Building Customer Loyalty Through Internet and Mobile Phones

The Icfai University Press
Advertising Express

MEDIA

-- Anil Chandhok
Professor
Om Institute of Management, Jagadhri.
The author can be reached at
anilchandhok@yahoo.com

-- Upasna Chadha
Research Scholar
Ch Charan Singh University, Meerut.

In today's competitive era, marketers are using all possible means to attract and retain customers. The two emerging tools with wide usage are Internet and mobile. These two media are being extensively used both for building B2B and B2C relationships. This article discusses the use and effectiveness of mobile and Internet services in building customer loyalty.

Mobiles are no longer regarded as just tools for personal or official correspondence. With great emphasis on mobile network services and development of technologically well-equipped mobile handsets and application software, there has been a significant increase in the ways by which mobiles are being used by the marketers to build relationships with the customers. In fact, we ourselves get so many messages from insurance companies or other service-oriented companies, about new products or schemes or any other related information or even reminders.
The growth of Internet has built bridges of communication between the companies and customers. Transformation of mobile channels from wireless communication to mobile web is also supporting customer needs today. From a customer's point of view, this is a B2C relationship. The purpose of this relationship is to coordinate all CRM strategies and contact customers through multiple channels.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is very important for building relationships and establishing trust with customers, which will ultimately lead to customer loyalty. Developing an effective CRM program and implementing it properly will help to fulfil customers' expectations and will also help to improve the quality of customer service. Marketers use a variety of media of direct marketing to build trust among customers.

Crm and Internet

Internet technology has transformed CRM into electronic CRM (eCRM) because companies can use Internet technologies to capture new customers, track their preferences and online behaviors, and customize support and services. The Internet has facilitated the implementation of CRM to a great extent. Internet helps in setting up correspondence with the customers at the time the customers want and, thus, increases the chances of customer acquisition, and that is not all, it can also be used to extend services and ultimately helps in customer retention.
CRM solution increases the profitability of companies by helping them to win customer loyalty, reduce costs and customize solutions to customers. CRM seeks to deal with customers at all three stages of building relationships namely, customer acquisition, sales, and retention through customer service. To facilitate the customer decision making process in the pre-sale stage, the e-CRM activities emphasize on marketing activities with personalized technology. In the next phase, i.e., during the sales phase, in order to ensure that the shopping and purchase experience of the customers are more efficient and satisfactory customized sales transactions are created. The final stage is that of customer retention in which the companies facilitate the customers to check the status of their transactions and track the shipments. It enables the customers to work together with the sales force and offers incentives for repeat visits through push e-mails and other loyalty programs that can enhance customer trust and loyalty.
To extend the services to the customers, companies design their official websites in such a way that these sites serve as a medium to correspond with the customers. With the help of such a website, companies can provide services/sales, and post sales support. This help to meet both customer's and the company's needs. Therefore, a company's website becomes an effective channel for customer acquisition, transaction/service, and retention. The Internet plays a prominent role in customer acquisition by e-marketing. It acts as an interactive communication between the company and the customer. Companies list their products and services on their respective websites and attract potential customers. New additions in the company websites in terms of options, like advanced searching capability and functions like service inquiry, comparing products and prices, can help to retain the customers and this, in turn, can lead to increase in sales. Companies can create online communities and increase their customer base. These communities interact and share their experiences. Online discussions about products can encourage customer initiated communications between the company and customers or among the customers themselves. These communities enhance customer loyalty, branding and trust towards the company which will, in turn, lead to increase in sales and customer relationships.

Crm and Customer Loyalty

Customer loyalty is the strength of the relationship between an individual's relative attitude towards an entity (brand, service, store, or vendor) and its repeated usage. There are firms that adopt a proactive approach to create customer value and manage loyalty through constantly anticipating and responding to latent customer needs. Companies, which are customer-oriented, treat their customers as competitive assets. Certainly, customer loyalty creates a foundation for charging price premiums and also addresses the challenge posed by the entry of competitors into the market.
e-Commerce players can ensure customer loyalty by initiating loyalty programs online. CRM strategies are implemented in three phases, namely acquisition, service and retention. In the first stage, registration of the customers, discussing online program details and program benefits contribute to the CRM strategy and help to acquire online customers. In the second stage, special services and awards offer numerous incentives and benefits to the customers. In the final stage, self-managed status, purchase history, personalized services, and privileges discount and services help to increase customer loyalty.

Mobile and Crm

In particular, mobile phones have turned out to be devices which provide firms with possibilities to build and maintain one-to-one relationships with their customers, combined with benefits such as large reach, low-costs, rapid feedback from customers, constant reachability and localization possibilities. On the one hand, the mobile medium is best-suited to enhance traditional CRM because of its very personal character, large reach and interactivity, which allows firms to develop intimate relationships with customers. CRM is indeed among the enterprise applications that generates the most attention with respect to mobility. On the other hand, despite the tremendous potential of the mobile CRM services, they have not been fully explored so far. Mobile services support commerce transactions and help in better management of personal activities. Among mobile applications proposed by wireless researchers, several new applications seem more promising.

Mobile Services and Customization

One benefit of using mobile services for building customer loyalty is customization. It is the ability to tailor products and services according to user preferences. Through customization, companies can understand customer needs better and create products that match customer needs better. Perceived quality of a product is influenced by the level of customization of the product. By tailoring products and services to individual customer needs, a company can fulfil and exceed customer expectations and improve perceived product quality. During sales and service phases, customized ordering and transaction process play a key role. Customization can help to improve customer satisfaction by tailoring products and services according to customer tastes and preferences. Customization provides users perceived control which is a successful move towards retaining customer satisfaction. Thus e-commerce websites can earn better customer satisfaction, if they give adequate choices to the customers to customize their own products and services. For mobile application delivery, customization could be: content display, interface presentation, navigation, links and shortcuts, and loyalty programs.

Customer Satisfaction and Customer Loyalty

Customer satisfaction is a major factor in retaining customers and can indirectly attract new customers by way of references. Many studies on customer satisfaction show that providing customer satisfaction by means of customer services helps in building customer loyalty. Customer satisfaction stems from a customer's comparison of expectations prior to purchase and post-purchase and post-usage evaluation of a product. Customer satisfaction arises when the customer's expectations meet the purchasing experience and after-sales service. Therefore, CRM strategies implemented in all channels can lead to a collective customer experience.

Trust and Customer Loyalty

Trust is the main factor to build a long-term relationship. It directly affects customer satisfaction and loyalty and directly influences the success of e-CRM strategy. Technology has made great advances in serving the customers. Advanced network infrastructure, web and mobile applications, security of data transfer and system authentication have made the information relating to the customers more confidential. However, a high level of risk may also be attributed to these system features, which may discourage the customers in performing purchase transactions and adopting the wireless strategies.

Conclusion

It is very difficult to make new customers. The best approach of marketing is to maintain links with the existing customers so that they act as brand ambassadors for promoting a company's product in their respective groups. The loyalty of the existing customers can be ensured by maintaining links with them and associating them in product improvement by inviting suggestions to make the product more useful to the customers. The most economical tools in terms of time, effort and money are the Internet and the mobile. Marketers need to develop a database so that such contacts can be made available from time to time.