Sunday 29 September 2013

Negative influence of Commercialization on Customer relationship management

In today's busy business world, many industries have got commercialized which directly or indirectly affects their relationship with the customer. Let us see with an example on how it affects and what have been the consequence?

In traditional system education was given to students in order to gain knowledge and also guided them on the right path which gave them the success throughout their career with minimal failure. Knowledge should be well balanced, it should provide both theoretical and practical aspect of a subject. Here the "Guru" or teacher thought of providing knowledge to student and aligned them toward the bright side of life. But the same educational system  has got commercialized in various ways in today's trend. If a student have to study they have to pay donation for admission, payment for the dresses, sports, books, shoes, bags etc...which many parents won't be affordable to pay. Every parent expects his/her daughter/son to study in a good school with better coaching and discipline. Above all today's parents wait in queue for the admission of LKG/UKG in most of the best schools around various metropolitan cities & Towns. Even after this they try in government schools where the quality of infrastructure, hygiene, environment to study etc...have been pathetic. Here the customer for the school is Students and their vision should be "Providing quality education". So in order to provide a customer satisfaction school should restructure their admission system, fees which will be affordable for students from every category of society. Education should always teach them the discipline in life and not aversion for studies. This makes the parents of the students as a delightful customer. Commercialization would only give capital to the school but not customer satisfaction & quality education system.

Likewise lets see this w.r.t Yoga or any other health related sector. When a patient goes to a hospital his prayers to Almighty is should return healthy. In traditional system doctors have great respect and affection towards their patient. Even though there was no sophisticated technology like today in those days doctors always gave positive energy to their patients which have cured many of them. This made the doctor and their clinic/hospital famous due to their customer relationship i.e. patients. But in today's fast moving and technology world many doctors see patients as a headache or burden for them. They do their duty for cost and not for making the patient as a delightful customer. If we refer a hospital "X" as a famous for cardiology, it will through our experience or information from our relatives, friends. But the same X hospital might have not been customer satisfactory for Y person might be due to some reason. But this percentage has been more in today's hospital due to commercialization. If a doctor is famous/best he is not a GOD, he is a human being like us. Hospital should have a system in the cost it can be more but the approach to treat a patient should give him/her the confidence that they will return back "Healthy and be a satisfied customer". This depends on their hospital facility, system of processing their health related reports, proper appointment system to meet the doctor, their stay if they are admitted which includes their attitude of the Nurses, transportation facility if any, payment system etc all together makes a customer delightful. This is seem very less in today's medical system which includes even Yoga. Yoga is a systematic approach to keep oneself healthy and above all resistant enough from various ailments which includes back pain, headaches, obesity etc. But this has been commercialized by many consultant who charges 1000 per sitting and by the time the patient becomes he should have paid Rs. 20000-30000. But the same was taught free by many volunteers which has now turned as a business. Every aspect has turned to be business rather sharing of knowledge. 

So how this affects the customer satisfaction?

1. Customer lands up paying enormous amount until he arrives or not arrives at a solution.
2. He/She will be dissatisfied with the institute/hospital once after undergoing a treatment or training but the quality may be as specified in their website or the ways they should have convinced the customer before joining them.
3. Company goes into a loss once customer spreads this information over social networking media. Today media delivers the information to many within seconds
4. Customer will be both a well wisher and an enemy for any organization. But for commercialized organization he will turn as an  enemy once after going through their process or system.

So organizations should see how to develop a process that focuses on providing the service to the society which will  "add value to the customer" rather not making them a dissatisfied customer. Commercialization will only lead an organization to drastic downfall in their growth along with not providing an opportunity to revive back and build a customer satisfactory image in the market.

Monday 9 September 2013

Importance of Supplier Management to Customer Relationship Management

In my last blog we have seen how Communication plays a vital role in effective Customer Relationship Management. In this blog we are going to see how supplier management has got same importance as customer relationship management in the growth of an Organization. As we all know unless we keep proper relationships with suppliers an organization will not be able to deliver the desired output on time which will eventually bring drastic collapse of an organization. At each stage supplier act as an input and customer act as an output so these two sectors always go together in any organization or business in general term. We have got an application dedicated for customer relationship management as well as for vendor management. Here we should make sure that the required raw material / finished part is captured effectively in the vendor management thereby getting more output in customer relationship management. So tool pertaining to Vendor Management should be efficiently handled to make sure we make the right decision while placing any order from supplier management which should tally with the market requirement. Excess or shortage will be a cost for the organization which has got negative result. An apt example for this if a medical shop vendor places an excess order for less moving medicine and shortage in large moving medicine will directly affects his business which will also bring down his business due to poor customer relationship management.
Customer relationship is not just handling the customer with efficient communication but to capture his exact need / requirement. As we know a business should move with the customer requirement and not with business requirement i.e. termed as Mass production which was practiced earlier. This is an important part of Marketing executive who should always keep themselves updated with the people's requirement thereby aligning the business accordingly. When this analysis is made efficiently then that the input will provide an efficient decision making when it comes to supplier management. An organization can provide a clear input to the supplier that we would require these many resource/ this quality of raw material in this mentioned time frame to keep themselves in line with this challenging market. Supplier management decision making requires the following input
1. Current market requirement analysis report.
2. Any new replacement opportunity i.e. bringing new model in the market.
3. Time in getting the raw material to time the it takes to reaches the market - Based on the current requirement decision has to be made.
4. Alternate supplier availability & logistic mode.
These are certain inputs that needs to be taken into consideration before making a procurement of raw material which should also carry the decision making report from higher executives. This would eventually make an organization to take proper supplier management decision thereby satisfying the customer needs. Supplier Management when it comes to agriculture requires a lot more decision making skill set along with time management. Unless a Farmer / wholesaler / retailer doesn't have proper time management along with market trend the entire business goes to a loss. Here time plays an even more important roles as the requirement is continuously growing without any reduction.
For every business supplier management should always go with proper decision making reports or frameworks thereby satisfying the customers needs. Customer will be satisfied with the product but getting that quality, availability on time, right cost make him a delightful customer that can be achieved only with this supplier management. How we can say that the supplier management is not efficiently management in our country? In our country every day there is loss in crores especially in agricultural product due to improper management of supply and demand. So in order to resolve these gaps there should be an analysis on the quantity of need of a specific product at a specific market thereby fulfilling their needs on time making them a happy customer. So the wholesaler has to see what is the requirement in the market then make a decision on the stock requirement thereby ensuring that the customer get the required product of the required quantity.
So it is a must in every organization to make a proper management of their supplier in line with the need of the customer thereby gaining a positive growth of an organization. In a way it is a must for an organization that getting more delightful customers depends on their supplier management. Supplier also should make sure that they deliver the requirement of an organization thereby they get more business which is very much applicable in software industries. So now we conclude that an organization should have an efficient, structured supplier management team who actually makes plans & categorize their suppliers according to market analysis report prepared by Marketing Team thereby giving much focus for the "need of customer" and not "as per the need of organization"