourage sales representatives to call on customers even when business is booming and they do not require their revenues to keep the company afloat. Once customers are secured, make servicing them a top priority.
Explain the two different types of CRM systems, and explain how a company can use infoUSA's database for creating a CRM strategy.

Answer 3

Operational customer relationship management provides support to the traditional processing of the transaction for the day-to-day operations of front-office that directly deals with the clients.
Analytical Customer relationship management provides support to the strategic analysis and back-office operations and takes account of all operations that do not directly deal with the clients.
The main difference between analytical CRM and operational CRM is the direct communication among the customers and the organization. Info USA can practice customer relationship management for everything starting from knowing the name of customer's till the customer's birthday.
There are also several methods that info USA can prolong its reach. This also includes personalization with the help of a website that provides data that consumers might want. This also helps to provide information to the companies who require it.

Question 4

Identify different metrics Actionly uses to measure the success of a customer marketing campaign.

Question 5

Entrepreneurship is all about finding niche markets, which arise from an untapped potential in a corner of an existing market ignored by major companies. Finding customers for a specialized or niche business is no longer an arduous manual task. Somewhere there is a list of names that will allow a business, no matter how "niche," to locate its specific target customers.
Vinod Gupta was working for a recreational vehicle (RV) manufacturer in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1972. One day his boss requested a list of all the RV dealers in the country. Of course, at this time no such list existed. Gupta decided to create one. Gupta ordered every Yellow Pages phone book in the country, 4,500 total, took them home to his garage, and started manually sorting through each book one-by-one, compiling the RV list that his boss coveted. After providing the list Gupta told his boss he could have it for free if he could also sell it to other RV manufacturers. Gupta's boss agreed, and his company-infoUSA Inc.-was launched.
Today infoUSA no longer sells lists on yellow pieces of paper, but maintains one of the nation's largest databases, including 14 million businesses and 220 million consumers. More than 4 million customers access this resource. More than 90 percent are entrepreneurial companies and have only one or two employees. These small businesses account for 60 percent of infoUSA's annual revenue of $311 million.
The point is that entrepreneurial businesses that want to thrive in specialty markets can use databases for reaching customers. While this resource does not do the whole job, it can and should comprise the core of a marketing program which also includes publicity, word-ofmouth recommendations, or "buzz," savvy geographical placement of the company's physical outlets, such as retail stores and offices, and, if affordable, advertising.
Slicing and Dicing
Put another way, databases, which slice-and-dice lists to pinpoint just the right prospects for products or services, enable entrepreneurs to find the proverbial needle in the haystack. An entrepreneur might target a market of only 200 companies or a select universe of individuals who might have use for a specific product or service-such as feminist-oriented prayer books for Lutheran women ministers in their 20s, or seeds for gardeners who grow vegetables native to Sicily, or, like one of infoUSA's own customers, jelly beans for companies with employee coffee-break rooms.
Databases have the ability to take the legwork out of locating specialized customers and make the job as easy as one, two, three. According to infoUSA, to use databases effectively, company owners must take three distinct steps:
Step 1: Know Your Customers
"In any business, there is no substitute for retaining existing customers. Make these people happy, and they become the base from which you add others. As a niche marketer, you have at least an idea who might want what you have to sell, even if those prospects aren't yet actually buying. Get to know these people. Understand what they are looking for. Consider what they like and don't like about your product or service."
Step 2: Analyze Your Customers
"Your current customers or clients have all of the information you need to find other customers. Analyze them to find common characteristics. If you are selling to businesses, consider revenue and number of employees. If you are selling to consumers, focus on demographics, such as age, as well as income levels. Armed with this information about your customers, you are ready to make use of a database to look for new ones."
Step 3: Find New Customers Just Like Your Existing Customers
"In a niche business, you find new customers by cloning your existing customers. Once you know and understand your current customers, you can determine the types of businesses or customers to target.
"An online brokerage, for example, was seeking to build its business further and needed a list of names of people 'with a propensity to invest' just like its current clients. Our company used proprietary modeling to provide a set of names of individuals from throughout the U.S. with the required level of income.
"You should buy a database-generated list only if you have analyzed your current customers. In addition, you should wait to buy until you are ready to use the list, because lists do have a short shelf life-about 30 to 60 days if you are selling to consumers and six to nine months if you are selling to businesses. Indeed, about 70 percent of infoUSA's entire database changes over annually."
No Magic Bullet
The magic of databases is that there is no magic. Every entrepreneur has a product or service to sell. The trick is to match what you are selling with people who are buying. Used effectively, databases serve as the resource for making that happen. Do not make the mistake of expecting a database to perform the entire job of securing customers for products or services. An entrepreneur must be ever vigilant about prospecting-and not only when business is slow. Entrepreneurs must encourage sales representatives to call on customers even when business is booming and they do not require their revenues to keep the company afloat. Once customers are secured, make servicing them a top priority.
Describe three ways a new small business can extend its customer reach by performing CRM functions from an infoUSA database.

Question 6

Argue for or against the following statement: Actionly invades consumer privacy by taking data from different websites such as Twitter and Flickr without the consent of the customer who posted the information.

Question 7

Entrepreneurship is all about finding niche markets, which arise from an untapped potential in a corner of an existing market ignored by major companies. Finding customers for a specialized or niche business is no longer an arduous manual task. Somewhere there is a list of names that will allow a business, no matter how "niche," to locate its specific target customers.
Vinod Gupta was working for a recreational vehicle (RV) manufacturer in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1972. One day his boss requested a list of all the RV dealers in the country. Of course, at this time no such list existed. Gupta decided to create one. Gupta ordered every Yellow Pages phone book in the country, 4,500 total, took them home to his garage, and started manually sorting through each book one-by-one, compiling the RV list that his boss coveted. After providing the list Gupta told his boss he could have it for free if he could also sell it to other RV manufacturers. Gupta's boss agreed, and his company-infoUSA Inc.-was launched.
Today infoUSA no longer sells lists on yellow pieces of paper, but maintains one of the nation's largest databases, including 14 million businesses and 220 million consumers. More than 4 million customers access this resource. More than 90 percent are entrepreneurial companies and have only one or two employees. These small businesses account for 60 percent of infoUSA's annual revenue of $311 million.
The point is that entrepreneurial businesses that want to thrive in specialty markets can use databases for reaching customers. While this resource does not do the whole job, it can and should comprise the core of a marketing program which also includes publicity, word-ofmouth recommendations, or "buzz," savvy geographical placement of the company's physical outlets, such as retail stores and offices, and, if affordable, advertising.
Slicing and Dicing
Put another way, databases, which slice-and-dice lists to pinpoint just the right prospects for products or services, enable entrepreneurs to find the proverbial needle in the haystack. An entrepreneur might target a market of only 200 companies or a select universe of individuals who might have use for a specific product or service-such as feminist-oriented prayer books for Lutheran women ministers in their 20s, or seeds for gardeners who grow vegetables native to Sicily, or, like one of infoUSA's own customers, jelly beans for companies with employee coffee-break rooms.
Databases have the ability to take the legwork out of locating specialized customers and make the job as easy as one, two, three. According to infoUSA, to use databases effectively, company owners must take three distinct steps:
Step 1: Know Your Customers
"In any business, there is no substitute for retaining existing customers. Make these people happy, and they become the base from which you add others. As a niche marketer, you have at least an idea who might want what you have to sell, even if those prospects aren't yet actually buying. Get to know these people. Understand what they are looking for. Consider what they like and don't like about your product or service."
Step 2: Analyze Your Customers
"Your current customers or clients have all of the information you need to find other customers. Analyze them to find common characteristics. If you are selling to businesses, consider revenue and number of employees. If you are selling to consumers, focus on demographics, such as age, as well as income levels. Armed with this information about your customers, you are ready to make use of a database to look for new ones."
Step 3: Find New Customers Just Like Your Existing Customers
"In a niche business, you find new customers by cloning your existing customers. Once you know and understand your current customers, you can determine the types of businesses or customers to target.
"An online brokerage, for example, was seeking to build its business further and needed a list of names of people 'with a propensity to invest' just like its current clients. Our company used proprietary modeling to provide a set of names of individuals from throughout the U.S. with the required level of income.
"You should buy a database-generated list only if you have analyzed your current customers. In addition, you should wait to buy until you are ready to use the list, because lists do have a short shelf life-about 30 to 60 days if you are selling to consumers and six to nine months if you are selling to businesses. Indeed, about 70 percent of infoUSA's entire database changes over annually."
No Magic Bullet
The magic of databases is that there is no magic. Every entrepreneur has a product or service to sell. The trick is to match what you are selling with people who are buying. Used effectively, databases serve as the resource for making that happen. Do not make the mistake of expecting a database to perform the entire job of securing customers for products or services. An entrepreneur must be ever vigilant about prospecting-and not only when business is slow. Entrepreneurs must encourage sales representatives to call on customers even when business is booming and they do not require their revenues to keep the company afloat. Once customers are secured, make servicing them a top priority.
infoUSA discussed three distinct steps company owners must take to use databases effectively. Rank these steps in order of importance to a CRM strategy